
Running Costs of a SaaS app - Sujan
https://cushionapp.com/running-costs
======
patio11
Worth noting: costs for people blow costs for software/services out of the
water. I was notoriously spendthrift with regards to SaaS services ("gotta
catch them all!") and spent ~$3 on people last year for every $1 on services.
(And if I had had any FTEs that would have been substantially higher.)

Over ~10 years running SaaS apps I generally managed to pretty consistently
find ways to spend 40% of revenue.

Also worth noting: as you get further from "things which are made by devs-
running-businesses-as-hobbies-for-devs-running-businesses-as-hobbies" towards
"business inputs sold by businesses to businesses" costs _skyrocket_. You're
going to spend plural thousands of dollars on bookkeeping and tax compliance
every year. You will eventually need a contract reviewed; that will probably
cost you a few hundred bucks. You're going to get a business insurance policy;
you'll find the bidding starts at a grand. etc, etc

~~~
morgante
I found it frustrating (but also understandable) that the running costs
apparently don't include any personnel when they almost certainly dominate the
entire expenses.

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destroytoday
: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!)

~~~
OoTheNigerian
Great stuff!destroytoday!

Regarding Heap Analytics, their pricing model is quite confusing. I'd like to
know how many users/visitors to your website are you getting that allows it to
be free.

To you, is the almost $5k you're spending on Intercom worth it? How much does
it come to per user?

You moved away from Baremetrics to Chartmogul, something with not as good a
design. Why?

~~~
destroytoday
Thanks!

In all honesty, we're way over Heap's free limit, but they haven't throttled
us or reached out, so shhhhhh.

Intercom is so worth it. We wouldn't be in the same position without it. The
reason it's so high (as I mentioned in another answer) is that we also use it
for sending our monthly newsletter. We could definitely get the cost much
lower, and we're planning to, but I just need to sit down and do it. We've got
our hands full with our current roadmap, so I haven't had the chance to move
everyone to a more affordable email marketing service, but sooner than later.

When I used Baremetrics, they were changing their pricing a lot and
experimenting so much with growth tactics that I don't agree with, like
removing the ability to cancel on your own—you now need to contact them.

I tried ChartMogul and they've been absolutely wonderful. The team is so kind,
helpful, and responsive. They also don't make drastic changes, which is
refreshing since I only need them to track my Stripe metrics.

~~~
nickfzx
"The team is so kind, helpful, and responsive."

Founder of ChartMogul here...thank you for the nice comments, you made our
success team's day! <3

~~~
aidos
Just to second that - Nick and the team at ChartMogul have been awesome to
work with. The product has evolved in leaps and bounds over the last couple of
years.

We tried Baremetrics originally but when we dug into the nitty gritty of the
numbers, there was a lot missing. To be fair, this was 2 years ago so I'm sure
it's changed a lot.

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biot
Tip: if you're reading this on your phone, switch to landscape orientation to
reveal a bunch of detail that's otherwise hidden. Then switch to a
tablet/desktop to see even more detail. It's a shame the responsive design
removes columns on smaller screens rather than finding another way to present
all the information.

------
tickthokk
I wanted a "total total" and calculated it. For the curious: $17,593.10.

Obviously not all months are equal, but that's about $517.45 per month.

Look like an awesome tool!

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potato122
First, thanks for boldly sharing. It's quite an accomplishment to finish
anything.

You guys definitely spent a lot where it doesn't count ($2k for a cool
secondary domain, $1-2k for fonts and SSL, ...), but if you've made it all
back then good job forget I said anything.

appname+app.com was probably not the best idea. Domain name hacks are
confusing, and you are now indirectly working for appname.com

A startup's name means everything and nothing. All that matters is that it's
short, relevant and memorable. clownmaker.com will always be better than
clownapp.com

Alright I'm done with the unwarranted advice. Really good job.

------
yokisan
For Stripe analytics, Profitwell is free. And awesome.

[https://www.profitwell.com](https://www.profitwell.com)

~~~
destroytoday
Looks nice, but I'd never not pay for a service because you're paying somehow,
or the service won't be around for long.

~~~
maxmcd
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.

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

~~~
pccampbell
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](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](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.

~~~
destroytoday
Crap—I'm one of those people who didn't scroll. :( I hate when that happens.
My b.

Thanks for the info!

~~~
pccampbell
Absolutely. That pesky fold gets me, too (even though our design team tells me
the fold doesn't exist ;)).

------
catapault
It's surprising to see the cost of Intercom compared to everything else on the
list.

We recently reviewed how much it was costing our business, compared to the
value we were getting out of it, and switched to a cheaper (and simpler)
solution.

~~~
rublev
>and switched to a cheaper (and simpler) solution.

Well don't leave us hanging.

~~~
catapault
I didn't want to come across as advertising something. We noticed that we
weren't making use of much more than email support, so we switched to
GrooveHQ. Their pricing is _much_ more reasonable, and their story and the way
they interact with their customers is great. But really, there are tons of
options out there.

My point is that if you're not making the most of what Intercom offers, then
it's pretty damn expensive.

~~~
briandear
I switched from Freshdesk to Groove as well.. after an aborted attempt at
Zendesk.. Groove is definitely my favorite; easy and lightweight.

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machbio
Is it really important to distinguish your web application with another font -
looks like he spent $500 on Web fonts, which is a lot for a startup ?

~~~
destroytoday
It’s less about distinguishing the app with another font and more about
designing the app with what I had in mind—the system fonts and more affordable
fonts didn’t feel right to me.

Even though I consider myself more of a developer, I went to school for design
and it’s a big part of my work, so the look and feel is just as important to
me as whether the app works or not. Sure, we could’ve saved $500, but I
wouldn’t enjoy using the app as much, or working on it.

I also got to support two type foundries that I really respect. (JAF & Dalton
Maag)

~~~
codeisawesome
The website looks wonderful, and considering just how much text you need to
use to get ideas across, the font money seems well spent. The entire page
looks... delicious.

~~~
destroytoday
Thanks!

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helpsite
The cost of SaaS apps can really start to add up. What's interesting is that
there's a very similar "stack" that almost all SaaS apps need to buy from
other SaaS apps, and many of them don't have a free alternative.

There exists a whole class of apps/services that could gain a lot of traction
by providing a freemium model. By becoming one of the best solutions AND
having a free version (for limited use), I think you have a better shot of
becoming part of a new bootstrapped SaaS business' "default stack".

This is why we gave HelpSite.io [1] a free version that includes features that
I consider "necessary" for any business no matter how small, even when most of
our competitors are charging for some of them. The more you can align with a
startup's own business model (e.g. they need lots of light services up front
even when they have no revenue; later they will have revenue and use those
services more heavily) the better off you will do.

1\. [https://helpsite.io](https://helpsite.io)

------
sly010
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 only ~$1000 a month, which is not a lot if you work as freelancer and
run your SaaS on the side.

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

~~~
jmduke
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.

~~~
iampims
> 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.

Would you mind sharing which service that is?

~~~
jasonkester
I run S3stat, and that's a pretty fair description of the service we provide
(for that price). It brings in a nice living from small businesses that can
perform the basic arithmetic described above.

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rloc
Why not switch to "let's encrypt" for SSL certificates. It's free !

~~~
nlivingstone
I myself am curious as to why you're not using let's encrypt.

~~~
bkmartin
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. "

~~~
nlivingstone
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.

~~~
encoderer
The issue is a responsive design that hides most of the content on the phone.

~~~
nlivingstone
Thanks for pointing that out... in a friendly and constructure manner.

Cheers!

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m3kw9
What do you guys actually do?

~~~
destroytoday
Cushion is a tool for freelancers to manage their schedule, forecast their
income, and track invoices. Time tracking is also dropping soon.

~~~
welder
You should check out [https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com). The API
could be used for your time tracking.

~~~
destroytoday
Oooo nice! Thanks for the link.

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nutanc
Didnt see any pricing info for your voice infrastructure. Was it a conscious
choice to not go for a business phone system?

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ptrptr
So overall 17,593.1 USD for 3 year of maintenance? Nice job! What are actual
cost of hosting cushion, GitHub Pages can seriously host this whole thing?

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altern8tif
Am I reading it wrong or are you just using/paying for Slack for a single
user?

~~~
destroytoday
Currently, we pay for a single Slack user (me), but each person who works on
Cushion-related things are single-channel guests. I work with one other full-
time dev, so he's in the #dev channel. I work with an editor in the #content
channel. Growth guy in the #growth channel, etc. It's actually refreshing not
having everyone in one channel—a lot less sifting.

------
uladzislau
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?

~~~
Lalabadie
If fame is your measure for success, sure.

Cushion took no funding to reach profitability, and is growing at a rate that
Jonnie seems to enjoy.

Here's his portfolio site, in case you wonder what no-name unknown companies
worked with him before:

[http://destroytoday.com/](http://destroytoday.com/)

