How Dial Moments was built: a weekend on Replit, a 9-to-5 and a lot of TikTok slideshows

Dial Moments is an audio guest book. A host creates an event and shares a link or QR code; guests scan it, hear a greeting and leave a voice message from their phone's browser, with no app and no account. Hosts play and download the messages in the iPhone app or on the web, and guests can add a selfie on some plans.^[3][2]

It was built by Elias Reyes, who works a 9-to-5 and builds apps at night.^[13] He has posted the whole thing on X as he went: the build, the sales, the dips and the experiments. This piece pulls those posts together with the app's App Store history and its TrustMRR page. Unless a line says otherwise, the numbers are his own.

Before Dial: two apps that went "eh"

Dial wasn't his first app. He had launched Plateful and QuickList, which he says made about $150 in monthly recurring revenue combined after more than a year on the store.^[13] His summary of them:

Those two iOS apps, he wrote, took "a few weeks even with AI" to launch without Replit.^[4] About three months before Dial took off, $100 a month was his average.^[8]

The build: a weekend on Replit

His headline claim is simple: with Replit, he built dialmoments.com in a weekend, and Apple approved the iOS app on the first try.^[4] Later posts repeat that it was "built with @Replit over a weekend"^[9] and that both the iOS app and the website were built with Replit.^[12]

The dates around that weekend are a bit fuzzier. Version 1.0 hit the App Store on March 26, 2026.^[2] In August he described a soft launch in February and a "real launch" in May, when he completely upgraded the site and the iOS app during Replit's 10-year Buildathon.^[21] Dial made the Buildathon's top 10 as an honorable mention; he says he stayed up all night on it, ordering chicken nuggets at 2 a.m.^[5]

Replit stayed his tool after launch. When he found a bug that let people get the unlimited plan for free, he says it was patched "in minutes".^[20] An update adding guest selfies and a Home Screen widget was approved overnight on September 11.^[27][2]

How it makes money: pay per event

The homepage pitch is "One-time payments. No subscriptions." Up to 5 guests is free; 25 guests cost $9.99, 100 guests $24.99 and unlimited guests $49.99, with guest selfies as an optional add-on.^[3] The App Store also lists extra guest packs and annual passes from $59.99 to $299.^[2]

That model gave him a puzzle early on. Lots of people installed the app and created events, but many didn't pay, and he guessed it was because their events were months away.^[7] He turned out to be partly right: by June he noticed many users coming back weeks later to pay, helped, he thinks, by automated reminder emails a week before the event.^[14] In September he said events created months earlier were being paid for that month.^[26] He has also wondered aloud whether a "pay later" button is really just a free trial on top of the 5 free guests.^[25]

Growth: TikTok slideshows, every day

His main channel is short photo slideshows on TikTok, aimed at people planning weddings and parties, reposted to Lemon8.^[9][6] He runs more than one account: one May goal was 10 posts in a day, five on a wedding-themed TikTok account and five on a business account.^[11] When he eased off, he felt it fast:

In August he built himself an "AI content engine" for TikTok with Replit Agent, in about an hour: it reads his content strategy doc, drafts post ideas for three accounts, and makes variations of posts that work.^[24]

He has tried paid ads too. He made ad images with Replit and ran Facebook ads for the first time before Father's Day^[19], spent about $50 a day on TikTok and Meta ads in July and $50 to $65 a day on Meta in August.^[21] In September he paused Meta ads to see how many of the far-off events those ads brought in would actually pay, noting that the iOS app was bringing in about $600 to $700 a month organically.^[26]

He also tried selling to wedding businesses. Replit built a pitch deck from his website's photos and copy, collected a list of local wedding planners and photographers and sent them an offer email, and he then had it look for 80 more across the country overnight.^[15][16][17] In August he said he was working on a white-label dashboard for venues and planners.^[22] He hasn't posted results from either yet.

The numbers so far

Two weeks after the Buildathon he posted that Dial had passed $1,000 in annual run rate in under two months^[10], and that it had made $100 in a single day.^[8] In August he shared his month by month sales, read from TrustMRR:^[21]

The money from his first two months paid for a trip with his wife to see Spain play at the World Cup, and paid off a credit card.^[12]

The current totals aren't only his word. On October 30, 2026, TrustMRR, which reads Dial's revenue through a RevenueCat API key, showed $7,845 all-time and $835 in the last 30 days.^[1] The homepage says 1,400+ events hosted and 2,900+ voices kept^[3], and the App Store shows a 5.0 rating from 14 ratings.^[2]

Timeline

1. Feb 2026

   Soft launch, by his account.^[21]

2. Mar 26

   Version 1.0 on the App Store.^[2]

3. Apr 14

   Update adds paid extra guest spots (+10, +25, +50).^[2]

4. May 8

   Top 10 honorable mention in Replit's 10-year Buildathon; posts that he built it in a weekend.^[5][4]

5. May 22

   Update syncs the app with the web version.^[2]

6. May 24

   Passes $1,000 annual run rate.^[10]

7. Jun 2

   Says he made $900 with Dial in May, and more in two months than his two older apps ever made.^[13]

8. Jun 11-12

   Has Replit find wedding planners and email them a pitch.^[16][17]

9. Aug 17

   Builds a TikTok content engine with Replit Agent in about an hour.^[24]

10. Sep 9

    Pauses Meta ads to see how far-off events convert.^[26]

11. Sep 11

    Guest selfies and a Home Screen widget go live.^[2]

12. Oct 30

    $7,845 all-time, RevenueCat-verified on TrustMRR.^[1]

Lessons for builders

1. 01

   Pick something people already pay for

   Weddings and parties come with a budget, and an audio guest book is a familiar idea. His older utility apps never got there.^[3][13]
2. 02

   Take the friction off the guest

   Only the host needs the app. Guests scan, tap and talk in the browser, on any phone.^[3]
3. 03

   Expect slow payers in date-driven markets

   When the event is months out, people pay months later. Remind them before the date and judge ads on a longer window.^[14][26]
4. 04

   Post every day, and don't stop when it works

   His traffic dropped the moment he eased off TikTok.^[18]
5. 05

   Use the same AI tool for the marketing

   Ad images, a pitch deck, a lead list and a content engine all came out of Replit.^{[19][15][16][24]}
6. 06

   A deadline helps

   The Buildathon was when he rebuilt the site and app, and May was his first big month.^[21]