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Actual is going open-source

actualbudget.com

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Re: Actual is going open-source

#31

Post by adrianmsmith »

jlongster wrote: post #20
sirtimbly wrote: post #17

Sad that this app didn't achieve the scale of subscriptions it deserved. A good reminder that awesome tech isn't usually enough. Do you regret not taking capital to fund marketing and support full time? Or put another way, any other ideas of where you could have spent someone else's money to give you a boost into higher subscription numbers?

Yes I totally regret it. There are ethical VCs that would be willing to invest a small amount and I should have done that. Bootstrapping isn't all it's cracked up to be; there are a lot better and smarter ways to kickstart a project.

Could you still pursue that route? Presumably it's never too late, especially as you've got a product already, and have demonstrated traction.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#32

Post by weaksauce »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #24

The blog post says 810 paid subscribers, and the price was $4/month so that's $3.2k/month. I mean that's not bad, that sounds like they'd nearly made it. Maybe they'd need 2-3x that to live off (depending where they live). But if they got that far I sort of feel they might have been able to make it. Then they wouldn't need any other job, they could just live off the product. And then any additional revenue growth wou…

they mentioned that they need to hire 2 people. so that's a pretty low gross for that. and the expense of running the servers and all that is not included there so net was probably wildly insufficient for that kind of newhire. I'd think spending some money on marketing would have been more prudent.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#33

Post by finchisko »

I feel your frustration about business not going as envisioned. My current failure rate is two failed attempts to build profitable busines. Actually the second project is similar to yours. Invoice app for small entrepreneurs. Till today I'm the only user of the app. To reduce costs, I made it run completely without server support, all data is stored in local storage and hosted on netlify for free (no own domain). https://moja--fakturazdarma.netlify.app/. It was nice challenge for me to make it work completely without any backend (generation of pdfs using pdfmake, generating qrcodes and lzma compression ...) I still use it for main own invoicing and use to in my resume as work reference, but with zero money income.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#35

Post by brap »

I’ve used YNAB before and really liked it, this seems conceptually similar. Did anyone use both and would like to share their experience?

My main problem with YNAB was that entering transactions manually all the time was time consuming, and I wasn’t able to stay consistent for more than a few months at a time (in my country there was no way to import automatically).

Re: Actual is going open-source

#36

Post by twobitshifter »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #24

The blog post says 810 paid subscribers, and the price was $4/month so that's $3.2k/month. I mean that's not bad, that sounds like they'd nearly made it. Maybe they'd need 2-3x that to live off (depending where they live). But if they got that far I sort of feel they might have been able to make it. Then they wouldn't need any other job, they could just live off the product. And then any additional revenue growth wou…

There’s a chance they just needed to raise the price. I wonder how people land on something like $4. At that price your demand for something like this is not price sensitive. $5 and you have 20% growth, $8 and you’ve doubled. To the users it’s just a few bucks.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#37

Post by Barrin92 »

>responding to Apple's complaints

I really wish people would utilize the web more rather than heading for the app ecosystems. From the article it's not clear if this is possible due to some particular tech choices they have made but in general it can reduce overhead quite a lot.

If you have a few hundred subscribers and you can do with one engineer less that can make a huge financial difference.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#38

Post by l8nite »

brap wrote: post #35

I’ve used YNAB before and really liked it, this seems conceptually similar. Did anyone use both and would like to share their experience? My main problem with YNAB was that entering transactions manually all the time was time consuming, and I wasn’t able to stay consistent for more than a few months at a time (in my country there was no way to import automatically).

I left YNAB when they pulled the bait & switch on pricing with their oldest customers last year. I’ve been looking for something to replace it for awhile now, so I’m going to try this out.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#39

Post by balaji1 »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #24

The blog post says 810 paid subscribers, and the price was $4/month so that's $3.2k/month. I mean that's not bad, that sounds like they'd nearly made it. Maybe they'd need 2-3x that to live off (depending where they live). But if they got that far I sort of feel they might have been able to make it. Then they wouldn't need any other job, they could just live off the product. And then any additional revenue growth wou…

would it have been possible to sell the code and business? the author doesn't mention that he explored that option. This seems very sellable. And like you said, $3.2k/month could go long way in other countries. So it would have been cool to find a buyer/partner who could be aligned with the vision and values of the author.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#40

Post by ICodeSometimes »

Interesting. I wonder why James didn't attempt to sell it at the very least?

36K ARR means you could have rather quickly found a buyer for 60k+ and gotten rid of the thing for a small but not in-significant payday. Also i wonder if the users are truly happy with being told they have to migrate to their own server as i'd assume they're the type who'd rather pay $4 a month instead of having to deal with the hassle.

In any case, it's quite a courageous move and seems very well-intentioned.

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