Hi, I'm Daan.
Ex-banker (23 years at international banks). Now an AI builder, husband, and father of two. I review the AI and hosting tools I actually use — because nobody else seems to.
Rotterdam (NL) · Currently writing from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Why this site exists
If you've searched for "best AI tool for X" lately, you already know the problem: the first ten results are nearly identical 3,000-word "reviews" written by people who have clearly never opened the product. They list the same five tools, copy the same marketing claims, and conclude with the same affiliate links.
I started AIBuilder Marketplace because that pattern broke for me personally. I was looking at AI tools for my own projects — a crypto trading system I was building, hosting for the sites I run, agents I wanted to put on a VPS — and the public reviews were useless. They didn't tell me which tool actually held up under real use, which onboarding was a mess, which support team would help at 2am.
So I started writing what I would have wanted to read.
Who I am
My name is Daan. I'm 48, married, father of a son and a daughter. We're based in Rotterdam but as I write this we're seven months into a stay in Ho Chi Minh City — my wife and I both love Vietnam (we've also lived in Indonesia), and the kids are at international school here. Long-term we'd like to make Asia home base.
For 23 years I worked at international banks. I left because, after the rise of LLMs, it became obvious to me that the interesting work in finance and software for the next decade is not going to happen inside a bank — it's going to happen at the desk of anyone who can ship a working system in a weekend with the right AI tooling.
Which is now, basically, my full-time job.
What I actually use to run things
This matters, because the only tools I review are tools I run on real, live systems with real money on the line. Here's my current stack:
Why this list matters: If you scroll my site and find a positive review of Hostinger, Replit, Claude, or Bitvavo — that's because I pay for them, depend on them, and would be in pain if any of them broke tomorrow. If you find a critical review of a tool, it's because I tested it and it didn't earn its place in my stack.
How I review
Every review on this site goes through the same filter:
- Have I actually used the product, or am I borrowing someone else's experience? If it's the latter, I label it that way.
- What did it cost me — in money, time, and frustration — to onboard?
- What does the product do badly? A review with no honest negatives is not a review; it's an ad.
- Who is this not for? The hosting that's perfect for me as a solo builder is the wrong choice for an agency with 80 client sites.
- If I had to renew today, would I? That's the only question that matters.
AI in the writing process
I want to be transparent about this because the AI content question is everywhere right now.
I use AI heavily — both Claude (via Claude Code) and my own agent Victor — to draft, structure, translate, and refine articles. I don't pretend otherwise. What I don't do is hit "publish" on raw model output. Every review is shaped by my actual usage of the tool, my own opinions, my own screenshots and numbers where I have them, and edited by me.
If a section reads like a press release, I'd genuinely like to know — it means I missed something in the edit.
Affiliate disclosure
Most of the outbound links on this site are affiliate links. If you sign up for a product through one of my links, I may earn a commission. This costs you nothing extra.
What this doesn't mean: that I'd ever recommend a tool I don't believe in for the sake of a payout. The conversion rates on affiliate links are bad enough without me trashing my own credibility. The math only works if you trust me.
Get in touch
If you spot something wrong, want me to test a specific tool, or just want to argue about whether Cloudways or Hostinger is the better VPS choice — email me at daniel@theweeklyaiedge.com. I read everything.