
Free SaaS tools for companies on a budget - a13n
https://canny.io/blog/free-saas-tools-for-budget/
======
wtmt
Lock in and information loss is something important to consider with any SaaS
solution, especially if you're going to use the free tier. Migration with data
and history is often very difficult or impossible. If you think a SaaS
platform would be worth paying for in the future across the different pricing
tiers, then go for the free or lowest tier and move up as your needs increase.
If not, there's always email and local spreadsheets to take care of whatever
you'd need, though it would be cumbersome. But you'd at least have the data
with you in formats that everyone can understand and improve.

~~~
bartread
(Tbh, if you're talking about Google Docs, it's not even that cumbersome.
Still, I prefer Office 365 and would probably plump to spend my own cash on
that. This is not the point of what I was going to post though.)

I think what you say is totally valid but an additional observation is that
once a SaaS gains some traction, or perhaps because they need the cashflow,
sometimes the free tier can disappear or be significantly reduced.

The canonical example here for me is UserVoice: it used to have a free tier,
no longer does and, in fact, whilst I was writing this post I was searching
for current pricing... but it turns out they're not even transparently priced
any more (please feel free to correct me if I missed something).

Anyway: beware.

~~~
a13n
Yeah UserVoice starts at ~$15k/yr nowadays, and it'll take you ~3 calls with
their sales team to even get a price. Canny is a modern alternative with
upfront pricing, and is actually the company behind this thread's blog post!

Comparison page here:
[https://canny.io/compare/uservoice](https://canny.io/compare/uservoice)

~~~
bartread
> Yeah UserVoice starts at ~$15k/yr nowadays

Holy ####.

I'd used it on small projects, and I know Microsoft still use it (or at least
were as of a few months back) for Teams amongst other products. I remember
wanting to use it for a side-project a few years back and being disappointed
that the free tier had gone, but thinking it would still probably be worth it
for something with commercial value.

But... $15k/annum. I mean, I hope it's working out for them but that's pricing
out a huge chunk of the market. Maybe they've just done their segmentation
really well and are coining it.

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plehoux
I'm co-founder of Missive [1], mentioned in the post. If any of you have
questions, I would be happy to answer them.

[1] [https://missiveapp.com/](https://missiveapp.com/)

~~~
scrollaway
How suitable is it for a support email inbox? I've used intercom in the past
but their pricing is annoying and their entire tooling is … problematic. I
could get into it but point is they don't fit the bill for mid-to-large b2c
businesses with free support inboxes.

~~~
plehoux
One of our primary goals is to create a AAA email client that behaves like you
expect an email client to. A second goal is to inject collaboration in the
email experience. Those two goals make Missive a perfect candidate for email
support.

~~~
plehoux
Sorry! Yes, we do. Assignment, comments, triaging, Out of office status and
more. [https://missiveapp.com/features](https://missiveapp.com/features)

~~~
scrollaway
Excellent. I'll give your product a try and email you if I have feedback :)

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arbuge
If I could suggest my company's own tool as an addition to this list,
[https://ReferDigital.com](https://ReferDigital.com) is an affiliate marketing
platform without any signup/monthly fees, and no volume tiers at which this
phases out. (It earns money as a fraction of any commission earned only - no
sales driven by affiliates, no fees due).

~~~
so_tired
hi

Checked out your profile/web page.

Can i email you about a small biz-dev opportunity?

We PAY YOU a monthly commission. We dont want any customer or account data. We
dont compete with u, or your customers.

I hope this doesn't sound too spammy..

~~~
dewey
Why don't you just use
[https://referdigital.com/homepage/contact](https://referdigital.com/homepage/contact)?
But because you are asking: It sounds a bit spammy ;)

~~~
so_tired
Hopefully hackernews is a better starting point for a conversation?

For what's its worth. Its a totally new startup. This is my first (failed?)
attempt at finding partners online?

Maybe we are like Robinhood? Paying millennials a higher interest rate AND
giving them zero-commision stock trades :)

------
pacetherace
Always think of tools in terms of your company's long term goals.

A free tool that doesn't offer possibilities to scale or won't remain cost-
effective at scale or doesn't offer features to migrate to other tools can
easily cost more than going with something that looks expensive or less
appealing right now.

Also, evaluate tools in terms of their familiarity to developers, sales and
customers in your domain.

~~~
elenveenpere
You're absolutely right. We're not saying that companies starting out should
just go for the free plan no matter what and not think about it at all. That's
why we added the entry level pricing as a side note, as well as a link to the
pricing page and reviews for further investigation. The added calculation
sheet also helps to see potential costs based on any plan, not just the free
ones, to see how it would affect the total money spent. We also very much held
back on including free, yet very low quality/limited tools. And yes—awesome
point about the familiarity aspect!

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webbie917
I see way too many market leaders on the list - just because they have a free
plan doesn't mean they are good "for companies on a budget". The free tiers
are designed to hook you in, but switching once you hit the limits can be very
expensive (resource wise) and shouldn't be part of cost-saving strategy.

Take MailChimp for example - it's a very expensive email marketing solution.

BigMailer.io is a great alternative to EmailOctopus because it supports
transactional emails (EmailOctopus doesn't) in addition to bulk and auto/drip,
and it offers a more generous free tier - up to 5,000 contacts.

------
wolco
The free tiers are great but trying to run a business with those limits can be
difficult then you get locked in to the expensive platform just as you start
to gain traction and have to payup or reinvest in the stack.

~~~
elenveenpere
Thanks for the comment! That's 100% true—that's why we added the entry level
pricing as well as the link to the pricing page for further evaluation. As a
bootstrapped company, at Canny, we're a big fan of (high-quality) free options
at least to start out with, when you really just need the basics. We have had
to upgrade/change a few times when the free tier doesn't cut it anymore as we
grow, but they did for enough time to save us some money when it was extremely
important to.

------
webbie917
I wrote about a similar but shorter list for early stage bootstrappers -
[https://www.bigmailer.io/blog/10-early-stage-tools-every-
boo...](https://www.bigmailer.io/blog/10-early-stage-tools-every-
bootstrapping-entrepreneur-needs/)

------
joshstrange
Interesting/odd that Canny does NOT have a free tier. I was about to say
"where were you 3 weeks ago when I really needed a feedback tool with a free
tier" but then I saw all their plans are paid...

~~~
a13n
Yeah, you're correct. We've definitely talked about adding one, and still may
in the future.

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znpy
I wonder how may of those tools could just be self-hosted on a $100-$200/month
dedicated server.

~~~
a13n
I don't think self-hosted versions of many of these tools exist. Are you
suggesting you build them yourself? It'd take years and your time is worth far
more than the money you'd save.

~~~
znpy
You’d be surprised how wrong you are. Most startups base their value
proposition on the fact that by buying saas instead of software, you don’t
have to pay a guy for infrastructure, maintenance and system administration.

Which makes totally sense for large organisations but less sense for small
ones where it could be easy to manage most services off a single box, provided
that regular backups are made.

Consider git alone: you can run a small gitlab instance for free. You can do
ci/cd off a jenkins instance. Ticketing systems are one of the oldest things
around.

Some basics of system administration is all you need.

