Sincerely hoping to make this list next year
SaaS We Happily Pay For
191–200 of 229 posts
Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For
#192While I think it's great you're thinking of tools to optimize your time BUT a team of 3 at early stage project/startup level should be a bit more frugal and look for clever ways to save the ~$200/month you're spending right now! I understand you have your own SAAS and want to justify subscription and this is a good promo method. I've written on HN before that I'm TIRED of subscription apps, specially per user subs, f…
> You'd be surprised how many great FOSS (free & open source
> software) are out there that you can deploy on your own VM
> and have unlimited number of team members and OWN YOUR OWN
> DATA!!!
If the VM disk starts filling up because log rotation wasn't set up right, or the ElasticSearch instance we only run for this service starts flapping, now I've gotta pay one of my devs to work on that instead of work on our product. And in your example, where I've only got three folks, that interruption could be ruinous.
$200/mo ($2,400/yr) is nothing compared to the financial and opportunity costs here.
Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is overkill, add 35% to the top and you will be closer (depending on absence/sick levels). Statutory allowances in the UK are higher than in the US, and in the UK for instance you would add: - 12.5% national insurance + apprentice levy - 3-4% pension - 10% of days as holidays - 5% of days as sick / other leave (dependent on amount taken in reality) - 2% payroll fees / other Note, this excludes training and equip…
Why add holidays and sick leave to an individual employee's costs? Most white collar employees would have an annual salary this is factored into already, unless you're having to hire temporary replacements for them perhaps (which would be more than a 15% cost, I suspect).
You are right, I usually do this to get to a worked daily or worked hourly cost (I work in consultancy) so I take holidays & sick into account to understand cost per worked hour / cost per worked day.
In reality it depends on the type of work you are doing.
Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why add holidays and sick leave to an individual employee's costs? Most white collar employees would have an annual salary this is factored into already, unless you're having to hire temporary replacements for them perhaps (which would be more than a 15% cost, I suspect).
You are right, I usually do this to get to a worked daily or worked hourly cost (I work in consultancy) so I take holidays & sick into account to understand cost per worked hour / cost per worked day. In reality it depends on the type of work you are doing.
Ah! Definitely makes sense in consulting/contracting :-)
Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For
#195Shhh... you can do almost all of this on Github private repos for free. Tasks and issue management, wiki, kanban board, discussions, ci/actions to trigger other stuff (send notification email for e.g.), storage of docs, revision control, tagging and organization, notebooks (with code too!), static hosting, support tickets, and so much more with Github API/webhooks :) Startup of this size shouldn't be spending a dime…
After all that, why would you spend $5/month/user on Fastmail when there are even cheaper and good options? Fastmail sticks out like a sore thumb in this solution. Mailbox.org and many others provide good email and web solutions.
Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn’t really “testing”. It’s just signing up for their own service. They aren’t making stripe transactions and then reversing them. If stripe bans you from buying your own service, they may want to rethink that policy.
I think this is credit card company policy and not specifically Stripe. IIRC, there is some language regarding using your own credit card because it could potentially be used to give yourself a loan. Credit cards have a much higher APR and lower limits for a cash advance. Processing your own cards could be used as an avoidance.
> could potentially be used to give yourself a loan
Noob question: Would using a debit card test the payment system without the self loan float?
Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For
#197"Collaborative email on top of G Suite. The main thing we pay for is a comment box below each email thread. It allows us to quickly discuss emails without forwarding or copy/pasting in Slack. It also allows us to edit drafts collaboratively and have multiple team inboxes for invoices, support, and other stuff." Thanks for the mention Francesco. I'm Philippe, one of the co-founders of Missive [1], don't hesitate if yo…
Who designed your logo? I like it.
The great https://tristanlabbe.com/
Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heard this one before. "Netflix is $10/m, so why would I buy Mailbrew (the product we make) for the same price?" Apparently hundreds of people are happy to pay for quality indie software that solves their problems. We are among them.
Netflix doesn’t offer the features of mailbrew and more?
Thank you. I felt like I was the only one confused by the comparison.
Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For
#199Shhh... you can do almost all of this on Github private repos for free. Tasks and issue management, wiki, kanban board, discussions, ci/actions to trigger other stuff (send notification email for e.g.), storage of docs, revision control, tagging and organization, notebooks (with code too!), static hosting, support tickets, and so much more with Github API/webhooks :) Startup of this size shouldn't be spending a dime…
After all that, why would you spend $5/month/user on Fastmail when there are even cheaper and good options? Fastmail sticks out like a sore thumb in this solution. Mailbox.org and many others provide good email and web solutions.
Plug for: https://www.migadu.com/
Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For
#200Shhh... you can do almost all of this on Github private repos for free. Tasks and issue management, wiki, kanban board, discussions, ci/actions to trigger other stuff (send notification email for e.g.), storage of docs, revision control, tagging and organization, notebooks (with code too!), static hosting, support tickets, and so much more with Github API/webhooks :) Startup of this size shouldn't be spending a dime…
Your comment seems to echo a fairly common refrain in this submission, that a startup should be miserly with their cash. What's the disconnect, I wonder? Why is there this belief that an early stage startup should pinch pennies? Am I missing something? For me, time (to spend building and selling) is substantially (like 2-3x or even higher) more valuable than cash at this stage. Am I undervaluing cash?
I assume there's going to be a pretty big difference between bootstrapped and funded startups. Efficiency is nice, but you need some runway too. Even if you move fast, your clients probably aren't and you need to last until the momentum gets going.
On the other hand, it's likely many are going too far, there's no point in being a zombie company for years. If you fail, better fail fast.