Audit report · Jun 9, 2026 · hand-graded
Last run 9 Jun 2026, 00:00
shipfa.st
This is the page the rubric came from, so it had better score. It does: one-time pricing, no subscription (#27), three tiers in Good/Better/Best shape (#12), 25+ testimonials and videos (#29), Marc's face and “Maker of the Year 2023” (#15), and numbers doing the selling — “8324 makers ship faster,” “$45,000 a month,” “7 days on average” (#3). The single honest catch is rule #28, the one he names by example: “Get ShipFast” is the product name, not the action. By his own letter — “‘Get Started’ means nothing… tell people exactly what they're about to do” — that's a notch short.
31 checks · 28 passed · 3 need work · 0 failed
Category scores
Fix these first.
Ordered by how much each one is costing you. Start at the top.
- 1
Even Marc uses a product-name CTA
rule 28Found: Rule #28, his own example: “‘Get Started’ means nothing. ‘Analyze My Website’ tells people exactly what they're about to do.” The hero (and every repeat) button says “Get ShipFast” — the product's name, which assumes you already know what ShipFast does.
Fix: Name the action: “Get the Next.js boilerplate.” It's the one rule his flagship grades short on.
- 2
Footer isn't engineered to be shared
rule 4Found: Rule #4: “97% of visitors won't buy, but they might share… Finish strong.” The page converts hard but the last screen is a standard footer, not a card built to be posted.
Fix: End on something a maker wants to screenshot — a “shipped in 7 days” badge, a one-line stat card.
- 3
OG image — couldn't verify
rule 5Found: Rule #5: “Treat the OG image as a YouTube thumbnail.” This is a page-source check we can't fully confirm from the live render, so we're flagging it low-confidence rather than scoring it blind.
Fix: If the share card isn't already a thumbnail-grade image with the price and proof on it, make it one.
The rest of the rubric
Needs work
- OG image not verifiedlow confidencerule 5
Rule #5: the share image is the most-seen asset. We can't confirm it from the live page — flagged, not failed.
- Customer-voice copy unverifiedlow confidencerule 14
Rule #14: “Steal your best copy from customers.” With 25+ testimonials the raw material is right there; we just can't confirm the headline copy is lifted from it.
- The category it created is now crowdedrule 19
Rule #19: “Nobody shares another clone.” ShipFast was the original SaaS boilerplate — but it spawned dozens of clones, so the novelty that carried it at launch is no longer doing the work for it. Not a flaw in the page; a note on the wave.
Passed — don’t break these
- ✓#30 — “Ship your startup in days, not weeks” is 6 words
- ✓#1 — no free plan; a one-time purchase
- ✓#2 — black on white, one teal accent for the buy button
- ✓#3 — “8324 makers,” “$45,000 a month,” “7 days on average”
- ✓#8 — a hard paywall: pay to get the code
- ✓#9 — copy written from Marc's own 16 startups
- ✓#10 — Stripe dashboards and demo videos, not paragraphs
- ✓#11 — one thing: a Next.js boilerplate
- ✓#12 — three tiers (Starter / All-in / Bundle)
- ✓#13 — rides the ship-fast indie-hacker wave it helped start
- ✓#15 — Marc's face, “Maker of the Year 2023”
- ✓#16 — pricing sits in the header
- ✓#17 — “days, not weeks” is the headline people quote
- ✓#18 — an emotional, time-anchored headline
- ✓#20 — the hero sells the whole thing alone
- ✓#21 — “22+ hours of headaches” names the pain first
- ✓#24 — sells the outcome: “make your first $ online fast”
- ✓#27 — one-time payment, no subscription
- ✓#29 — 25+ testimonials and videos
- ✓#31 — $199 premium against free starter templates
Headline rewrites, ready to paste
“Ship your startup in days, not weeks.”
“Stop rebuilding auth and Stripe for the 9th time.”
“The boilerplate that's launched 8,000+ startups.”