Kickstart is the app that helps indie app developers ship, brought to you by the creator of Hacking with Swift.
You don't need more tabs, more notes, or more half-finished launch docs. You need one place to handle the work around your app: your App Store listing, competitor research, pricing, reviews, analytics, marketing, and more. Kickstart brings all of that together in one app, so you spend less time stitching tools together and more time shipping.
You can start with a brand-new app or import an existing App Store Connect project, then keep your launch plan, store presence, analytics, feedback, competitor research, and marketing assets together in one Mac app.
With Kickstart you:
- Replace launch chaos with a clear daily workflow.
- Keep your positioning, store copy, reviews, keywords, and release tasks aligned.
- Turn App Store data into specific next moves instead of more noise.
- Create marketing assets without leaving your shipping workspace.
- Spend less time stitching tools together and more time shipping.
Instead of leaving you with a vague checklist, Kickstart breaks shipping down into small, practical tasks you can actually work through. That makes it easier to stay focused on what needs doing now rather than trying to tackle everything at once.
Keep track of what matters:
- Follow revenue, subscriptions, downloads, installs, crashes, and more, including automatic daily sales reporting.
- Compare your app against iOS and macOS competitors to spot positioning and keyword opportunities.
- Manage App Store Connect metadata, keywords, pricing, localizations, events, and even editorial nominations.
- Track and optimize your campaign spending on Apple Ads.
- Read, summarize, translate, and reply to App Store reviews.
- Track TestFlight builds, tester feedback, and "What to Test" notes.
- Draft build-in-public posts, press pitches, and Product Hunt launches.
- Design and build a whole website for your app in just a few clicks.
- Create your press kit assets, video hooks, and marketing videos.
- Get day-by-day tasks to help you stay on track with your work.
Power up your iOS Simulator
Kickstart adds a floating companion panel right beside Xcode's iOS Simulator, so the tools you actually need while building are always within reach:
- Compare live UI against mockups and inspect network traffic
- Send push notifications and deep links
- Tweak status bars, locations, language, and accessibility overrides
- Capture polished screenshots or touch-ready videos without breaking your flow
Best of all, Kickstart is private by design: your project data stays under your control, Kickstart has no analytics or tracking, and all the built-in AI features run using Apple's fully private Foundation Models framework.
Subscription options
Many Kickstart features are completely free, but some features require a subscription. These include:
- App Store Connect optimization and management
- Competitor tracking and analysis
- Video editing and website creation
- Price parity calculator
- Build insights
You can choose to subscribe to Kickstart for $4.99 weekly or $69.99 annually, with subscriptions renewing until canceled.
Kickstart focuses on the work around your app that actually affects whether it gets noticed: improving your App Store presence, learning from reviews, tracking competitors, and showing up consistently.
You already have the skills and the ambition. Kickstart gives you a practical workspace for launch, growth, and everything in between – it's the difference between shipping and succeeding.
Terms of service: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula
Privacy policy: https://www.hudson.uk/privacy
App Store® and Xcode® are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
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Everything You and Your Apps Need
Adr713
There’s a myth that gets perpetuated that suggests you publish on the App Store and the checks start rolling in. While that isn’t (usually) the case, there is so much more to making a successful app, and Kickstart fills in all of the gaps, from planning a launch to capitalising on a solid marketing plan. There’s just so much to keep up with, and it takes years to learn how to do it all, and this app thankfully eliminates that for me. I cannot think of the last time I found an app that was so useful to me as an indie app developer. I’ve brought my existing apps to it, and it’s a guarantee that any future apps I do will start from square one in Kickstart. You owe it to yourself to invest smartly in your development career, and that’s exactly what this is in one convenient package. And in today’s world of AI and automations, this comes with its own MCP that allows you to make a lot of this heavy lifting even breezier. If you don’t want to leave things to luck and instead want to make big wins, give Kickstart a try.
Developer Response
Thank you for this delightful review – I'm so glad Kickstart is proving useful to you, and wish you every success in growing your apps on the App Store!
Extremely helpful for indie developers
gomez2357
Kickstart makes a developer’s life so much easier. One of the best parts is being able to quickly create a clean webpage for each of your apps, which is especially helpful when preparing for an App Store launch.Paul is also very responsive. When I emailed about useful features, such as adding Terms of Service support and expanding Apple/GitHub Pages functionality, he replied quickly and clearly. It feels like the app is actively improving based on real developer needs.Highly recommended for any Apple developer who wants to launch apps more professionally, save time, and give their apps a better chance to succeed and make money.
Developer Response
Thank you for using Kickstart! I'm glad it's already helping make life easier – launching a great app takes so many steps, and by delegating work to Kickstart you're freeing up more of your time for the parts you care about most.
Not very welcoming for VisionOS
rth023
This seems to have great potential! However, there are no options for competitors for VisionOS apps. “App analytics” never seems to load, either during sessions, or after a day or two.I’ve updated my rating to reflect that the potential is becoming reality. The issue with Apple analytics has been addressed and the developer replied that Apple has not yet made an API for the VisionOS App Store — but he’s made the request! Thanks!
Developer Response
Thank you for using Kickstart! The Analytics screen was a bug, but I believe it has now been fixed in v1.0.6 – please let me know if you're still hitting problems. As for visionOS, I'm afraid this is a limitation on Apple's side: there is no official API for reading from the visionOS App Store, and I'm not keen to go down the data scraping approach used by some others. I have contacted Apple to ask them to support visionOS with the App Store search, so we'll see if it's something they are willing to support. Until then, I'm afraid there is very little I can do.
Amazingly Helpful!
Perlguy2026
I’m an indie developer and this is THE app that I never knew I needed! It has all of the overwhelming things I need to do to get my app released and seen in one place.It also will build you a complete website for your app just by filling in a few blanks - this feature is over-the-top amazing to have.I highly recommend it! I recommend the subscription too, it will pay for itself.
Developer Response
Thank you for using Kickstart, and for writing this lovely review! The website builder was so much fun to create, and I'm looking to keep expanding it with more and more features as they are requested 🙌
Thank you for using Kickstart! There's another huge collection of improvements in this update – I appreciate everyone who wrote in with requests and bug reports!
- NEW: Keyword tracking has been greatly expanded, and is now its own top-level activity rather than being inside Competitors. It now has a trend sparkline so you can see movement over the last 30 days, you can filter by specific platforms, double-clicking a keyword row shows more details, you can also control whether keywords must match all tags or any tag, and can also immediately add all your initial keywords from App Store Connect. It's also significantly faster for users who are tracking many keywords, and should happily scale up to 1000 keywords and beyond.
- NEW: You can now add subtitles to any video – double click on it, then enable "Use video speech as narration", then you're done!
- NEW: The video editor can now create and animate arrows, has new bounce animation styles, and can split multiple clips at a time.
- NEW: Adding an existing app to Kickstart now has a custom task list that is more focused on helping you grow your app faster.
- NEW: Submitting an Editorial Nomination has a new "Enhance" button, so you can turn a few sentences into something pitch-worthy.
- NEW: You can now reduce or remove reflections in all 3D device models. To enable this new behavior, download the new v2 models.
- NEW: Kickstart now shows a What's New screen when you update the app, so you can see what's changed across each version.
- IMPROVED: You can now select keywords to track straight from the Keyword Analysis screen.
- IMPROVED: Added editorial nominations guidance directly from meeting Apple's editorial team at WWDC.
- IMPROVED: Generating content for a website will use real customer reviews if enough exist.
- IMPROVED: By popular demand, Kickstart Overdrive and the video editor are now both on the welcome screen.
- IMPROVED: Clicking any device resolution in Kickstart Overdrive's menu bar icon switches between points and pixels.
- IMPROVED: Adding your App Store Connect credentials now uses a step-by-step approach to make it easier.
- IMPROVED: Kickstart Overdrive's settings now has an option to launch Overdrive automatically when you log in.
- IMPROVED: You can now backdate journal entries.
- FIXED: Apps with very low analytics numbers (very new apps, for example) now no longer get stuck on the Preparing Analytics screen.
- FIXED: Website image filenames now get lowercased and slugged to avoid publishing problems – "My Screenshot 1.png" will be converted to "my-screenshot-1.png".
- FIXED: Complex subscription scheduling is now handled more clearly, allowing you to selectively replace existing schedules as needed.
- FIXED: Website homepages now use the Site Name value for the title tag, and you can now use landscape device images in website screenshots.
- FIXED: If you push back a task, its new date is calculated from today rather than from its original date.
- FIXED: Added a "Delete" context menu to release checklist items to complement the swipe to delete option.
- FIXED: Terms of Service and Privacy Policy links are now cleaner.
- FIXED: Downloading app analytics is now much faster, and less likely to cause performance problems for popular apps.
- FIXED: The Press Kit's "About the Developer" box now supports Markdown.
- FIXED: Fixed a rare crash when using update_project with the MCP.
- FIXED: The Competitors comparison table has clearer behavior for sorting the current app.
This release also adjusts the privacy policy, planning ahead for a future release. The change is to note that AI integration will either be done locally on your Mac or using Apple's Private Cloud Compute. Either way, it's always private to you – Kickstart continues to track nothing at all.
Version 1.0.6
The developer, Hudson Heavy Industries, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. Learn More
Supported Features
VoiceOver
Voice Control
Dark Interface
Differentiate Without Color Alone
Sufficient Contrast
Reduced Motion
Captions
Information
Seller
Hudson Heavy Industries Ltd
Size
85 MB
Category
Developer Tools
Compatibility
Requires macOS 26.2 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
Mac Requires macOS 26.2 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.