What we learned shipping to 320 masjids in 2025

Every January, the founding team writes a long, honest retrospective on the year that passed. We share the wins, the things we got wrong, and what we're changing as a result. Here's ours for 2025.

What worked

The donations module became the front door. We launched donations as one of nine modules, expecting most masjids would adopt the platform for membership management first. We were wrong — almost three-quarters of new sign-ups came in for donations, then adopted the rest of the modules over the next three months. We re-shaped onboarding around this in Q3 and time-to-value dropped from eleven days to four.

Office hours. We started running biweekly live walkthroughs in March, and they became the single most-cited reason people stay on the platform. The format is simple: thirty minutes of demo, sixty minutes of open Q&A. We answer questions in the order they come in, and we don't skip the awkward ones.

Charging fairly. We doubled prices in May and lost almost no customers. The old pricing was a hangover from when we weren't sure if anyone would pay; the new pricing reflects what running the service actually costs. Boards understood immediately.

What flopped

The mobile app, version one. We shipped a React Native build in Ramadan. It crashed on Android 9, the prayer widget never updated correctly across timezones, and the donation flow was three taps too long. We took it down in May, did a full rebuild from native code, and re-launched in November. The new one works.

Calendar "smart" defaults. We tried to be helpful by suggesting recurring patterns when admins created an event. The suggestions were just wrong often enough that people stopped trusting any of them. We removed the feature entirely in October.

Email digests. We rolled out a weekly "here's what happened in your masjid" digest in July. Open rates were respectable, but the digest didn't change anyone's behavior, and a small but vocal slice found it noisy. We pulled it back to opt-in only.

What we're changing in 2026

Faster paths for small masjids. Most of the masjids signing up have under 200 active members. Our defaults are calibrated for 500+. We're building a "Starter" experience that hides advanced settings until they're needed.

Real expense workflows. The first version of finance was about reading the books. The next version is about running them — receipt capture, multi-step approvals, and category budgets. We shipped the foundation in April; the rest follows in Q2.

Translations. Arabic and Urdu are in QA now. French and Bahasa Indonesia follow in Q2. We're translating the admin UI first, donor-facing portals next.

Thank you

To the 320 masjids that trusted us this year — including the ones that gave us hard feedback when we needed to hear it — thank you. We're honored to be part of the work you do. Onward.