

Ask HN: Flaregun - Manage domains and SSL certificates - Would you pay for this? - ollierattue

Hey everyone,<p>I am really keen to build a for sale web app, having developed a couple of successful free products. Instead of going for the build it and they will come approach, I have decided to get some early validation of my idea. Yesterday I asked HN about Silo (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2556658) a SSL certificate management web app. A HN user pointed out that there may be major trust hurdles to overcome with this product, but he expressed interest in the expiry notification concept. This got me thinking.<p>A little while ago two major, yet easily avoidable problems occurred, resulting in downtime, lost revenue, stress, and unhappy clients:<p>1. I get a phone call from a client who tells me their websites and email is down. I run some checks and find out that the domain name had expired. My client registered and manages the domain name so this downtime is his fault. However my client is not particularly happy when I tell him this. He was of the opinion that I looked after his domain and hosting so should of spotted and warned him about this. Clearly doing this manually for all my clients is impractical. The domain went into 'holding' and an extortionate release fee had to be paid, which I bore the cost of as a gesture of good will. With lots of clients and domains registered by myself and clients this is likely to happen again.<p>2. I get a phone call from a client who tells me that some of his visitors have reported that their e-commerce website is coming up as insecure in their browsers. I check the website and see that the SSL certificate has expired. I spend the next few hours getting a new certificate re-issued using my clients Enom account. My client is annoyed as his customers have complained and he suspects he has lost revenue as a result.<p>Step in Flaregun. Flaregun (http://getflaregun.com) is targeted at people who look after domains on behalf of their clients. You enter all your domains and it looks up the whois information. A notification email is sent out a week before the domain expires to ensure you have time to warn your client and renew the domain. Similarly SSL certificates are added and expiry notifications are sent out a week before to ensure you have enough time to renew your certificate.<p>I have put up a holding page (http://getflaregun.com) with price plans. I am reaching out to the HN community to see how the idea is received and whether you would be willing to pay for this product. Thanks for your time.
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hopeless
I like it (caveat: I'm not the target market)

It's simple and doesn't require much interaction from the user. Ideally, I
would set the notifications at 1month and 1week as some clients may have
purchase orders to be written etc (or for small businesses, on holiday for
example over Christmas)

Only other thought: this doesn't have to be a webapp. It could function just
as well as a cross-platform desktop app or browser extension. Sure, that's a
one-off payment model but I would worry that a user wouldn't be signing into
Flaregun that often so the likelihood of maintaining a monthly subscription
would be low. I would just worry that if that aren't logging in often, the
perceived value goes down.

Best of luck!

~~~
ollierattue
Hey Hopeless, thanks for taking the time to comment.

Your notification periods sound spot on. Early (1 month) to allow purchase
order & client holidays + potentially clients wanting to let a domain lapse.
The system could then do another whois lookup expiry check before sending out
the 1 week left reminder.

I take your point about the monthly subscription model. Thinking of the
monthly services I pay for I tend to log in pretty regularly. As you say
Flaregun isn't really like this. You would dump your domains into it when you
first sign up, then login every so often to add a new domain (10-30 seconds).
So payment options are:

1\. Keep it monthly and perhaps reduce price.

2\. Charge a one off fee (local program) - it could even be some kind of
spreadsheet addon. However I favour a webapp as it is the easiest incarnation
to iterate and further develop. Also a local program would need to always be
running to display / send the notifications.

3\. Yearly subscription. Domains are yearly so this would kind of tie in.
Getting into a customers head if you thought Flaregun solved a problem for
you, you probably would be fairly loyal - i.e. it's not a try it, see if I
like and if I get on with it I will keep it kind of product. You either want
it or you don't. But I always feel an upfront yearly cost increases the
barrier to subscription. I wonder if a yearly cost with a 100% money back
guarantee if not satisfied, could be the answer.

Any other thoughts / ideas appreciated.

Cheers,

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there
i do web/email hosting and am in a similar situation with my customer domains.
however, i'm an opensrs reseller, so i usually do the actual domain
registration and renewal for my customers as their registrar. if customers
don't want to transfer their domains to me, i tell them they're responsible
for renewing them (which i use as a selling point for why they should transfer
them to me).

for any domains/certs that require manual renewal on my part, my billing
system (plug: <http://corduroysite.com/>) is set to invoice the customers for
these a month or two in advance because it's entered as a yearly recurring
service. if they pay the invoice, i see it and do the renewal manually (or at
least verify that the domain is set to auto-renew with opensrs). if they don't
pay the invoice, the domain doesn't get renewed. this is actually beneficial
because sometimes customers want to let some domains go, so they will contact
me and tell me to let them expire before the auto-renew date comes up.

anyway, as for your product, your free package seems like it would be useful
for your target market (web developers managing a few domains). however,
anyone with more than 15 domains would probably have a billing system or
domain reseller account that manages all of this for them. for a large company
with hundreds of domains needing your more expensive packages, i can't really
see them manually importing and deleting lists of domains as customers come
and go, especially since there is no integration with their billing system.

my point being, the product may get a lot of free accounts but not many paid
accounts. perhaps you should look into integration with established
billing/invoicing systems?

~~~
ollierattue
Hey, thanks for the detailed comment on how you handle this situation. It is
so helpful to get such thoughtful feedback and has really got me thinking
critically about this product.

Out of interest do you develop websites on behalf on your clients or is it
just web/email hosting?

I am trying to figure out the core market for Flaregun. I think it is really
targeted at web design agencies which handle a clients complete web presence.

The last company I worked at, a small web agency, was a reseller (Enom) and
like you would buy domains on behalf of clients. However a lot of our clients
wanted to buy the domains themselves so they had full ownership. So we had a
situation where we owned and renewed 70 odd domains and then the rest (100+)
were owned by 40 odd clients (some legacy) across as many registrars. Tracking
all these domains was just not possible. Some were bound to slip.

"i tell them they're responsible for renewing them (which i use as a selling
point for why they should transfer them to me)" - this is a completely
reasonable policy which completely covers you. However perhaps this "I told
you so" attitude wouldn't work in all situations. I guess it depends on the
relationship with the client. If it is just hosting then yeah you can take
that stance. However clients paid my old company to handle their web presence,
sometimes on high traffic websites were downtime was not acceptable. In this
instance their expectation was a little higher, and preventing potential
problems like this was assumed to be a responsibility of the web agency.

Your thoughts on the free vs paid for plans are interesting. A few of my
thoughts:

1\. Perhaps it would make sense to get rid of the corporate plan (as you say
anyone with this many domains would already have a well sorted billing /
renewal system in place)

2\. Make the agency plan unlimited (chances are they wouldn't have more than
500 est domains).

3\. I see the professional account as a freelancer. Maybe 30 domains is too
high in this case.

4\. The free account could be removed and a 30 day free trial added to the
paid accounts. I guess you either want this or not. The free account doesn't
really serve as a sales device like it would on other apps. Also your use of
Flaregun doesn't expand over time (like it does with a app like Basecamp). You
start with x number of domains to manage, so you jump in at a price point
(plan) which allows that number of domains.

I have been thinking about building billing (domain and hosting) into the
product, but I guess most people already have an invoicing system setup and
wouldn't want another systems. Integration with existing systems would be
great but is time consuming and makes the web app a lot more complex.

Cheers,

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PonyGumbo
I'd definitely pay for this, but the pricing feels off. I have about 70
domains right now, and I just can't see spending $12/month for an automatic
renewal reminder.

~~~
ollierattue
Hey, that's really great to hear you would pay. It's great idea validation.
Would love you to answer a few quick questions:

\- Could you suggest a monthly price you would be happy to pay?

\- Would you be willing to pay a yearly (saving over the monthly cost) fee? If
so what would you be happy paying?

Thanks for your time.

~~~
PonyGumbo
Sure, no problem. I'd honestly be more inclined to pay on a quarterly basis,
and I think my threshold for something like this is probably around $4/month.
If it were me, I'd eliminate the free plan (or take it down to one domain).
Also, at $4/month, I wouldn't care whether it was ad-supported, so that's
another potential revenue stream.

~~~
ollierattue
Thanks for this. Hadn't actually considered a quarterly charge. That's a good
idea. Low monthly charges start to get difficult with per transaction standard
fees (like paypal).

One more quick question. Are you acting as an individual i.e. freelancer, or
agency? I don't think an agency would mind paying $12/month if they had a few
hundred domains, so perhaps the domain limits are off and it would be better
like this:

Professional - $5/month - 100 domains

Agency - $12/month - 500 domains

Max - $30/month - 2000 domains (can't see much demand for this plan)

I agree the free plan doesn't seem to make much sense. A better option would
be to give a free trial period on the paid plans e.g. 7 days.

~~~
PonyGumbo
Agreed. I'm a one-man shop.

~~~
ollierattue
Thanks for all your input - new pricing plans up at
<http://getflaregun.com/plans>

Plans feels more suitable now. Getting rid of the free account feels the right
move. If anyone is interested they should be willing to 'gamble' $5. I can't
see many free -> paid upgrades happening so it is probably easiest to cut it
out (less support, coding etc).

If you click on signup there is a form to get a one time email when Flaregun
launches (it is currently in development).

Cheers,

