MileStage

Freelance project tracking with built-in payment gates.

3 followers

Freelance project tracking with built-in payment gates.

3 followers

Dead simple milestone payment tracking for freelancers. Automated reminders, stage locking, zero transaction fees. Stop chasing payments, prevent scope creep.

Free Options

Launch tags:Task Management•Freelance•SaaS

Launch Team / Built With

Humans in the Loop — A free community for people who love using AI to ship faster

A free community for people who love using AI to ship faster

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Maker

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Hey everyone! I built MileStage because I was tired of the same freelancing cycle: deliver work, send invoice, wait forever, send awkward follow-up emails, do "quick revisions" while still waiting to get paid. I tried invoicing apps, all-in-one platforms, contracts with payment terms - none of it solved the core issue. Once you deliver, you lose leverage. Clients have everything they need, so paying you becomes low priority. The fix wasn't better invoicing. It was changing the structure entirely. Projects broken into stages where payment is required before moving forward. Client approves stage one → pays → stage two unlocks. Simple. I couldn't find anything that did just this without all the bloat, so I built it myself. Started as a tool for my own projects, now it's live for other freelancers. Would love to hear your thoughts - what's missing? What would make this more useful for your workflow?

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1mo ago

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p/milestage

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18d ago

I got tired of chasing clients for payment, so I built a tool that makes it impossible to ignore

Late payments and scope creep are usually a structure problem, not a client problem. Once you've delivered the work, you've lost all your leverage. I spent 10 years as a freelance designer living that cycle before I decided to just build a fix.

MileStage breaks projects into stages. Each stage has a price, deliverables, and a revision limit. The next stage doesn't unlock until the client pays for the current one. That's really the whole mechanic, BUT it completely changes the dynamic. Payment becomes part of the workflow, not an awkward conversation at the end.

p/milestage

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20d ago

No more unpaid scope creep. Get paid BEFORE the next stage unlocks.

Ever finish a big chunk of work for a client, send it over, and then... crickets?
They love it, but suddenly there's "just one more tiny tweak" (that turns into 10), or they ghost you on the next payment while asking for extras. You've basically done free work, and chasing invoices feels like begging. Sound familiar?

That's the exact pain I built MileStage to fix. It's super simple: you break your project into clear stages (like 30% deposit design concepts revisions final files), set the price per stage, and share one clean link with your client. No account needed for them.

The magic? The next stage literally locks until they pay for the current one. No more scope creep sneaking in unpaid. Payments go straight to your Stripe (you keep 100%), automated reminders nudge them if they're late, and you get pro-looking PDFs for quotes/invoices without extra hassle.

No more awkward "hey, can you pay now?" messages. The system enforces the boundaries for you. If you've ever lost hours (or sanity) to endless revisions or late payments, this changes everything.
Check it out at milestage.com (14-day free trial, no card needed).

p/milestage

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21d ago

The Real Reason Freelancers Do Free Work (And How to Stop It)

Here's a pattern I've seen over and over: a freelancer delivers work, the client says "looks great, just one small change" - and suddenly you're three rounds deep into revisions you never agreed to. The project scope quietly expands. You feel awkward pushing back because the client seems happy and you don't want to ruin the relationship. So you do the extra work for free.

This isn't a client problem. It's a systems problem.

Most freelancers track projects through scattered emails, Notion docs, or mental notes. There's no clear boundary between "this is what you paid for" and "this is extra." When everything lives in your head or in loose conversations, scope creep becomes invisible until you're already doing unpaid labor.

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