

Sweden's Tictail is now powering 10,000 online stores, after only 10 months - mmelin
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/03/14/swedens-tictail-is-now-powering-10000-online-stores-after-only-10-months/

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davefp
10,000 customers is very impressive. By comparison, Shopify has been running
since 2006 and has just broken the 50,000 customer barrier.

That said, Tictail is currently a free service. From what I can tell, no-one's
paid them a penny. The real test will be how many of their merchants stick
around once the add-on pricing is (a) announced and (b) goes into effect in
May.

EDIT: From their help section
([http://help.tictail.com/customer/portal/articles/531368-how-...](http://help.tictail.com/customer/portal/articles/531368-how-
can-tictail-be-free)):

> Our ambition is to offer these add-ons at between 1€ - 5€ / month.

(full disclosure: I'm a Shopify employee.)

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pedrocr
Just today I was going through the shopify pricing page to figure out if there
was any option that didn't have a fixed fee in return for a higher per-
transaction fee. Why have you guys decided not to scale down more than 14$ a
month? That's not a lot for any "real" stores but I've considering setting up
an online store for some very low volume stuff and paying 168$ a year just to
be online has always put me off. Tictail may very well be the answer to this.

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davefp
There are a number of factors, but I think you answered your own question. I
don't claim to speak for the company officially, but as I understand it
personally our target market are the 'real' stores you mention who don't have
a problem with $15/month.

I'm curious though, how high a transaction fee would you pay if you were on a
free plan? Most merchants HATE percentage fees and want them gone completely.
With that in mind we do our best to minimize them.

Maybe TicTail will be a huge success. My point is that even though they have
10,000 customers we should hold our judgement until they get their business
model up and running properly. When the dust settles, we'll have a better idea
of how they're doing.

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pedrocr
Sure, I assumed that's what you were doing, not wasting your time on my
marginal business. I just thought this wasn't your typical freemium business
as even your free users would be generating revenue from the transactions and
as soon as any of them start selling a bit more it would be very easy to
upsell them. To answer your question I'd easily take a free version of your
14$ plan with a 5% fee instead of 2%. I assume most people would be fine
taking that deal just to launch a store to validate a concept. If it works you
get an upsell, if not they go try something else.

I was just annoyed as the only other option I knew about was self-hosting
something like oscommerce. I can do the self-hosting just fine but I've heard
bad things about it and it looks so bad... Then along comes TicTail and I'm
excited again. Even though their easy payment option seems to be paypal...

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qwz
Very nice design. Easy to start a shop. I just launched one myself:
<http://water.tictail.com/>

I just wonder if there is a market for my products ;)

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sandstrom
I think there is :) this Norwegian brand is essentially bottleing tap water.

(That said, I'm sure their tap water is just as good as any bottled water. For
some reader (e.g. people in the US who buy bottled water) this may sound
alien, but 100% of the Swedish and Norwegian populations drink their water
from the tap.)

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voss_(water)>

~~~
qwz
I think the water is perfectly fine. :) It's just that shipping costs make
this kind of business absurd.

I'll try to set up a shop selling virtual goods instead
(<http://askme.tictail.com>)

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qwz
Can this be used for selling virtual goods? Is it convenient enough when
shipping address is not required? And are people willing to pay?

To experiment with that, I set up a new store at <http://askme.tictail.com/>

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asax
I'm a strong believer in TicTail. They have a great team and seem to be
building a userbase rapidly. It will be quite interesting to see what happens
once they launch their paid add-ons.

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arnklint
Way to go Tictail!

