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Launch HN: Lago (YC S21) – Open-source usage-based billing

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Re: Launch HN: Lago (YC S21) – Open-source usage-based billing

#81

Post by AnhTho_FR »

telecuda wrote: post #61

Congrats! We built a usage-based telephony (voice & sms) billing system for our customers and appreciate the pain. Not to take anything away from your launch, but founders / product managers should carefully consider if usage-billing (even with a tool like Lago) is best for your business and customers. We started as usage-based then learned a few years in (once we understood customer usage trends - key) that customer…

We 100% agree with you. Actually the first tagline of Lago was "billing for product led SaaS", the wording was a bit confusing, but our thoughts were:

(i) "pure usage based pricing" models (like Snowflake's) aren't going to be the main standard for SaaS, for the reasons you mentioned, the main being predictability (for the merchant and the end-user). Cash collection is also a big pain: if you collect cash after the consumption, the dispute rate can be high. (ii) However pricings will increasingly incorporate "usage dimensions" (monthly active rows, number of emails, GB used, etc) and this trend is spreading very fast (3 out of 5 SaaS according to the latest OpenView report). It can take many forms: Annual subscriptions including a monthly base usage and/or prepaid credits based on consumption, and/or an amount of payments processed, etc This is what we lived at Qonto.com and solved for, for 4 years, and you woudn't think of it at a "usage based player" though, we rather had "usage subscriptions" : https://qonto.com/fr/pricing All the possible combinations make the billing very hard to maintain and iterate on, and this is why we built Lago. All this to say, we 100% agree with you that not all companies should choose a "full usage based pricing" but find a balance or at least iterate between "subscriptions/fixed amount" and "usage based".

Re: Launch HN: Lago (YC S21) – Open-source usage-based billing

#82

Post by AnhTho_FR »

louis-lau wrote: post #69
AnhTho_FR wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Lago co-founder here) Thanks for your message Louis, we always welcome genuine and actionable feedback and appreciate the time you invested into writing an example!

No problem! If it's helpful I'm glad. I do believe the original message wasn't meant to be snarky/arrogant at all, it just read that way. Maybe it reads a lot better in French! :)

Definitely! Also we posted at 6AM PT time and are really jet lagged, and I think Raffi had not had coffee yet!

Re: Launch HN: Lago (YC S21) – Open-source usage-based billing

#83

Post by Rafsark »

foxbee wrote: post #70

This looks great. Your website is clean and informative - great work. Stripe is awesome but a self-hosted option fits our culture and philosophy a lot better. Will give it a blast when i get a chance.

We put a lot of effort into the website and its messaging. This helps users understand how billing works, as the complexity of the features behind it can be difficult to grasp. To help, we often explain the problem and the solution. Glad you like it!

Re: Launch HN: Lago (YC S21) – Open-source usage-based billing

#84

Post by xyst »

great project and thank you for open sourcing! this is something I need for a future project and you have already built all or most of the features I need for the billing aspect.

I'll explore the product more on my own and will try to contribute back where possible

Re: Launch HN: Lago (YC S21) – Open-source usage-based billing

#85

Post by canadiantim »

Rafsark wrote: post #21
canadiantim wrote: post #16

Congrats on the launch! I fully intend on using Lago for my SaaS. I wonder, would it ever be possible to use the structure provided by lago to also set up a marketplace where user can buy/sell from eachother?

Thanks, we're excited to have you on board! We've had some requests about billing for marketplaces. Currently, Lago is designed to bill subscriptions with embedded fixed fees and usage-based fees, resulting in a consolidated "end of period" invoice. Marketplaces, however, require immediate invoicing with a different logic. We have a product vision dedicated to SaaS for now, but this could be a use-case to tackle in t…

That's great to hear marketplaces are a possibility in the future, even if it's a remote possibility right now. I understand you want to focus and hone in on your current product vision, but glad you are open to serving marketplaces too. Thanks for the great product!

Re: Launch HN: Lago (YC S21) – Open-source usage-based billing

#89

Post by TheJoeMan »

telecuda wrote: post #61

Congrats! We built a usage-based telephony (voice & sms) billing system for our customers and appreciate the pain. Not to take anything away from your launch, but founders / product managers should carefully consider if usage-billing (even with a tool like Lago) is best for your business and customers. We started as usage-based then learned a few years in (once we understood customer usage trends - key) that customer…

> It's easier to show "up and to the right"

I think it's funny how MBA's at the end of the day base their decisions on glancing at a chart. So now, the engineers are catching on to optimizing for that pretty chart.

I made a mistake by spitballing sales figures for a product and someone incorporated it into an ROI calc that was being judged to the decimal place.

Re: Launch HN: Lago (YC S21) – Open-source usage-based billing

#90

Post by Rafsark »

neximo64 wrote: post #88

It is quite sneaky on the get started page. You are pushed into the cloud option, since the self hosted text is the same color as the background and you can't see it.

You are totally right, that's a good catch. Just changed the text color to white! Thanks a lot for your feedback
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