HacknPlan was founded in 2015 by Chris Estevez, a Spanish software developer and scrum master with a huge passion for game development. After many years working on unsuccessful indie projects, both alone and with remote teams, Chris finds out the main reasons why those projects fail are unrealistic scope definition, bad project planning and a lack of a proper team workflow. He starts to develop a better workflow for his personal projects, influenced by his experience in agile development teams, and then realizes he can’t find the tool to organize the projects the way he envisioned, so he decides to create it by himself.
The first beta of HacknPlan came out in September 2015. It was still a very simple planning app, completely free, and it was promoted among indie game developers in online communities, such as Reddit and Unreal Engine and Unity3D forums. After a short time, the application gets a lot of attention and hits 10K registered users. The app is frequently updated using feedback from the community.
In April 2017, HacknPlan reached v1.0 and the first premium tiers were introduced. This version includes more functionality, a better design and enhanced performance. Several months prior to the launch of v1.0, HacknPlan offers a pre-sale deal and brings in almost 100 studios for the premium version of the service.
The next important milestone is the major update of 2018. The user interface, structure and navigation are redesigned for better readability and overall user experience. During this period, other features are also released: advanced metrics, charts, integrations and more.
In September 2019, the beta of a public API and webhook system was launched, enabling users to build their own integrations and extend HacknPlan with external tools and services.
By 2021, HacknPlan reached 200K registered users and more than 300 studios using the premium services worldwide, becoming one of the most popular tools for project management in the gaming industry.
Recently, on August 2023, HacknPlan launched a new major update with a new user interface, usability and performance improvements.
Read more about our updates and news on our blog and Twitter.
Where are we?
Mad Cactus Digital SL
Calle Alameda 22, 28014 Madrid (Spain)
