How Plaarts works
Funded by the people who use it. Hosted in the EU. Built by one person, part-time, in Amsterdam.
Most platforms tell you what they value. Plaarts tells you how it's built. Below: who runs it, where the money goes, where the data lives, and the things this platform refuses to do, with the reason next to each.
01. Built solo, part-time
Plaarts is built by Bradley, in Amsterdam, in evenings and weekends around a day job. There is no team. The "we" you see in the app is the platform speaking; the "I" is Bradley.
That means things move at one-person speed. Replies usually come within a day. Bigger features take longer than they would at a venture-backed company. The trade-off is that nothing here is being optimised for a quarterly growth target.
Email Bradley: [email protected]
02. Funded by the people who use it
Plaarts is paid for by donations. There is no investor on the cap table, no advertiser to please, and no plan to sell the company. Eventually, venues with several active listings may move to a small paid tier, but only if it can be done without changing how anything ranks.
Where a donation goes (approximate)
- Hosting (Supabase, Hetzner, edge functions): roughly €40 a month.
- Domain and email infrastructure: about €120 a year.
- Stripe takes 1.5% + €0.25 per donation.
- The rest funds development time, which is the part that decides whether Plaarts is around in five years.
If a paid feature appears one day and pricing's a barrier, email me. We'll work something out.
03. Where the data lives
No black boxes. The whole stack is named below.
- Supabase EU region
- Database, auth, storage and edge functions
- Hetzner Germany
- Application hosting, via Coolify
- Resend
- Transactional and digest email
- Stripe
- Donations and any future paid tier
- Cloudinary
- Image conversion at ingest only (no tracking)
- PostHog
- Product analytics, fired only after consent
- Sentry
- Error tracking, so I find out about bugs before you have to tell me
04. No engagement farming
The feed is ranked, but not by a model trying to predict what will keep you scrolling. It's sorted by closing dates, what's new, how close something is, and what others are saving. There's no "For You" page tuned to your behaviour, and a show in De Pijp gets the same chance of being seen as one in the Jordaan — placement reflects the work, not what we think you'll click.
05. No ads
No banner ads. No sponsored content. No affiliate links to ticket platforms. Your attention isn't for sale here. The day that changes is the day Plaarts stops being Plaarts.
06. No promoted listings
Every exhibition gets the same search placement. The listing fee is flat — no promoted slots, no paid boosts, no way to pay to rank higher. The only thing that decides whether a show appears is whether it fits the curation policy.
07. What data I see
I see what's needed to run the platform: your email if you signed up, what you saved, your rough location for the "near me" feature (city level, not coordinates). I don't sell it. I don't share it. PostHog only fires after you consent.
Find your next show
That's it. The rest of the platform is what's actually on.