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Running Costs of a SaaS app

cushionapp.com

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Re: Running Costs of a SaaS app

#71

Post by jmduke »

benevol wrote: post #66
sly010 wrote: post #58

This info is actually very useful for me as it confirms my (rational) fear of accumulating expenses. It's way too easy to just spend $10-$50 here and there and before you know it you are spending $1000 a month, while the core service is still running on a single triad of web-server/worker-server/database-server combo with no redundancy. On the other hand it probably contains everything I could think of and it's still…

I literally use none of any such paid services. Zero. It's really not that hard. Just automate what can be automated.

Automation isn't just a choice where you snap your fingers and it's done. Automation takes time and effort and adds technical debt and support burden; sometimes these are trivial amounts, sometimes they aren't.

I use a service that sends me a bunch of fairly trivial Google Analytics data. It costs $10/month for the equivalent of fifty lines of Python.

I know I could spend maybe two hours writing a replacement for it and set it on an EC2 host and probably never worry about it again, but those two hours are still non-trivial amounts of time: two hours of my time pays for more than three years of that $10/month. Plus, the API may be brittle, there may be edge cases I haven't thought about, and I don't want to add yet another thing to monitor and worry about.

Sometimes, yeah, you can automate things and roll your own dependencies -- and sometimes the calculus works out and it's a no-brainer. But I've found that homebrewing a $XX/mo dependency is rarely the best use of my engineering time.

Re: Running Costs of a SaaS app

#72

Post by bkmartin »

nlivingstone wrote: post #20
bkmartin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the whole article... they have started to use it and will migrate more of the app there... " We use Let’s Encrypt for the SSL certificates for both the marketing website and in.vc. Eventually, we’ll migrate our other SSL certificates to Let’s Encrypt. It’s free and easy. "

Read entire article... multiple times. kind of arrogant of you to assume otherwise. no mention on the post what so ever about let's encrypt.

Didn't mean to be arrogant. Sorry for that. Had no idea it was a responsiveness issue, was reading from desktop. I'm not usually so short in my responses. Again, sorry about that.

Re: Running Costs of a SaaS app

#73

Post by thisnotmyacc »

benevol wrote: post #66
sly010 wrote: post #58

This info is actually very useful for me as it confirms my (rational) fear of accumulating expenses. It's way too easy to just spend $10-$50 here and there and before you know it you are spending $1000 a month, while the core service is still running on a single triad of web-server/worker-server/database-server combo with no redundancy. On the other hand it probably contains everything I could think of and it's still…

I literally use none of any such paid services. Zero. It's really not that hard. Just automate what can be automated.

Cost benefits though. $15 a month to save a few days coding is a bargain.

It really depends on what your turnover is, where you make the most money, and what your time is worth (objectively, rather than ideally).

Re: Running Costs of a SaaS app

#74

Post by gkop »

AtheistOfFail wrote: post #65
destroytoday wrote: post #2

:waves: Hi, I'm the founder of Cushion. I'd be happy to answer any questions about our running costs or transparency. (Thanks for posting, @Sujan!)

Why don't you guys use the new Heroku beta SSL feature so you can bank that extra $20 a month? It's not much but it makes a difference if you're spinning multiple sites up. https://blog.heroku.com/announcing_heroku_free_ssl_beta_and_...

FYI I don't think it's beta anymore :)

Re: Running Costs of a SaaS app

#75

Post by Rezo »

destroytoday wrote: post #2

:waves: Hi, I'm the founder of Cushion. I'd be happy to answer any questions about our running costs or transparency. (Thanks for posting, @Sujan!)

Hi fellow NY SaaS developer :) I ran a similar report for our year end books, and it's amazing the amount of SaaS it takes to run a SaaS. Or put another way, the incredible ecosystem now available that allows you to focus on your core business.

I don't see any third party Stripe dunning service, did you build something similar yourself? Otherwise it might be worth looking into, it's one of those things that pays itself back in no time.

Re: Running Costs of a SaaS app

#76

Post by mokkol »

uladzislau wrote: post #56

Definitely not lean. From the first look - too many tools and expenses for unknown no name startup. I'm wondering how much of these can be painlessly cut off?

A bit harsh. I guess they are very profitable and those tools probably save them money and time.

Re: Running Costs of a SaaS app

#77

Post by pccampbell »

destroytoday wrote: post #55
maxmcd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they have a paid tier. I feel like there's room for a little optimism when superusers are funding the existence of free plans.

Oh, okay—I browsed the website and couldn't find anything about a paid tier. nod

Hola! Patrick here - Founder of PriceIntel/ProfitWell. Why ProfitWell is free is actually a longer story, but the short answer is we discovered we could monetize more effectively (and efficiently) by giving away the metrics for free (while still being the only one on the market that's 100% accurate) and then selling add-ons like Retain (kills your delinquent churn), Recognized (Revenue Recognition), etc.

Here's our pricing page (with paid tiers - you have to scroll down): https://www.profitwell.com/pricing

If you're curious around the science/data that went into this (the longer story), you can check out a talk I gave at our SaaSFest conference: https://pi.wistia.com/medias/jdywlrpowl. We used our Price Intelligently software to determine market willingness to pay/feature value before writing too much code.

As always, let me know if you have any questions. Happy to help.

Re: Running Costs of a SaaS app

#78

Post by tmaly »

marban wrote: post #44
csomar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually asking because I got an ethically-questionable, evil idea: If you are owning the Cushion word, can you sue for the domain name cushion.com?

No. The trademark must be registered and exist at the time the domain was registered and that the domain owner knowingly and intentionally registered the trademarked domain name.

how sure are you of this? I have owned a domain since 2003. a few years back a new startup named inc tried to buy it from me. they ended up getting domain.org but I checked recently and they registered the trademark. I was reading that I have only a few years to appeal it showing I am harmed by them. I did not read anywhere that they could not sue me

Re: Running Costs of a SaaS app

#79

Post by cobookman »

destroytoday wrote: post #13
marban wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever considered any Heroku alternatives? I've had quite disappointing cost experiences last time i used it.

We've thought about it, but Cushion is incredibly lightweight and doesn't need to be used constantly, so our load is very low. We've only needed 2 dynos since we launched and we're nowhere close to needing more than that. As much as I'd like to lower the cost, they truly take so much weight off our shoulders. I gladly pay what we're paying now, so it's not an issue for us.

Have you looked into Appengine Flex. Appengine flex is a PaaS like heroku, and will scale up any docker container. Its a great solution for your early days, and when you do need to move to a 1000+ node cluster its easy to switch from Appengine Flex to kubernetes. You also might get a lot of free startup credits https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/

(Disclaimer, I work for Google).

[1] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/

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