Uploadcare dashboard
Sep 2026
Dashboard took the biggest chunk of my time at Uploadcare. We've grown from a turbulent startup into an established SaaS, and all of our ups and downs have left their marks on the dashboard. Let's look at what we ended up with.
Small things
Solo designers often fall into the trap of copying big corporate design systems that are built for a very different scale: lots of designers, lots of handoffs, and teams that barely talk to each other. At Uploadcare, we avoided freezing the system for quite a while and started documenting repeating patterns only when the value became obvious:
- The project grew large, and frontend developers started to complain
- We decided to make a dark theme (gosh, that was the biggest one!)
- We were satisfied enough with the aesthetics
I wanted the app to feel native. I believe tools shouldn't be intrusive with their branding, but should instead embed themselves naturally into a person's workflow. I chose Inter and Commit Mono, a neutral combination that won't get in the way. The scale matches that of a modern desktop OS.
Big things
Dashboard maintains a tricky balance between being a tool for manual workarounds and a feature showcase for new users. It opens with a basic concept showcase. The industry standard is AWS, and Uploadcare simplifies many things. The demo is designed to challenge the AWS mental model. The primary value lies in what you don't need to do with Uploadcare compared to AWS.
Files page is the main and the most used part of the dashboard. We made it modular so we can experiment with the focus and painlessly expand the system.
Playground pages are a set of interactive customizable demos for the primary use cases. They are "replayable": people often use them as a simplified configuration tools.
Analytics gives a clear view of how files are used and delivered. It's a place to check if integration works correctly and to get insights about the performance.
There's a lot more to dashboard. To keep this showcase reasonably long I'll wrap it up with a few more screens.
Make sure to see it live.