Why maebe exists
A different system for every client, and in the end one person holding all the threads together. How that everyday reality turned into a tool of its own, and where the name comes from.
A post rarely takes long. The photo is taken, the edit works. What eats time is everything around it: choosing the images, the back-and-forth, the approval, the question of which version is actually the right one.
maebe.maebe grew out of exactly that "everything around it". Not on a drawing board, but in day-to-day work with real clients.
Two worlds, one problem
Behind maebe are two kinds of experience that rarely meet. One: more than fifteen years of web development, starting out as a trained media designer, working on platforms, websites and the technology behind them. The other came later: at some point I changed course, turned my hobby into my job and started working as a photographer and videographer. For some clients, that includes running their social media channels.
That's exactly where things started to get stuck. Not in the shooting, not in the editing, but in everything in between. Every client works differently. For one, the content plan lives in a spreadsheet; for the next, in a project tool. Images are picked through a gallery service, feedback arrives in a messenger, the final files sit in a cloud folder, and somewhere in between there's an email saying "looks good".
Each of these tools is fine on its own. Together they add up to a tangle in which I was the only one who had to keep track of everything. Which version did the client see? Which image did they not want after all? Was that "ok" about Tuesday's post or Thursday's?
The real problem wasn't the amount of work. It was that part of the work consisted of nothing but carrying information from one place to the next.
From our own fix to a product
At some point the obvious question was: why isn't there one place for this? A place where clients can approve content and choose media with no account, no new app and no instructions. And where everything comes together for the team: planning, media, captions, approvals, and finally the posting itself.
That question became maebe. Designed to solve the problems of our own day-to-day work, knowing that many others have exactly the same ones: social media managers, agencies, photographers, in-house teams.
maebe covers the whole path: planning posts, collecting media in pools and having them rated, getting approvals by link, and finally posting yourself or publishing directly. Each team puts together the parts it needs. A photographer might only use media pools so clients can make a selection. An agency uses the full flow from draft to publication. The tool should adapt to the work, not the other way round.
Three things were set from the start:
- Approvals your client will actually use. How they work in detail is in the help center under How approval works.
- Data in the EU. Servers and storage are in Germany, and the AI features run through a European provider.
- AI as a tool, not an autopilot. maebe helps with wording and planning, but the AI never publishes anything on its own. The decision stays with a person.
Where the name comes from
My daughter's middle name is Mae. Mae plus a small "be" became maebe, pronounced like the English maybe.
That fits better than I first thought. Because that is how almost every post starts: with a maybe. Maybe we post this today? Maybe the second image instead? maebe is the place where that maybe turns into a decision.
It was also deliberately not meant to sound like an engine room. A lot of software is named like a toolbox: angular, technical, often very masculine. maebe was meant to sound softer and friendlier, more like a question than a command. That the name is also a small declaration of love is, for me, the nicest part of it.
One place instead of many
Wherever several people are involved in a post, where someone has to approve, where media gets selected and clients or colleagues have a say, nobody should have to carry information from one place to the next anymore. That's what maebe is for.
If you manage channels for others, see how social media managers work with maebe. For a quick overview of the platform, the help center has What is maebe?.
This article was written with the help of AI. Research, claims and point of view were reviewed and are owned by Kristof.
