
Ask HN: Should I create a clone of a popular SaaS with rock-bottom pricing? - aminmemon
I am looking forward to dabble in SaaS. I want to create something for which market already exists. Should I create a clone of any popular SaaS with rock-bottom pricing?<p>Would I be able attract customers? Does this make any sense?
======
codegeek
Good news and bad news for you.

Good news: You want to create something for a market that already exists.
Good.

Bad news: You assume that cheaper pricing will make you win. Not even close.

There are tons of SAAS clones out there for every successful saas. Do you know
how many Trello clones are out there ? Slack ? What matters is your ability to
execute and sell. Cheaper pricing is one small factor that may get you a few
clients but in order to run it as a successful business, you will need a lot
more things. Some checklist:

\- What significant advantage are you offering over existing ones that you are
cloning ? Please tell me pricing is not the only differentiator. Most clients
won't care. Trust me.

\- What is the reputation of your company ? Even if you are starting out, you
need to show that people can trust you.

\- How easy is your UI/UX ? Are you creating a better clone or a worse clone ?

\- Can you win on customer support ? Lot of people want to switch from their
current provider due to customer support. Pricing does influence that decision
but not a whole lot.

~~~
nutanc
Agree with this. We have a successful cloud call center product Cloudagent in
India and it has an enterprisy pricing structure. We wanted to launch in the
US this year and we came up with a new simplified product getkookoo.com and
went with a drastic price change to capture the market. We removed per agent
pricing and said a flat $19.9 for unlimited agents and pay for only the calls
you make. We thought the super simple and cheaper pricing is all we need.
Turns out, its not. Though we have got customers, its been harder than we
thought. In our case, it looks like the second point above, trust, is what we
have not been able to communicate.

So yeah, pricing is just one very small factor. It is a factor, but only after
all other factors have been taken care of :)

~~~
gorm
If you want to communicate trust I would think hard about using a clown in
marketing.

I think I understand what you want to communicate, but it reminds me more of
something suitable for marketing a used car sale at jaw dropping prices.

If trust is what you want to communicate it should also be visible in the
design of your web site. That means focus on details and optimization here and
there.

E.g. you should check how many visited your site with a mobile phone today and
see if you can spend some time on optimizing the first inoression. Also
remember that users who come to your site might have other ideas on what is
important. For instance maybe you should try to give your logo a little bit
less prominent space and don't scroll it back into the view because it's
annoying. Also optimize the page so that the call to action and testimony now
beneath is visible and above the fold.

I would also focus on the value you provide to your customers and not only
that you are affordable.

One issue I have with Indian companies are that they are not too good with
their workers. I have heard a few stories. So maybe something that would
assure me you are good with them, if you are, would be nice to see there.

Best of luck!

~~~
snowwrestler
And carefully check grammar and spelling on your site. If you can't get that
right on your homepage, I'm not going to trust that you're going to get the
details right in the rest of your business. Some examples:

\- Each comma in a sentence should be followed by a space.

\- Each sentence should end with a period.

\- U.S. prices always have two-digit decimals. $19.90, not $19.9.

\- Use a comma to separate thousands. 30,000, not 30000. (No space after
commas used to separate thousands.)

These might seem nitpicky, but they make a big difference in establishing
initial trust.

~~~
jorvi
Most of the globe actually writes €/$19,99 and 30.000, if we're gonna be
nitpicky.

~~~
kojeovo
They're trying to launch in the US. The USA doesn't

------
mrspeaker
My semi-related anecdote: I was working in Paris, and we'd frequently go for
lunch at a pasta takeout place that was very conveniently located. The food
was terrible and overpriced. 10 euro for a small box of pasta with some
generic sauce. But there were _always_ long queues of people there, because it
was convenient.

One day we were walking there, complaining about it how cheap it must be to
make such substandard fare. Someone suggested that we should get out of
computer programming and start a pasta place: we'd serve the same shitty pasta
and pasta sauce, but charge 5 euro instead of 10. We'd make a killing!

The boss was walking with us and remarked, boss-ly, "Why would you sell
something for 5 euro when people are happily paying 10?"

I kicked myself for not even _thinking_ of that.

~~~
timfrietas
This comment deserves much more attention; positioning matters. If your pasta
was twice as good for half the cost people would probably still convince
themselves there's something inherently inferior about 5 euro pasta and that
it should be avoided.

This is why starting upmarket and working down (Apple) works better than
starting downmarket and trying to work up.

~~~
cookiecaper
>This is why starting upmarket and working down (Apple) works better than
starting downmarket and trying to work up.

I don't think we can go that far.

Apple _didn 't_ start upmarket, first of all. Their original market was
technical consumers. Jobs's obsession with design and beauty in combination
with the Mac's decline in favor of more "business-oriented" IBM PCs, which
were much uglier, eventually made Apple the de-facto brand of artists and
designers, which led to it becoming the brand of those who wanted to showcase
their creativity.

Apple products became fashion statements that said "I'm creative and unique".
That's what really drove Apple into the luxury segment. It seemed to be more
accidental than anything else.

Second, going after the big fish always sounds nice, but it's hard to do it
successfully. Enterprise sales cycles take a _long_ time, months or sometimes
years. The features that big customers want are usually giant PITAs that have
to integrate with 6 wildly divergent legacy systems. Enterprises want
enterprisey support and they consider questions like "How likely is it that
this product is going to be around in 5 years?" as part of the sales cycle
(and until your company is at least 5 years old, it's hard to answer that).

For high-end consumers, in most cases, luxury brands have to be aged and
respected before they build up the panache needed to drive acquisition. The
brand has to be carefully controlled and messaged. Aggressive marketing can
_sometimes_ speed up the aging process.

If you're targeting mom-and-pops or normal consumers, there is a much bigger
pool of consumers to draw from, and they have much lower barriers to entry.
Find a segment to hook, inspire loyalty, serve them well, and then see about
moving on to enterprise, hopefully targeting enterprises that your long-term
customers work for and can convince to buy MyThing Enterprise Edition.

If you're starting with $5M of cash, going after the big fish in the pond may
work fine. If you're trying to bootstrap or trying to find a way to survive
after some pittance of seed funding runs out, it's usually a different story.

~~~
thenomad
I'd argue that an excellent price point to target is _just below_ the point
where you have to switch to enterprise or Rolls Royce-style sales models.

------
throwawayAf7jD
Throwaway here. I did this with my startup. There were two major players in
the industry and I undercut the cheapest one by 35%. Both are hemorrhaging
long time customers to my service in droves. Though the key difference is that
the product and customer support is vastly superior (as noted by those that
have switched).

Launching with a lower price point allowed me to win over the price comparison
shoppers and thus further refine the product. That helped the business grow
organically and get in the same conversation as the long time players. It's
now making $25k/m and growing _a lot_ faster than I expected.

So to answer your question. Yes you can attract more customers by launching
with rock-bottom pricing, but you better make damn sure it's a better overall
product. Otherwise you just become the "cheap" option in the customer's minds.
It's also important to consider what would happen if one of the competitors
reacted by matching your pricing. In my case I tried to estimate their
overhead by looking at their office location, number of employees, etc. Then I
figured a price that would really put some pressure on their finances should
they try to match.

~~~
no1youknowz
> In my case I tried to estimate their overhead by looking at their office
> location, number of employees, etc. Then I figured a price that would really
> put some pressure on their finances should they try to match.

I've done that same calculation myself.

One of my competitors has well over 300 engineers for a relatively simple
Saas. I know why they have done this, one of their other products is a
blackhole and the other is pandering to VC requirement in staffing.

These types of companies are the best to disrupt.

~~~
throwawayAf7jD
> well over 300 engineers for a relatively simple Saas

This would be a huge red flag to me. As a solo-founder I would assume that I'm
overlooking something or incorrectly defining "simple". If it is really simple
and they are allocating that many engineers to solve the problem, then they'll
eventually figure it out and downsize. Then you're competing with a more
experienced and focused company. On the flip side, if you're solving a problem
they think is hard, then an acquisition may be in your future.

~~~
no1youknowz
That sort of thinking is what got a newly competitor a nice chunk of the
market.

I'll say it again, one of THEIR OTHER PRODUCTS IS A BLACK HOLE.

So what I'm trying to say is, their primary product is a relatively easy SaaS
to make. They made a huge mistake in building a secondary product in their
offering and thus requires the 300 engineers.

Domain knowledge is something else that I and the other newly competitor has.
HN developers who think they can build applications in a weekend completely
omit this point.

Domain knowledge is what makes something easy, compared to someone who doesn't
have it and then thinks it's hard.

Out of those 300 developers, how many in total have the domain knowledge. Not
many I am betting.

> Then you're competing with a more experienced and focused company.

Yahoo was experienced and look how that turned out. Same goes for Bing.

Never discount domain knowledge.

~~~
lazugod
It's not obvious what you mean by "black hole".

~~~
no1youknowz
Black hole in terms of money.

As a company, you throw resources (money) at solving a particular problem.

You are hoping that as a company, you can accrue enough customers to cover
that spend.

Should another company come in and then disrupt your efforts, you have two
choices. Either hire more engineers and develop more features, thus incurring
more costs. Or you lower your pricing and hope your competitor is bleeding
faster than you are.

As a company with a black hole, if another competitor isn't bleeding and
pushing out more features and gaining your customers. You'll then do something
drastic like buy another company.

This is what actually happened in that space. The only problem, is that it
shows your competitors you have no ideas left. The company is effectively a
zombie. It will collapse, it's a only matter of time.

------
02thoeva
So we launched [https://emailoctopus.com](https://emailoctopus.com) around 3
years ago, it was pitched as 10x cheaper than Mailchimp and that's remained
our core proposition.

That said, it's very difficult to grow a bootstrapped business when you're not
charging much. At the lower end of the market you usually have less committed
customers and depending on the SaaS, you may attract less favourable
customers. As such we're slowly moving away from pricing being our only unique
selling point and beginning to look at differentiating features.

Copying features at a lower price is a fine way to start out as a one-man band
and gives you sufficient focus to get it out ther door, however, to grow the
business I think you'll need to look bigger.

~~~
dharmon
I thought a lot about entering this space as a low-cost alternative to the
unnecessarily expensive choices out there. So if you want some unsolicited
advice, here goes.

In my opinion, one of your biggest problem in acquiring customers is that the
gatekeepers out there, the big name bloggers, have a vested interest in
continuing to send their readers to Aweber, ConvertKit, MailChimp, etc. The
kickbacks they get are huge.

As a specific example, go to smartpassiveincome.com and look at his monthly
income numbers, and how much he is getting from ConvertKit (a few years ago it
was Aweber). Those affiliate commissions alone are a solid six figure income.

The end result is that he has no incentive to push a basic mailing list
management solution that satisfies 99% of his readers' needs. Instead he has a
great incentive to push the narrative that his readers need this overkill
solution for when they launch their million-dollar course in 3 months. (I
actually like Pat, or at least his internet personality, so no offense to him,
this is just how human nature works)

Not to mention the strong pull on the customers' parts to feel like pros by
using software the pros use, even though they don't need any of the features
or support they are paying for.

I never came up with a satisfying solution around this. The best idea I had
was to cultivate a brand as a rebel in the space, pushing back against this
"evil conspiracy" by passing the cost savings directly to you.

P.S., you guys really need double opt-in. I believe it is legally required in
many places.

~~~
efdee
Off-topic, but this touches on how I feel about all those "passive income" /
"niche site" / FBA big shots. When you look at their income, almost all of it
is for meta stuff (hosting referrals, tool referrals, book sales) and not for
the stuff they -claim- to live off (the FBA, the niche stuff, ...).

Kind of how most people who got rich off the gold rush are those who were
selling shovels.

~~~
hsribei
It also pains me to have to sift through all the meta noise. But some examples
do stand out. patio11 is one.

I recently found about Tyler Tringas, who has open revenue numbers, is
profitable, and specifically focused on making the business as automated as
possible to have time. He was going to write and sell a "metabook", but
decided against it precisely for reasons of credibility. He's publishing it
for free at [https://tylertringas.com/micro-saas-
ebook/](https://tylertringas.com/micro-saas-ebook/).

Another one is Jason Kester, who wrote about how he did it for free on one
simple blog post here: [http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/guy-on-the-
beach-with-...](http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/guy-on-the-beach-with-a-
laptop.html)

It's good to see there are some actual cases, and it sounds at least more
doable than the crazy startup lottery that is, ironically, more socially
acceptable. (Passive stuff is for lazy people.)

~~~
vanderreeah
Interesting links, thanks. I would like to point out though that since it asks
for (though doesn't demand) email addresses to keep up with the book's
progress, Tringas's book is not entirely without a profit for him. (Based on
the assumption that a mailing list is highly valuable for these kinds of
entrepreneurs.)

------
sonink
I know a friend who did something similar in a 'crowded' SaaS market. He
thought it will take him 6 months to make a hundred grands an year - it took
him 3 years, but he kept at it.

Now it makes a few hundred grands an year to pay for his nomad vacation
lifestyle and he has hired help to grow.

I think growing an existing SaaS is one of the safest business to build
online. The market is already proven and you will find a niche over time even
if it is not pricing. The most important thing - dont die.

~~~
AJ007
I think your answer is the best so far.

Making blanket statements about it being a good or bad idea isn't very
helpful. The OP made a very generalized questions with almost no detail.
Certainly not enough to provide much of any helpful advice. However,
ultimately it is going to be dependent on how interested the developer is in
making it work and their timeframe.

Underestimating how much time and resources even the simplest of projects
require is common - and that is if your management skills are really good.

------
patio11
Name, without looking, the cheapest alternative to Github, or Basecamp, or
Trello.

Do you use any of them? No, you don't. Because you do not make decisions
primarily based on price.

You may think customers, in aggregate, primarily make decisions based on
price. You'd be wrong. You're going up against a lot of empirical economics
research conducted by, among others, SaaS companies, where they hire someone
to tell them to double the prices and that results in 2X the revenue plus or
minus 10%.

Preview of coming attractions for running a SaaS company: at virtually every
company, churn rates go up as prices go down, because low prices attract tire
kickers, pathological customers, and folks who are loyal only to the thrill of
finding a deal. You might think that customers paying $10 are worth 10% of
customers paying $100, but it's actually closer to 2~3% once you factor in the
elevated churn rates.

Do a SaaS! (Though dabbling in SaaS is, perhaps, hard. Maybe dabble in writing
a book about the problem your SaaS would solve. If you can't dabble your way
to a book dabbling your way to a SaaS app is harder in every way.) Charge more
than you think is reasonable for it. Then, double your prices.

~~~
cmadan
I use Bitbucket instead of Github because it is way, way cheaper than Github
even though its pretty much a clone.

~~~
cyberferret
+1 I use BitBucket instead of GitHub purely because: Private repositories for
$0.

~~~
lllllll
Idem Gitlab

------
cyberferret
Anecdotal Story: Back in the 90's a colleague of mine had a small company here
in Australia that developed a financial forecasting model for larger
organisations. They were doing OK, but needed a huge client to really get them
on the map.

Then, one day, they received a phone call from one of the 'Big 4' banks in Oz
to pitch their software solution to them with a view to the bank taking it on
nationwide. This was the 'big one' they were after.

They made their pitch which went well, and my colleague was asked for their
licence price, which they up front said was calculated at $50,000 for each
state.

The bank thanked them, and they left the pitch meeting, but they never heard
back. Months later, my colleague approached the procurement manager who was at
the meeting and asked why they didn't get the contract, as they had discounted
their licence costs significantly in order to try and get the business - was
it still too expensive?

The manager told him: "Actually, we LOVED your solution, which was perfect,
BUT we had budgeted $1Million dollars per state for the final software
solution. When you said $50K per state, most of our committee members thought
that was too cheap, and they had reservations that you would be around for the
long haul to support the software, so we voted against you..."

~~~
nudpiedo
this is a very good point, especially because the size of the customer matters
a lot and often the big ones perceive your value mostly in the price.

------
richardw
One issue with attracting customers who are looking for cheapness is that
they're very likely what Patio11 calls "pathological customers". To be avoided
at all costs.

Read his interview with Ramit Sethi here:

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-
patrick-...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-
mckenzie-on-why-your-customers-would-be-happier-if-you-charged-more/)

(Look for "How You’re Collecting Pathological Customers And How To Stop")

Having said that, it's an option to attack a market, just be aware of what
you're in for. To get reasonable revenue you have to get many more customers.
Support loads will be higher. Revenue to support ratio might drive you crazy.

------
dharmon
While from an engineer's perspective it seems distasteful to do this, from a
business perspective it can absolutely make sense.

Low-cost leader can certainly be a sustainable competitive advantage. Think
GEICO vs. All State.

A lot depends on the service you are looking at, but I think it's important
that low-cost be part of your marketing. Advertise the fact that people
shouldn't be "paying for features they don't need" or support they don't need.
If you are clear up front that you are cheap for these reasons (and are not
afraid to fire customers, or at least tell the more difficult ones they should
be using the more expensive service), you can sustain that lead.

Be careful, though. You need to think about _why_ your competitor is able to
charge more.

An illustrative example is a program called "Final Draft". They make
screenwriting software and have been around a long time. Years ago I was
curious after hearing the owner discuss how much they sold, how is this
company that makes a niche product able to do so much business? How many
active screenwriters could there possibly be?

The answer, I realized, is that their business is not made from working
screenwriters, it's made from _aspiring_ screenwriters. Every wannabe knows
that the pros use Final Draft, so if you wanna pretend to be a pro, you're
gonna spend the $100 to get Final Draft so you can feel fancy. This is an
awesome advantage for them, and it means I would have a hard time writing a
clone and selling it for even $10. The actual software doesn't matter! It's
the feelings it gives.

There are tons of products in the Internet Marketing world that have a similar
advantage. If your favorite blogger uses it, you feel like a bigshot so you'll
pay up for tons of stuff you don't need as s small-timer.

On the other hand, they may just be charging more because they have hired too
many people or are being greedy. Up to you to figure this out.

~~~
bdcravens
> Think GEICO vs. All State.

GEICO isn't a startup though. It has been around since 1936.

~~~
dharmon
> Low-cost leader can certainly be a sustainable competitive advantage. Think
> GEICO vs. All State.

That makes my point even more dramatically, that being the low-cost leader
doesn't have to be a race to the bottom if you have some _structural_
advantage. That it can last. Startup or not is irrelevant.

~~~
bdcravens
Yes but OP is talking about building from scratch AND being a low-cost leader.
GEICO over the years has pivoted (they originally started as Government
Employees Insurance COmpany) and they had the advantage of the business and
resources they had already built up. Today, they're owned by Berkshire
Hathaway. They spend millions on marketing. So yeah, some serious structural
advantage that's irrelevant to OP.

~~~
dharmon
Ah, I see the confusion.

The structural advantage is that they sell directly. They don't use the
intermediate agencies who are collecting commissions. That, combined with
specifically going after certain customers (originally govt. employees, as you
pointed out), allows them to undercut their competitors like All State.

But not just undercut, undercut in a way that _All State cannot match_. The
last part is key, and what makes it a long-lasting competitive advantage.

To bring it back to OP. If their competitor has built-in high costs, there is
an opportunity here. That's why I said at the end they need to figure this
out. If the competitor just has fat margins then they can easily cut prices,
but if they have some high headcount, or maybe some legacy stuff that costs a
lot, then can't match the low price without losing money.

------
clairity
i'll say this again: nearly every small business (startup or otherwise) is a
marketing problem, not a technology problem. here are just a few things to
think about:

* how will people learn your product exists? how much should you pay for this discovery per potential customer?

* what features must you offer for people to want to pay you? how many of these features can you buy vs build?

* how quickly can you get to market, to reduce costs and risk and start learning about the market asap?

* what kinds of people would want your service? why would they choose your version rather than an incumbents'? if price is your only differentiator, then how many features do you need to be a true alternative? how much support and availability do you need to keep customers loyal?

* how do you create enough trust for potential customers to start to rely on your unknown company/product/service?

* how much should you charge? as others have noted, "rock-bottom" is not a great answer. how much value do you generate for your customer, and how much of that do you intend to capture?

* is SaaS the right revenue model for the type of product/service you're building and the customers you're targeting?

* how will you measure satisfaction and engagement, and generate further value to retain customers?

if you're eager to tackle these kinds of questions, go for it! if not, you
probably don't want to start a business, because such questions (rather than
the tech) will occupy a large part of your day-to-day.

this is why yc's startup school essentially offers a mini-MBA curriculum,
rather than a tech-focused one (these questions are also covered in the core
marketing class of an MBA program).

------
throwaway2016a
Yes. But only if...

1\. You can still afford marketing. Products do not market themselves. For all
you know that super expensive SaaS is spending only 10% of their money to run
the tech and the other 90% is marketing. (intentionally going to the extreme
other end)

2\. You have TALKED TO CUSTOMERS and you know that price is a sticking point
for them.

\- OR -

You have another business and the savings on the monthly bill alone would pay
for the R&D and running the product. In which case attracting other customers
is just icing on the cake.

Edit:

Also, side recommendation. If all things considered equal the product is the
equivalent. Don't sell it for rock bottom. You don't need to. Sell it for 25%
(for example) lower than the competition. You don't need to be rock bottom you
just need to come out slightly on top when the customer is doing their
decision matrix.

Not to mention physiologically if it is too cheap people wonder why and they
think there must be something wrong with it. Which can get you less sales not
more.

------
quizme2000
There is an inversion building in small market Saas pricing. Due to Saas
consumers being burned by disappearing or deprecated services, a low or rock-
bottom price is a red flag. This is especially true for a Saas services that
are business oriented.

If you can deliver a true clone, why not double, triple, or 10x the price?
Most Micro or Small Saas are under-priced anyway. You will not be able to
snipe a competitor's customers, unless their service is not working, just by
having a lower price.

However, if you can clone the service and attract your own customers you
should charge more. Revenue will allow you to build out a more
valuable/reliable product.

A potential customer will assume the service is more valuable and reliable
than the product you cloned simply because it's higher cost.

------
ChuckMcM
Historically cloning a product with rock bottom _pricing_ generally bankrupts
the cloner, but cloning a product with rock bottom _costs_ can be a winning
strategy.

One of the more interesting situations that entrepreneurs encounter are
competitors who are under pricing them but are doing so at the cost of their
own margin. The risk is that you can 'win' (capture the market) only to find
the more customers you get the more money you lose to the point where you're
forced to raise prices or exit the market. Sometimes that choice is made for
you by running out of cash.

So the bottom line is this, talking about pricing before you have the business
does not make sense. If you can design a SaaS business and accurately cost it
out and take a survivable margin and under price most or all offerings in the
market, sure go for it. If on the other hand you just have a vague sense that
it shouldn't cost as much as it does for this kind of service and so starting
to sign up customers at a low price while you build and deploy the service?
That is a recipe for disaster every time.

------
fab1an
The fundamental equation you need to get right in SaaS (esp in a bootstrapped
business) is to have a customer lifetime value that's vastly higher than your
customer acquisition costs. Lower prices than your competitors mean that
you'll also need to be able to get customers at much lower customer
acquisition costs. This is A LOT harder than one might think.

Worse, and contrary to popular opinion, lower pricing _does not_ necessarily
mean lower customer acquisition costs in SaaS!

Are you a marketing/growth expert with a proven track record of doing just
that? If no, prepare for years of learning a lot of fundamental basics the
hard way. If yes, well, do get in touch with me! ;)

Another aspect to consider is that, assuming you're looking at B2B, lower
pricing doesn't mean that your product will be more attractive to B2B buyers.
If anything, you'll often find that the opposite is true.

~~~
logicallee
It's weird that people performing this analysis, including you, and many VC's,
treat customer acquisition costs as though you had to write a check to
someone, so determining your customer acquisition costs means looking at the
size of that check.

That can certainly be true, but don't most successful startups have some kind
of viral, or networking, aspect, or get unexpected free press due to being the
news itself, or piggybag on goodwill generated in other aspects of their
business?

Why do people consider that "customer acquisition costs" are some kind of
given, or are easy to estimate?

~~~
sergiosgc
It's not easy to estimate, but it's such a relevant number that you can't
ignore it. Engineers often fall into the trap of "make a good product and
customers will come". It's a trap. Customer acquisition is a real cost and
must be factored in.

~~~
logicallee
That's just what I'm saying. It's not a real dollar _cost_ (as in, a certain
number of dollars which you have an invoice for) because, for example, blogs
are free, emailing reporters is free. If you have an iPhone even high-quality
promotional photo shoots, and a YouTube channel is free.

So when you invest your time into getting the word out -- is it fair to say,
"that is a real cost"? It's a time-cost. It's an effort-cost. It impacts your
business. But is it a number?

I realize that for some people this number is easy -- how much are we spending
on Ad Words? -- but for other businesses the effort that you mention is very
hard to dollarize. It's kind of weird that some people assume you can.

~~~
bluesteel44
You should dollarize your time. Maybe you're severely undervaluing it? Randy
Pausch has a great argument why you should (in his time management talk).

~~~
logicallee
VC: "Do you know your customer acquisition costs?"

You start to think. You started working on this full time 9 weeks ago. You've
spent maybe 45 hours per week on the project total. You spent between 15 to
40% of your time managing the press, blogging, replying to email inquiries.
Honestly, it's hard to estimate. You have not given your credit card out or
made any bank transfers, it's been only just you. You are now closing a round
at a valuation of 1.7 million. You have 745 users. Scenario A: your last day
job was as a florist, working for someone else and netting $9.50 per hour
after taxes. Scenario B: in your day job you make $165k as a senior engineer.

Question: what are your customer acquisition costs? If it's relevant, answer
separately under scenario A and B. (A and B may also be red herrings,- a
trick, irrelevant information.) if you need additional information to perform
the calculation, ask and I'll give it to you.

What is your calculated response? Justify your calculation.

------
lucaspiller
Last year I took over a SaaS from a friend that had rock bottom pricing. It
was free and he eventually got fed up of paying the $50/month hosting fees.
There are similar services that provide many more features, the only selling
point this had is it was free.

Since then I've starting charging new customers and it's just about making
enough to cover hosting costs. Thats all I planned to achieve, so in my eyes
it's a success :D I've also sunk a good few hundred hours of work into it, so
I'm nowhere near breaking even but heh.

However I now have customers paying me between $1 and $21 per month, and
honestly it's not really worth the support headache - it was a lot less work
when it was free. I could happily ignore users and forget about it, but it's a
whole different level when you start charging people.

So can you make a business doing this? Yes, but figure out what you want to
achieve from it first. If you plan to quit your day job and earn $X000/month
from this, then it's probably not a good idea. If you just want to get some
experience running a business and don't value your time, then go ahead.

------
shubhamjain
Case in Point: Mailerlite [1]. They started as one of the most affordable
email marketing software. Even today, I think their pricing beats every other
big name out there. Today, I think they have grown to a decently successful
bootstrapped business.

I won't say "rock-bottom pricing" is the way to go unless existing solutions
are exorbitant but I feel "pricing" is the easiest and safest differentiator.
MessageBird doesn't need to create a complex go-to market strategy, they can
simply say they are an affordable alternative to Twilio. Amplitude didn't have
to pretend that they were better than Mixpanel, only cheaper, especially if
you were utilising millions of events.

I also asked this question to a VC who suggested that it can definitely work,
notably if it's in commodity markets. If I software is specialised I don't
think it makes sense to sell it cheap. But if it's a well-established solution
that everyone uses than I don't think there it's bad idea.

[1]: [https://www.mailerlite.com/](https://www.mailerlite.com/)

~~~
FanaHOVA
I think you mean Twilio, not Trello, when talking about MessageBird :)

~~~
shubhamjain
Ah Thanks. Fixed now. :)

------
cyberferret
A few people might say that it worked for Borland back in the '80s when they
released Turbo Pascal. Most compilers back then were in the vicinity of
$1000+, and were complex beasts.

The comes along Borland with a compiler that fitted on a single floppy disk
for $69, and it could compile code in the order of 100x faster than the
nearest competitor. The rest is history.

But I think that the point people miss was that as well as being less than
1/10th of the price of incumbents, Turbo Pascal ALSO promised a hundred fold
increase in performance. If they had brought out a bloated C compiler on a 19
disk installation pack that ran in the same time as the Microsoft C compiler
that came on 20 disks, I don't think it would have been game on.

Plus, Borland also swamped all the popular magazines with brash, full page ads
that were the antithesis of the staid developer tool ads of the day. As others
have pointed out - there are many more things than price which are important.

~~~
manquer
There should more to this story..

If their product was that much better (it clearly was) there is no logical
reason to not also price it 1000$ and it would have still sold almost the
same. considering the 100x speed increase it probably have sold at 2000$
almost the same as a premium compiler.

Something else made Borland sell it that cheap, either competition was going
to release the same boost or they were reaching a new larger segment entirely
, i don't think it was about just being lower cost with extra features

~~~
cyberferret
> there is no logical reason to not also price it 1000$ and it would have
> still sold almost the same

Maybe not. In my case, I was just out of school in the 80's and would never be
able to have afforded a $1000+ compiler. When Turbo Pascal came out at that
price point, I jumped on it. It was my chance to do some 'real' programming at
a budget friendly price. Even IBM's Macro Assembler at that time was several
hundred dollars.

I would credit Borland and providing the launchpad for thousands and thousands
of students, hobbyists and amateur enthusiasts to start their programming
careers, who never would have otherwise. My first program I sold for $$$ was
written in Turbo Pascal.

~~~
cyberferret
Correction: "I would credit Borland *for providing the launchpad..."

And in thinking about what I wrote above, I seriously believe that if it
wasn't for Borland bringing out a $69 compiler all those years ago, I would be
in a totally different profession today. It seriously was the catalyst for me
becoming a programmer.

------
mmcconnell1618
It's likely that the SaaS you want to clone is far more sophisticated than you
think. Even if you clone the features, you still have to clone the customers,
marketing, business models, etc.

Is there a niche of customers that use the product you could target with a
more unique offering? Find a way to provide more value to the niche. Yes,
cheaper offers more value for the same product but there is more money in
solving a valuable problem and charging more based on that value.

Competing on price alone is a really tough road to take in business. You end
up with everyone losing margin and it is a race to bottom. Only really
sophisticated operators can drive cost out of their business fast enough to
stay ahead. If you don't want to be the next Walmart, don't compete on lower
prices.

------
dsugarman
This is a great question! My opinion is that it's a really bad idea, the
cheapest solutions are typically really bad businesses because they have far
too little resources to invest in their product and company. Our pricing is
always going up because our best customers are the ones who pay us more, not
only because we make more money but because they have more resources to invest
in their success and they churn less. if you double pricing you need half the
number of customers to make the same revenue but you have way less people to
make happy.

------
yason
Rock-bottom pricing brings rock-bottom customers. Yet still they will complain
that is costs too much. If you paid the rock-bottom customers to use your
SaaS, they would complain you pay them too little.

------
spo81rty
Lots of good comments here but wanted to point out a key point nobody else
mentioned.

Price alone won't let you win, but perhaps it might if you are targeting a
different market segment.

For my company, our competitors focus on large enterprises. We focus on the
small and mid sized companies. Our pricing is lower, our product is simpler
too.

Focusing on smaller companies also changes our customer acquisition strategy
to be different than our competitors. That was the hardest part to figure out
too!

------
ravivyas
Based on my attempt to build a SAAS analytics product and failing, here are my
inputs.

\- Lower pricing may sound like an entry point. But what ever will allow you
to build a competing product, will allows others to compete with you. While we
were building our Analytics product, we believed using Google BigQuery and
other managed services, we could offer a cheaper analytics product, we would
pass all the savings of a managed service to the customer. But then Google
release FireBase analytics and made Data studio free, AWS released Pinpoint.
While currently they might not have the traction of others, they will gain and
pretty much make other's current business models un-viable

\- There is no right answers as to why a company will move from one provider
to another. I was always under the impression that "better customer service"
will get people to move and more importantly stay. But the real fact is, if
you have competition, there are going to be multiple reasons. The tendency of
"hackers" to find the single "silver bullet" is harmful, in most cases the
whole is more than the sum of its parts.

\- Most folks who build a startup, don't event thing of branding. Having a
known brand is very important in a world where the users almost always self
select into SAAS products. I had written a little about it here:
[https://medium.com/@Ravivyas/abundance-sales-
startups-99b42e...](https://medium.com/@Ravivyas/abundance-sales-
startups-99b42ec7fafe)

\- In most cases basing your startup on a single assumption or theory is a
risky prospect. Just being cheaper is not enough, you need to have feature
parity, comparable support and a brand.

\- Most important point, you need to make money, for that you need to chase
people willing to spend money, who are not looking to cut corners. Such
customers won't stay long. As an extension, having 1-2 big clients on a
customer page is more comforting for a prospect rather than seeing 10-20 who
they can't relate too.

------
bdcravens
Rock bottom pricing doesn't automatically attract customers; they still have
to know about you. What is your marketing budget? If your plan is to just
code, and they will come because your price is the cheapest, you will fail.

Additionally, I think you'll be amazed at the time it takes to build
something, and the cost to run the infrastructure. The first time you lose
someone's data, you're sunk. You're not going to put a SaaS app on a $5
droplet, even if you think that's easy.

So still the same narrative: you might succeed if you can pour several
thousands of dollars into it before you make any money, you may have a chance.
If you think all you need is a laptop, coffee, and hope, I'd say you may be in
trouble.

------
dba7dba
I was reading interview with founder of Ghost blog on indiehackers and he said
something about pricing that was new to me. He said when he charged more for
his product, quality of customers he got improved. Like less silly requests
for help. Less demanding. Etc. Rock bottom price may just attract more rock
bottom customers.

------
DanHulton
Nope. You should clone a popular SaaS product, but focus on a specific niche
in the greater market and charge _more_ for it, actually.

------
throwawaySaaS
I run a product team in a relatively mature SaaS business in the
infrastructure space. As you probably know, infra is pretty crowded so there's
no shortage of competitors. While we had a unique take at slicing out a niche
vertical, I wouldn't say what we were doing was entirely novel when we were
getting started. So, it's definitely possible to get into an area where there
is already product validation.

As for competing on price. You'll quickly discover that if price is the only
criteria which you win a deal that these tend to be your worst customers. They
use the most of your resources, are least considerate when you screw up (and
you will screw up) and don't expand sales necessarily well. When they realize
that they can do something cheaper, they will be the first people out the
door. That doesn't mean that customers aren't and shouldn't be price
conscious. But, you really want to be winning sales based on perceived value,
quality and strategic alignment. Your customers should place their loyalty in
you by which you build new features in which they pay you more for. By doing
so you inherently reduce churn, increase add-on sales, and turn your customers
into your greatest marketing asset.

------
no1youknowz
> I am looking forward to dabble in SaaS. I want to create something for which
> market already exists. Should I create a clone of any popular SaaS with
> rock-bottom pricing?

Certainly. Do you have the domain knowledge of why it's already been created?
Do you know all the problems it's trying to solve? Do you know other problems
it may solve?

That last part is important. Even if you clone an existing app, you may see
other uses for it. Now develop that other functionality and you are better
than your competitor.

As for rock bottom pricing. Well this will only get you so far. Need to hire
support? Can the business now support itself? Nope? Oops, need to raise
pricing now.

Also marketing, can the business pay for that and sustain it, to keep on
getting new customers? Nope? Oops, now need to determine pricing to support
marketing.

> Would I be able attract customers?

Anything can attract potential customers, converting them is another story.
You may have rock bottom pricing, but that may actually turn a segment off.
Will you still be there in 6 months? What's your stance on privacy? What will
you do with my data?

A big thing, is why they should use you, compared to similar saas products.

If I may ask, what is the SaaS product you are looking to clone?

------
mittermayr
Your only main advantage is that you can probably move faster through
iterations than the established provider. But also, you've got to do some
catching up and then making sure you navigate through the deadly sea of
feature-hell. Use the product, understand it, go through forums and talk to
users, figure out their pain points. If you find an opportunity, just one
niche thing you can help them with, then go all-in on that. It will help get
some users interested. They'll say things like, "if you also had X,Z and Y,
then we'd be able to switch completely" — and that's where you'll likely crash
your boat again when conquering the hell that is the sea of possible features
once more. It's doable, but it's a lot harder than it may seem at first.

------
tlogan
There is one important piece here.

If you can offer something for free that "original" requires payment then that
approach might work very well - at least as customer acquisition strategy.

That is reason why Trello and Slack are pretty much free. As far as I
remember, Gmail did the same: they offered 1GB of free email. That was so much
better then my Yahoo which asked me for 9.90 a month for 250MB. So I switched.

But then when you ask users to pay (to upgrade) then 1.99 vs 9.99 vs 19.99
really does not make a lot of difference.

And do not be fooled by "features matters", "support matters", etc. The
customer acquisition is the most important part of any (small) business
(including SaaS).

------
dharness
I think that this is a great exercise - especially if you are in it to dabble.

Making a SaaS app requires a lot of creative effort in design, scope, pricing,
etc. By copying something that exists you can greatly reduce the cost of
design by copying layouts and UX decisions, and focus on learning and coding.

In terms of making money, possibly, a little, but I wouldn't count on it for
any substantial income and if you made zero dollars I would not be shocked. It
is very difficult to say without knowing the product specifically. I am
certain some markets are just begging for a rock bottom pricing clone.

------
tyingq
If there's a prevailing opinion that the existing popular SaaS is overpriced,
you might get some traction. Especially if there's currently little
competition.

On the other hand, if you go too low, you won't attract the same customers.
You'll get a more miserly crowd that is comparing it to running something
themselves on a cheap VPS. They won't be easy to deal with, and will come and
go.

I get that being more specific is hard if you're trying to keep the idea to
yourself. But, I suspect the answer is very specific to what SaaS you're
considering competing against.

------
theprop
The fundamental problem you have with this plan is that at rock bottom pricing
you're not going to earn enough money to pay for customer acquisition. SaaS
companies generally need to spend a lot of money to acquire customers.

That said, there are some relatively big, fragmented markets for SaaS like
email marketing in which there are at least 15+ companies with at least $10 mn
/year in revenues, but most of them are not rock-bottom pricing.

------
conceptpad
A better idea is to target the design of your SaaS at an underserved segment
of the market with deep pockets and charge a premium. Here's your how-to:
[https://www.amazon.com/What-Customers-Want-Outcome-Driven-
Br...](https://www.amazon.com/What-Customers-Want-Outcome-Driven-
Breakthrough/dp/0071408673)

------
kbos87
Two main problems with competing on price that I've experienced -

#1 - As others have mentioned, competing on price will mean that you attract
users for whom price is the most important thing. These users are often more
fickle, retain at significantly poorer rates, and in my experience, they
(counterintuitively) consume more support resources. They also have a
substantially lower NPS, which also shines through when they write reviews.
Those are some big negatives.

#2 - Pricing your product substantially lower than the pack means that you'll
have a very hard time competing with other players in many paid acquisition
channels, if you ever intend to. There are plenty of other ways to find
customers, but you'll have to rely on channels & audiences with lower intent
(as in, people who aren't directly seeking out and already motivated to find
what you are selling.)

There are ways to succeed with low cost and free products, but it's a winding
path that is far from as obvious as it may seem.

------
ganesharul
"Clone" What you mean by that? Are you going to duplicate the product?

Doubt it! Not only SAAS in every product there is an open market for alternate
product atleast for 'popular products'. Alternate products just clone 'problem
statement' and build their own version of the product solution.

In case of popular product, well developed or well defined domain first few
steps of solution is going to be same which is unavoidable ex: A car will have
four tyres. But, you have all the freedom to change it to be an electric car
and make it better. This is how all better products are being made.

Any solution need product market fit, persistence, best engineering, trust
among customers, support, experience etc.,

Spend your time in thinking "How this could be done better?". Then you need
not clone any product. Almost all forms of idea is been tried in this world.
We should try with our own skill set and experience.

All the best!

------
ishwarjha
Whether you are making clone of a popular SaaS or building a brand new
product, just looking at pricing alone won't help you go anywhere. To make it
a success, you need to make 1) Interesting to sell - product, features,
usability, experience, and availablity are the enablers for making it
interesting. 2) Interested to buy- you'll need to generate leads, engage with
customers, build trust, and develop relationship to find the customer to
buy/try-out your product. 3) Interested to Pay: your strategy and actions for
converting the customer to a paying one.

And this involves a whole lot of thing. Not just pricing, positioning, cloning
or copying.

------
StevenForth
What you are talking about is a penetration pricing strategy. These generally
fail. They are a good idea if (i) there are real first mover advantages or
(ii) there is a steep learning curve or (iii) there are strong internal
network effects. Preferably you have two of these. This is not true of most
enterprise solutions. Generally, companies that adopt penetration pricing
strategies do not generate enough cashflow for sustained innovation and are
displaced by the services that invest in such innovation. Or, the service
becomes completely commoditized and is often taken over by some form of open
source option.

------
drchiu
I'd say go for it.

Many of us who have learned the lesson of competing on pricing learn to do it
differently the second time around.

Pricing is one of those things that's hard to understand as not to compete on
if you're still new to understanding saas business models.

Until you've experienced some sort of success with a low priced saas, it's
hard to see why everyone always say to price it more. Sort of like the matrix,
nobody can tell you what it is. You have to see and experience it for
yourself.

------
hluska
The problem with competing on cost is that you end up winning those customers
who are most concerned with cost. Consequently, if another competitor that is
cheaper than you enters the market, or if an existing competitors changes its
pricing, you will end up losing all the customers you just spent $$$
acquiring.

What about building a near clone that is perfectly suited for a use case that
isn't particularly well met by the other product?

------
mmccaff
Consider if you will be fulfilled by selling a commodity.

It's a race to the bottom and unprofitable users often demand the same level
of attention and support as ones who pay more.

Also think about hidden costs. The other company might be priced as they are
for a reason.

Is it a product where differentiating on price is something that would even
matter to the user? The difference in price would be enough to choose you over
the competition?

------
jfoster
If your thing is an actual viable replacement, why would you charge rock-
bottom for it? You would be leaving money on the table.

------
empath75
At the low end, you aren't going to be competing with SaaS providers, you're
going to be competing with people who just self host a similar solution that's
either open source or they built themselves.

If you think you can knock out a cheap version with a few developers all of
your potential customers are going to be thinking the same thing.

------
sparrish
I would discourage it. Having rock-bottom pricing, you'll not be able to
afford to market to the same customers as your higher priced competitors and
it will take you a very long time to build your customer base.

If you have other differentiating factors, that changes the equation but all
things being equal, lower price isn't enough.

------
deftturtle
Ultimately you will win on the relationship with people. Building trust,
delivering service, being friendly, treating them as people and not customers,
and doing your best is the right mindset. You can and perhaps should be more
expensive in some industries, because you offer better relationships and
service.

------
wand3r
If this is a pure-play quick money motive; then yes. Make something you care
enough about to do a good job; compete on _value_ not price. Then have an exit
strategy/timeline: e.g. x amount to get to y traction or pull the plug. If you
hit y traction then prep for a small sale on Flippa.

------
problems
It's a good bet. Many of those popular SaaS companies are run like absolute
shit and don't even try to optimize their pricing.

If you can do it at a fraction of the overhead, I'd say go for it as long as
you have a way out if it all goes to hell and you have a good idea of the
upfront effort level.

------
thefahim
Yes, this makes sense and is a great way to get started. Once you get your
foot in the door, you can start introducing features to differentiate yourself
and increase your price. Focus on marketing to price-sensitive customers and
keeping them happy month over month.

------
rvivek
Also, remember it will get harder for you & attract a strong team around you
if the only mission is to create a cheaper clone. Startups are very tiring
over the long run that a strong mission + team is likely the only thing that
is going to push you forward.

------
nurettin
You are on the right traco, however, pricing is not the only aspect people
consider when choosing a service. Features are the most important assets that
you have. Try using their service and listening to their customers in order to
get a feel of what is missing.

------
kumarski
Only works if you're in a country outside the US.

Developers in the USA have really high salaries because of the INS moat. If
you can crack that equation, then you could do a lot.

BrowserStack vs. Others. Sheer number of people you can task to a single
problem.

~~~
throwaway2016a
This is only relevant assuming...

\- The founder is not themselves a developer.

\- The founder needs to hire more developers.

\- The founder can't afford to live on a shoestring budget while building the
product (and doesn't have another income stream).

This is where developer founders have an advantage.

I am US based and I know business and I am a principal level code / architect.
I can build and launch a product in a month or less working on it at nights
using just sweat equity and besides the time cost, all I need are to pay legal
fees ($2000 to register the business, write terms of service, etc), a domain
name ($10), and some servers ($100 max if I don't feel like optimizing for
cost).

In fact I have... my side projects bring in more income to me than most
developers make in a year and they cost me < $2000 to launch. No I won't say
what they are on a throw away account because it will reveal who I am.

------
ronreiter
Instead of looking for doing the same thing better and think that would get
you customers, I would advise to start from the question "how do I get
customers" first, and do that. That's really what you want.

------
petraeus
The main problem with clones is this .. they are clones and no original
innovations will ever arise out of said clone. The original product was not
successful because it was the lowest cost but because it was innovate.

------
juandazapata
My.02. If your selling point is "I'm cheaper than X", then it doesn't worth it
IMO. Think about how you can deliver added value to the solution and _maybe_
you can steal some customers.

------
pbreit
I wouldn't go rock bottom because that signals to prospects that your product
is lousy. I would price it below average so that price is not an objection but
have at least 1 strong differentiator.

------
skdotdan
I would try to find a niche within the market of this competitors, and
unbundle the set of features that are relevant for this niche, making the
product simpler and slightly cheaper.

------
manigandham
Price is rarely what matters, especially for any serious business.

We look at actual value, trust, brand recognition, integrations, quality,
longevity, and more, that go beyond a simple price list.

------
pnw_hazor
Watch out for patents.

Funded Saas companies will have patents. Avoid triggering trouble by hiding
how your service works and try not to copy the look and feel if possible.

------
drc37
A great book to read to read is the Innovator's Dilemma. It talks about a
different industry (steel), but I think it could be applicable.

------
maxwin
Please. If you want to clone something, plz clone ERP like SAP S4/Hana . That
will be a lot more useful and lucrative.

------
twic
Yes, and please clone hosted ELK, or some other log handling stack. The
current options are crazy expensive.

------
fuhrysteve
Price is not a competitive differentiator. Didn't have to go to business
school to learn that one!

------
jamiesonbecker
Price is the least relevant variable.

~~~
salesguy222
So amazingly untrue...

do you pay extra for usb sticks, or do you buy 2 of whatever is cheapest
unless something is extremely mission critical?

~~~
bdcravens
> do you pay extra for usb sticks

Yes. Whatever I may potentially lose (even if it's time walking back to my
desk and taking time to fish out the 2nd stick) is more than my cost savings.

------
argimenes
If you have the technical skill - if you can walk the walk, not just talk the
talk - then why not?

------
cerved
Focus on the cost of the problem solved as opposed to the pricing of the
solution.

~~~
throwawayAf7jD
This is a good point, however, from a customer's perspective the cost of the
problem solved includes what they're already paying for the service.

------
z3t4
when competing in price make sure their product can be replaced by your
product without friction. and thay your product is always an option.

------
homero
Yes competition and alternatives are critical

------
Beltiras
Features over pricing to shake up incumbency.

------
rodolphoarruda
The less you pay, the less you care about it.

------
faragon
Of course: do it.

------
stretchwithme
Read Zero To One.

------
smilesnd
You need to do a ton of research to make this call. When you look at starting
a business even if it is copying and pasting someone else you need to make
sure their are certain elements in place for yours to also be successful.

Is the market big enough to support multiple players? If it has a market size
of 1 billion dollars then all you need to do is to get roughly 1% to be
successful. If the market size is only 1 million dollars then you might be
fighting over a small amount of money, and their isn't enough space for any
one to grow into a successful business.

Does that other SaaS have one large client that make it possible to stay a
float? I have seen a ton of small companies exist just because they have one
giant fish making it worth it. I also seen companies crumble because that
giant fish decide to leave. If that is the case you might not be able to copy
the success the other SaaS has.

Is the SaaS your trying to copy already running at rock-bottom pricing? You
might be surprise how much certain things actually cost. Whatever you think it
might actually cost to run a copy cat service it is a safe bet to double that
amount. Copying someone else idea might give you short cuts, but you don't
know everything they learn along the way to get where they are now.

Could you make a better product then the current SaaS? The only way you are
going to attract customers to your product is to do it better. Like some of
the other comments say having the lowest price also means having some of the
worse customers. Their have been post here before about SaaS companies raising
their price till the customers that complain the most finally left. If you are
at the rock bottom then be prepare for the bottom feeders.

Pricing is a tricky subject that is less logical and more human nature. A
human will typically pay more if he feels like he is getting more value peer
penny. A human will over spend if it fulfills some strange idea, as making him
look important, makes him feel good about him self, or because it easies his
mind knowing it is properly done. Here some links about increasing the cost
actually benefited them.

[http://kevinhoctor.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-future-of-
softwa...](http://kevinhoctor.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-future-of-software-
pricing.html)
[http://www.startupproject.org/2011/06/price/](http://www.startupproject.org/2011/06/price/)
[https://theadaptivemarketer.com/2012/01/14/a-pricing-
lesson-...](https://theadaptivemarketer.com/2012/01/14/a-pricing-lesson-from-
the-concorde/)
[http://jacquesmattheij.com/Double+your+price+(and+no+Im+not+...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/Double+your+price+\(and+no+Im+not+kidding\))

My advise build a better product or add more functionality, price it higher
then the current SaaS, and make sure you listen to people but never let them
control your hand.

Best of luck

------
kapauldo
Yes but build the importer first.

------
frik
Pricing page?

Essential $ - Standard $$ - Enterprise (contact us)

or just 14-day-trial and "contact us".

What's your stand on that? What makes more sense to launch a SaaS?

