Product case study — Austria · 2026

Der Werkstattcheck

Stop trusting your mechanic. Start trusting ratings. A garage and repair shop rating platform for the DACH region, built and maintained by the same person who built arbeitgebercheck.at.

Visit werkstattcheck.at ↗Who built this →

Team size?

"When the entire engineering team travels, they could fit into the original Fiat 500. Passenger seat stays empty."

The Problem

Cheap and reliable garages
are like hidden gems.

A bad garage repair costs you money. A really bad one costs you time, safety, and trust.

Garage ratings didn't exist for the DACH region. Der Werkstattcheck was built to fix that. Anonymous ratings mean shop owners can't game the system. Real pricing feedback means you know when you're getting ripped off.

Wasn't sponsored with a company car to influence reviews.

Built in 2008 as a side project, werkstattcheck.at was designed to be simple and effective — a platform where users could share their experiences and help others make informed decisions about where to get their cars serviced.

How It Works

Simple to use.
Harder to game.

Rate your garage visit

Anonymously rate your garage visit — service, professionalism, value for money, and more. Takes 5 minutes.

Geolocation-based access

Want to find garages near you? Access is based on your location to ensure relevant results.

Product Mechanics

The decisions that
make it actually work.

"You have to give honest feedback about your own garage. Quality over quantity."

On quality control

You have to participate

Submit your own garage experience and access what others write. No freeloaders. This isn't Yelp.

Stays completely anonymous

You rate your mechanic. They never find out it was you. That's the whole point.

Email does the follow-up

Send people back when they haven't rated in a while. Remind them when a garage they looked at gets a new review. All in the background.

Garages can claim their listing

Shop owners can respond to reviews and upgrade their visibility. Fair game.

By the Numbers

Real traction.
No funding required.

500+

Garage ratings submitted

Austrian search positions for garage + rating queries

Garage packages (1 free, 2 paid)

Thats the Org Chart

Who Built This

One engineer.
Full ownership.

Bernhard

Engineer · PM · Founder · bernype

PHP LaravelVue 3Inertia.jsTailwindMySQLPlaywrightDockerSelf-hosted VPSSEO

werkstattcheck.at isn't a startup project. It's a side project built in parallel with a full-time role leading 15–25 engineers — which means every decision had to count.

No product manager to hand specs to. No UX team. No DevOps. One person, every role, every decision.

"The standup meetings are very short. Also I always agree with myself about the sprint goal."

On solo product development

The 2025 relaunch was a complete rebuild — new stack, new UX, new infrastructure. Not because the old version was broken, but because 25 years of experience means knowing when to start clean. This is what full product ownership actually looks like: no hand-offs, no gaps, no excuses.