Smart Post Studio 2.0 — what changed

The first version of Smart Post Studio was a desktop app for Mac and Windows, built by one architect who wanted his video files to stay on his own machine instead of being transcoded in somebody's cloud. That product still exists and still works exactly that way. But nearly everything around it has changed in the last few months — enough that calling it 2.0 is accurate rather than marketing. Here's the whole list, including the part where five strangers we paid to use our website found the thing we'd been getting wrong the whole time.

What version one actually was

A native scheduler you installed. Tokens in your OS keychain, media published from your machine at original quality, one flat price instead of per-channel fees. Nothing about that was wrong — it's still the reason a lot of people use it, and we wrote up how it got built at the time. The problem was narrower than the product: it only worked for people already willing to download software before they knew whether they wanted it.

Four things shipped

The web app (beta). The single most-requested thing since launch was "can it post while my computer is off?" Now it can. Connect a platform in the web app and posts fire from our servers — laptop shut, phone in your pocket. It's included on every plan, and the desktop app stayed exactly as local-first as it always was. The two aren't alternatives; the desktop app is now the privacy option rather than the only option.

Fanvue. As far as we can find, we're still the only scheduler with it. Creators on subscription platforms run the same content operation as any brand — teasers, calendars, caption variants — and every other tool ignores the platform they actually earn on, so they post there by hand. It works from the web app now too, no computer required.

LinkedIn Company Pages. Personal profiles shipped first; Pages needed a separate LinkedIn API approval that came through in August. Both post types now schedule from the same calendar, and adding a Page doesn't change your bill the way a per-channel tool would.

MCP access (beta). The one we're most curious about. Instead of renting you our AI, you connect your own — Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, any MCP client — and it reads your queue, drafts, and schedules. One URL, a one-minute sign-in, no token to copy. There is deliberately no "post now" tool: everything an AI creates is a draft or a scheduled post at least ten minutes out, carrying an AI badge, sitting in your queue where you can stop it. It's on every paid plan including the $8 one, and the setup page spells out the limits.

The lesson we paid for

Here's the uncomfortable part. We hired five people to use the site cold and narrate what they were doing. The results were not subtle.

Three of the three testers who clicked "start free trial" expected a signup form and got an operating-system installer page. Two of the five abandoned the test at exactly that step. Not "found it confusing" — stopped. Our own trial CTA was a download wall, and we'd been looking straight at it for months without seeing it, because we already had the app installed.

It got more specific from there. The newsletter modal, meant to fire on exit intent, was firing on arrival for all five — one of them said, in effect, that they hadn't left yet and had no idea why they'd subscribe. Four of five were frustrated by "one flat price" appearing without an actual number. Somebody counted the platform logos in a section headed "all 8" and found seven. And the word "MCP" in the hero lost people entirely: "What's MCP?"

The honest read: the product had been web-capable for a while, and the site was still selling it like a download. Five people and a small invoice found that faster than we would have.

What it costs, and what's still missing

Scheduler is $8/month — all eight platforms, unlimited scheduling, the calendar on desktop, web and mobile, and MCP access; bring your own AI. Studio starts at $11/month billed semi-annually and adds our AI Writing Studio, which writes natively in 50+ languages, plus Sol, the in-app help chat. No per-channel maths, no seat tax. Fourteen-day trial, no card.

Still true, still ours to fix: posts published from the desktop app need the app running at posting time — that's the cost of media staying local, and the web beta exists precisely to cover it. Every plan is single-seat; multi-seat team accounts are on the roadmap and not shipped. MCP is beta, and doesn't run during the trial. We have no analytics product. Team/Agency is a waitlist, not a tier you can buy.

We relaunched on Product Hunt

Smart Post Studio was on Product Hunt once before, as an early version. It's a different product now, so 2.0 got a comeback launch in August. Olver answered every comment himself, because there is no team to hand them to — and several of the objections from that thread have already become site copy and shipped fixes. The page is still open if you have honest feedback; it's worth more to us than praise.

TL;DR: Since the first launch Smart Post Studio added a web app (posts fire with your computer off), Fanvue, LinkedIn Company Pages, and MCP access so your own AI can draft and schedule — and rebuilt the trial path web-first after five paid usability testers walked into our download page and two of them stopped. $8/month Scheduler, from $11/month Studio, 14-day trial, no card. Desktop-published posts still need the app running; team plans still aren't shipped.