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Actual is going open-source

actualbudget.com

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Re: Actual is going open-source

#51

Post by trafnar »

mellosouls wrote: post #48
codegeek wrote: post #25

"I completely underestimated how much work it takes to build a business. There's so much overhead. I'm always figuring out why a build failed, taxes, how to triage issues, responding to support, designing UIs, responding to Apple's complaints, and more. There's so much that goes on behind the scenes. There's no way a single person can possible do this alone, especially as a side project." This is the part that resona…

you can have a cushy tech job making 200K relatively easy Some of these claims seem to come from people living on a different planet to me. Yes you can make that, but only if you are in a tiny (and normally very privileged) set. The way it's breezily posted on this forum at times shows perhaps just a leeetle disconnect with the mainstream tech world

I'm guessing this comes from the California / Bay Area perspective where 200k salaries are not rare (but a "just ok" house costs $2.5 million)

Re: Actual is going open-source

#52

Post by Trasmatta »

zwily wrote: post #26
bdcravens wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any examples of companies that opened previously closed source that continued to offer that product?

The Canvas LMS: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms

Canvas was open source from the start. Schools have always been able to run their own instance, but most just pay Instructure to do it.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#53

Post by blooalien »

bdcravens wrote: post #12
cpitman wrote: post #5

I wish people wouldn't use "we open sourced it" as a synonym for "this product is dead". Especially for a SaaS company, there is a totally valid business strategy in open sourcing your codebase but continuing to provide a paid SaaS offering for users that are not interested in self-hosting. It causes confusion every time a company open sources their software. Always have to wonder, "Is it dead and they are yeeting it…

Any examples of companies that opened previously closed source that continued to offer that product?

Blender 3D might be one of the more well-known success stories in that regard. Godot game engine also perhaps? Gotta be more'n a few others as well, I'm sure. Those are just two that instantly come to mind for me (being a couple of my favorites that were both closed source at one time in their history and have gone on to massive and continual success since their open sourcing).

Re: Actual is going open-source

#54

Post by caseyross »

twobitshifter wrote: post #36
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.

Moreover, everything on the website implies that Actual was a high-end, exactingly designed product for discerning, well-off people. But it was priced like general-audience commodity SaaS. My guess is that most subscribers would have been more than willing to pay, say, 20 dollars a month instead of 4, particularly for something that has "saving you lots of money" as a core value proposition.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#55

Post by [deleted] »

poleguy wrote: post #16

I still use YNAB4 regularly. I have a paid copy from before they moved to an online model. I'm running it on ubuntu in wine. It still works fine. I had never heard of Actual till today. It looks like it would cover my use case. I'm not sure why I would have switched, though, as YNAB4 still works for me and has no recurring charge and is fully local.

[deleted]

Re: Actual is going open-source

#56

Post by xbryanx »

l8nite wrote: post #38
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.

Check out Lunch Money[1] - Which feels more polished and supported to me.

1 - https://lunchmoney.app/

Re: Actual is going open-source

#57

Post by renewiltord »

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.

You can still raise if you want to and have a growth user growth story. Though completely understandable if you feel burned out on the product.

If you want to stick to it, I would lean the open-sourcedness of it into a connector data-source import advantage.

Your product looks slick, man. It's probably small consolation, but you've got a talent for good product design.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#58

Post by raverbashing »

codegeek wrote: post #25

"I completely underestimated how much work it takes to build a business. There's so much overhead. I'm always figuring out why a build failed, taxes, how to triage issues, responding to support, designing UIs, responding to Apple's complaints, and more. There's so much that goes on behind the scenes. There's no way a single person can possible do this alone, especially as a side project." This is the part that resona…

Agree. It resonates a lot

Building your own business is as much about business plans as it is to building the product as it is making sure there's enough toilet paper in the bathroom. And all of those are important

Re: Actual is going open-source

#59

Post by xbryanx »

jlongster wrote: post #23
yurishimo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the final user numbers are accurate, revenue was a bit over $3k a month. Not even enough to really pay the founder if living in the US. Assuming $200/mo for servers, backups, and help desk software, that doesn't leave much after taxes for take home pay. As someone who just discovered this software, I am now really curious to give it a try!

Yep that's right. I launched around 3 years ago, and it was brutally slow. I think it took a year to hit 100 subscribers. Another year to hit 300. This past fall, YNAB increased their prices which gave me decent jump from around 500 to 800 subscribers which is where I'm at today. I did everything wrong when it comes to marketing and getting subscribers. I focused on the tech and never invested in content, building hy…

This is awesome feedback and I appreciate your honesty. I will help so many remember what matters in their next ventures.

Re: Actual is going open-source

#60

Post by bern4444 »

There are a lot of tools like Actual (YNAB, Monarch, Mint, Aspire google sheet etc). All are focused on budgets and mostly managing cash accounts.

I've always wanted an equivalent but for investments. I know you can sync investment accounts to some of these, but that only reports the balance generally.

I'd love to have the equivalent for investment accounts that answer these questions:

What is my sector exposure?

How much, across multiple accounts and brokerages, of Apple (or any stock/etf/mutual fund) do I own as a total percentage?

How much money are in retirement accounts vs non retirement accounts?

What is my IRR (rate of return) in aggregate and per account?

And of course things like projections, safe withdrawal rates, analysis in the form of charts and graphs like what Actual and the rest offer.

etc

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