Hi all, I’m a bikepacker with a weird hobby of building bike- and outdoor-related software projects for fun.
My latest is a bikepacking gear directory website, a place to search, sort, and compare bags and racks from makers both big and small. It’s still a work in progress but you can see the current version at bikepackbaggregator.com (Bikepack Baggregator. Baggregator = Bag + Aggregator. Also accepting suggestions for better names lol. 🙂
The goal is to help people buy the right gear the first time, and also help small bikepacking gear makers get the word out about their products. I don't make any money from this project, in case you are wondering, I do this kind of thing for fun to learn new skills and give back to the bikepacking community.
I’m posting here to let people know the website exists (maybe it can help you with your gear choices) and hopefully get feedback from other bikepackers. Does the idea seem helpful? What do you like about the website, what could be better, what else would you like to see?
In my opinion the site's most useful feature is sorting and filtering by price, weight, capacity, waterproofness, compatibility, etc. For example, you can filter the seat bag list to see all that cost less than $170, are bigger than 12 liters capacity, and weigh less than 20 oz (or metric equivalent, I'm in the U.S. but trying to build for an international audience). Or you can filter the rack list to find rear racks that don’t need mounting eyelets and have cargo cage mounts on the sides. And lots more.
Another part of the project is collecting crowdsourced info about what bags and racks people are using on which bikes, to help others answer the “will ___ product work well on ___ bike?” question. If you’ve put some miles / kilometers on your bikepacking gear I invite you to add your experience to the database by submitting a review, setup, or product suggestion on the Share page.
If you do check it out I hope you find it helpful! Thanks in advance for any feedback you want to share.
by exploringwild
7 Comments
Seems great.
I think if you enjoy doing it then go for it. Getting the word out for the sites existence and establishing some level of recognition is the hard part.
I love bick packing and i am a dev. Would love to participate in that if you are interested.
I love it. The last few days I have tried to research a good aluminium cargo cage. Your site did it in minutes for me. Thank you.
Would love to also see other bike parts in the future. Keep up the good work.
Baggregator! Love it! Looks great and I look forward to using it.
Looks like a good idea, quite helpful!
Forgive me for being a downer, but here are important things:
1. Time. You’ll have to spend a lot of time to add all the gear from all the makers, all year, every year, as the models change, old stuff isn’t sold anymore and new stuff appears. Don’t burn out!
2. Money. Servers, and your time, cost money. The easiest way to monetize the project will be to feature brands for money. Just be upfront about it and separate what’s ads and what’s not. Losing the trust of your visitors is to be avoided at all cost.
3. Crowdsourcing information is a great way to save on 1. (and then on 2., too), but you’ll still have to check the information, fix badly formatted dimensions etc.
4. Please provide metric alongside imperial pls
5. It might be nice to have the info on where the bag was manufactured.
Good luck on the whole project, it’ll be really great 🙂
Thanks. This is good.