
Show HN: Simple Ops – My new microstartup after three years of indie hacking - 1hakr
https://simpleops.io/
======
aantix
While I understand the sentiment behind a $10/mo offering, you will attract
cheap customers. Which are the _worst_. They demand more support while knowing
less and pay less. The worst of all worlds.

Price is a signal. You’ve done a lot of great work. Don’t sell it short now.

~~~
XCSme
So your suggestion is to increase prices just to get rid of "poor" customers?
I think this is a really good ethical discussion, and I personally beleive
many products/services are way overpriced because of this, which really raises
the bar for small businesses and developers.

I am also building a high-quality, high-value product that I am making
affordable even for really "poor" webmasters. I am thinking of raising the
pricing, but at the same time I still receive messages from devs that are just
starting saying that they like by product but it is too expensive for them,
which is a bit sad to hear (you create something nice that some people can't
afford).

But in the end, maybe money really talks.

~~~
cleong
Low prices attract customers that will demand more features and make more
complaints to you then any other demographic. In SaaS higher priced customers
are typically more accommodating and in addition you get more resources to
meet their demands.

Somehow there's something psychological that makes you appreciate a product
less when you paid 10$ vs 1000$.

~~~
nashadelic
Do you have a link to back that up? Sounds counter-intuitive to me. People who
pay more would demand more?

~~~
makeee
This is my experience as well. One way to put it is that people that tend to
demand more also demand lower prices.

------
fblp
Hi there, ive been browsing hn for over 7 years and this is one of the nicest
indie landing pages ive seen. I like your eye for design.

Have you considered letting the uder do a demo by entering a URL and then you
email then the results of the initial site scan? (later generate a page). You
get an email, they get a low friction semo. Win-win!

~~~
puranjay
The design is nice enough but from a marketing perspective, the copy was
really great. No fluff, just a very clear value proposition. I understood
immediately what the service does and how it could benefit me. Far more mature
than most indie SaaS websites I've seen.

~~~
1hakr
It feels great to be appreciated for all the hard work i have put in the last
few months, thanks a lot mate!

~~~
LoathsLights
If you'd like some feedback there's one/two things that stood out to me.

When you click on the pricing page your navigation bar becomes a mobile style
one, those are usually only shown if the screen width is small like on mobile.

When you click on the live demo page you get a back button top left thing that
seems like it belongs to a mobile app, on a desktop where the screen is wider
this design choice seems a bit odd.

I'm guessing this stuff comes from still being in a bit of a learning phase
with Vue or some library you're using. Otherwise great site, just something to
look at in case you want to improve on it.

~~~
1hakr
This is really useful. Thanks mate.

------
heipei
I recently researched third-party services that do performance / uptime
monitoring, alerting and more. There were a couple of good ones, but none that
I found that integrated monitoring/performance/alerting along with a publicly
accessible status-page/dashboard which also had the option to create incidents
with status updates (text description). You might consider if this is worth
adding.

For now I went with the Open Source Statping tool but I'd happily use an
affordable service if it unified everything.

~~~
agustif
I'm using instatus and it integrates with some 3rd-party tools like pingdom or
newrelic to auto-update status-page.

It's nice, might work for you: [https://instatus.com](https://instatus.com)

It seems they recently implemented the automation part for the status /
incident report.

[https://github.com/InstatusHQ/public-
board/issues/9](https://github.com/InstatusHQ/public-board/issues/9)

~~~
1hakr
Thanks mate, will check it out

------
dewey
I'd structure the pricing page a bit differently. Having a "Lifetime" plan
isn't really something that's common for a offering like that because everyone
knows it's not actually lifetime. I only realized that there are more "normal"
plans once I scrolled but on the first glance it looks like the lifetime plan
is the only one available.

~~~
1hakr
good point. thanks will fix that

~~~
rapind
Spotted a copy bug: "Monitor your website's health performance & performance".

~~~
1hakr
Good catch. Thanks mate, will fix it.

~~~
stevekemp
1\. Your /about page also says "wbsite" rather than "website".

2\. Your /features page is blank.

3\. Some of the copy on the /docs tree could be proof-read and reworked. e.g.
/docs/faqs

Nitpicking aside it seems like a cool service, and a cool site.

~~~
1hakr
Thanks mate, really appreciate the feedback. Will fix the typos.

------
stedaniels
This is a crowded space, but you seem to have integrated many related features
into your offering. With that in mind is a bit tricky to see exactly how you
compare to the competition. I know some are for and some against competitor
comparison tables... I think you'd come out favourable however. It looks
great! If I had the cashflow is jump at that lifetime offering. I wish you
well.

~~~
1hakr
Yes thats the plan, an all-in-one tool.

------
1hakr
Simple Ops does these • performance monitoring • alerts in 7 different
channels • website health • Real user metrics • Performance check • SSL check
• Global monitoring in 5 locations

~~~
sah2ed
Congrats on shipping! The design is really well done.

1\. Did you hand-code it from scratch or you use a template/theme?

2\. What about a domain renewal check? The person who registered a domain
might not be the one that signs up for Simple Ops, so a renewal notice would
be nice for when a domain is about to expire.

~~~
1hakr
#1 I hand coded it from scratch #2 yes thats a good idea, I will do that.

Thanks for the feedback.

------
raunometsa
As I understand, you're offering a limited lifetime packages (25 x $199 and
then x amount of $499)? I guess it's for generating initial $$$ and validating
the interest for the product?

And when you sell these out, you continue with monthly/yearly packages?

This is cool. But I'm sometimes thinking about these monthly prices. Can we
sell products with lifetime packages instead? You know, like you can buy and
download a software program, like Postico (which is made by an indie dev):
[https://eggerapps.at/postico/](https://eggerapps.at/postico/)

I see the difference for the maker though. Postico's developer has built a
software program (a file) that can be downloaded and used, but SaaS lives on
the server and needs maintenance/updates.

I'm not a fan of paying every month for a lot of SaaS products. But something
feels weird to sell an online product with one-time price only:

1) when I have monthly packages, I need to keep the product alive as long
people pay me (or when I have only a few paying customers I can say I'll shut
it down and they don't need to pay anymore) 2) when I sell lifetime packages,
I need to keep the product alive for an eternity even though maybe nobody pays
me

But as long as new users are signing up and paying lifetime money, it's okay!

~~~
XCSme
I also have the same pricing structure on
[https://www.userTrack.net/pricing](https://www.userTrack.net/pricing)
(initially lifetime only, now also monthly).

I added monthly mostly to allow customers to get started at a much lower cost,
thus making the initial purchase easier to make. This also means that if they
can test it for cheal and if are satisfied, after a while, they can switch to
the lifetime plan.

In my case I think it works because it is a product, not a SaaS. Feels a bit
weird to pay monthly for a product, but it actually works and is more like IRL
renting or paying monthly installments.

~~~
raunometsa
Cool product! I've seen many indie analytics tools recently.

One thing they promote is privacy. Which is important indeed. But another
aspect could be the simplicity of them. Google Analytics is just too huge. We
often need only a couple of key metrics.

For example, Simple Analytics is really nice I think (doing $6.2k/mo):
[https://makehub.io/startups/simple-
analytics](https://makehub.io/startups/simple-analytics)

But it starts from $19/mo. I feel it's too expensive.

Another one I recently discovered is Plausible (doing $1.8k/mo):
[https://makehub.io/startups/plausible](https://makehub.io/startups/plausible)

Starts from $6/mo, which is a lot better.

I love that your product is self-hosted by the client. Are you providing
updates for them?

~~~
XCSme
Thanks!

I know of most of the other analytics platforms, I am not really a fan of the
hosted "privacy-focused" analytics, as they are still 3rd party analytics
where data is centralized, but they are a step forward. Also the data the data
that they provide is usually not enough for commercial websites.

I do release regular updates, but I am just releasing an auto-updater
functionality which will enable you to update the platform with one click.
This is one of the final steps before I start a bigger marketing campaign.

I personally think self-hosting is the future, not only in terms of analytics,
but for any hosted service that you might use. The most important thing
stopping this from happening is usually the big corporations not wanting to
give up on potential huge money and data streams. I self-hosting is now
possible and easy thanks to all the VPS/cloud providers that enable for very
cheap servers running the app that you need to be easily setup and maintained.

~~~
raunometsa
I think most things were self hosted before they moved to the cloud and
software as a service became a thing?

So what you're saying is that maybe we're going back to self hosting again.
This could make sense! Then we're buying software for a reasonable price and
not having to pay every month for it.

I don't like these monthly payments somehow! It's like $20 here and $30 there,
and you'll pay $500/mo before realising it.

Self-hosting could be the answer to my problem here:

 _1) when I have monthly packages, I need to keep the product alive as long
people pay me (or when I have only a few paying customers I can say I 'll shut
it down and they don't need to pay anymore) 2) when I sell lifetime packages,
I need to keep the product alive for an eternity even though maybe nobody pays
me_

Curious if you're also sharing your revenue publicly? Would be fun to list you
on MakeHub.

~~~
XCSme
I agree. With services you also feel that you are captive and paying for stuff
that you don't even use, but if you stop you lose your data or might not be
able to come back in the future, so you keep it running "in case I need it" or
"I will use it at some point".

I also think software is way overpriced, especially when it comes to services
that mostly just rent a server for $5/mo and resell it for $100/mo with not a
lot of real value added on top. I think it makes more sense to buy the
app/product and choose the server yourself, and pay $5/mo for the server or
like $100/mo for a REALLY powerful server, not for a plan with "100k visits,
30 days retention".

On point 2), if no one buys your product anymore you can just stop supporting
it and "kill it". Being a software product it usually doesn't break over time,
unless it's something based on other volatile APIs. Take games for example,
they sell as a lifetime software license, games released 20 years ago can
usually still run without problems and without any maintenence.

I do somewhat openly share the revenue, currently I have myan estimated
revenue shown on the IndieHackers page, but being only a product up until now,
the revenue varies from month to month (not as stable as a SaaS). Currently
it's around $1000/mo as I'm not doing any marketing, I still get sells from
people coming from Google or from word of mouth. I usually try to update the
IH page as soon as a big milestone is reached.

I think userTrack could be listed on MakeHub (from what I read, as I'm a solo
founder, no funding, public revenue).

~~~
raunometsa
Thanks! I think userTrack makes a nice addition to MakeHub, added now!
[https://makehub.io/startups/usertrack](https://makehub.io/startups/usertrack)

~~~
XCSme
Thanks for adding it! I also subbed to MakeHub :)

------
edhadh
I found these sentences hard to parse, I'd consider reworking them/checking
the grammar:

Regularly get the real-world Chrome users experience metrics right from
dashboard. Its update every week and you can measure improvements.

------
daolf
Starting a startup means optimizing for growth, at all cost.

Bootstrapping or indie hacking have usually different goals: you optimize for
revenue or time spent.

Shortly said, when building a startup you aim to change the world, when indie
hacking you just want to change yours.

At least that is why I chose that path 2 years ago :)

~~~
peterlk
I mean, if we want to argue about definitions, personally, I like Steve
Blank's:

"A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable
business model. The goal of your early business model can be revenue, or
profits, or users, or click-throughs – whatever you and your investors have
agreed upon. Most startups change their business model multiple times."

I disagree with the idea that a "startup" needs to be "optimizing for growth
at all costs" \- as you say. I think this is actually a rather dangerous
approach because growth at all costs is how we get things like Ponzi schemes,
WeWork, and other abusive organizations.

Your comment also seems to imply that you can't do anything meaningful if you
don't have/raise money. This is simply not true.

~~~
daolf
That was a short answer, of course it could be refined :).

This part of Steve definition is for me the most fundamental: "The goal of
your early business model can be revenue, OR profits, or users, OR click-
throughs – whatever you and your investors have agreed upon".

When bootstrapping you cannot afford to have a business model that can
generate anything else than revenue. Except if you optimize for time while
having another full-time job for example.

I was not at all implying that you can't do anything meaningful if you don't
raise money. But again it depends what you mean by meaningful.

If by meaningful you mean developing a product / idea that will completely
disrupt an industry or the way people live (think Tesla, AirBnB, Apple & co),
I'd argue that 99% of the time, people with that ambition will use the VC way.

If by meaningful you mean building a strong business, generating millions of $
and creating hundreds of jobs (think BaseCamp, MailChimp, ConvertKit), I agree
that raising money is not mandatory.

But I stand by my point, if you want to change the world, you should probably
aim for the VC road.

------
napolux
Hey, looks cool. What's (in your opinion) the real difference between "indie
hacking" and a proper startup? (Apart from the legal entity)

~~~
1hakr
The product is the same, its just the mind set. In a startup you are more
focused on securing a funding and grow 10x and on the other hand Indie hacking
is more on bootstrapping. I feel startups started bootstrapped but have turned
into what they are today because of VC. Also the biggest reason why 95%
startups fail.

~~~
napolux
Thanks for sharing!

------
bouk
You should definitely charge at least double or triple what you are doing
right now. You'd still be cheaper than the competition!

~~~
1hakr
Thanks for the suggestions. I will comeback to pricing if there is enough
traction. My current goal is to reach as many website users as possible and
make performance monitoring available for everyone.

------
aeden
Looks like there are some issues to resolve with the signup process and
billing. I've contacted you via your support channel so we'll see how this
works out. :-)

~~~
1hakr
I will reply to it, thanks for reporting

------
tckb
Good to see this one on the top of showhn. I see that you shared the same 2
days ago and the one before 8 days ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849221)
what has changed since then?

~~~
mtlynch
My understanding is that this is acceptable practice. There's a lot of luck to
a post reaching critical mass on HN, so if you happen to get lost in the
noise, you can try again. Trying three times does not feel at all egregious to
me. As long as you don't delete old submissions to hide what you're doing, I
think that's in line with HN's rules.

One notable difference is that today is a weekend, which means there's less
traffic on HN but also less competition to reach the front page.

~~~
tckb
By looks of it you seem to have misinterpreted my question. I never suggested
it to be a bad practice but rather was curious if there’s was something
changed to post it again, I certainly would.

~~~
mtlynch
Oh, sorry. I thought you were implying that OP was in the wrong for
resubmitting a link that had been ignored previously and not changed since.

------
maxlamb
If you don't mind me asking, what tools (if any) did you use to design your
landing page UI?

~~~
wic8
From the look and css classes, it's most likely made using
vuetify[[https://vuetifyjs.com](https://vuetifyjs.com)]

------
wusatiuk
We are looking for such a solution combined with data available via a Google
datastudio connector. Could be an awesome feature to attract agencies as
customers, who need to report to their clients.

~~~
1hakr
Thanks a lot, i will add this feature soon!

------
Semaphor
The service looks nice and at a very fair price point. But I can’t stand it
when I’m forced to go through a 3rd party to sign in. At least this made me
create a throwaway GitHub account for OAuth.

~~~
1hakr
This was to make it easy. Does email login work for you?

~~~
Semaphor
E-Mail signup/login is my favored way, every time. FB/Twitter/Google are, of
course, by far the worst, but even Github might randomly decide they don’t
want me on their service anymore. My E-Mail provider is the only one I pay and
the only one I have some slight trust in.

~~~
1hakr
Cool, i will enable email soon.

------
jaxxstorm
If I can make a suggestion for a pro feature, it would be good to be able to
test/measure pages behind some kind of authentication, even basic auth would
be useful

~~~
1hakr
Thanks mate, definitely in my plan.

------
steventey
This is incredible, Hari! Love the vision for SimpleOps, and I love that
you're providing a limited lifetime deal package! Great work man!

~~~
steventey
That dinosaur animation on the landing page was a nice touch too haha

~~~
1hakr
Thanks mate! I'm glad you liked it.

------
adenozine
This is a beautiful page. I like the design very, VERY much.

I don't really have the need for the product, but I wish you the best of luck!

------
stf-ods
Very nice implementation. I wish you well! The product reminds me a lot about
AppPulse Active (or what it should have been)

~~~
1hakr
Cheers!

------
marxdeveloper
Never let users see your website down... and USED BY RefurbMe which seems to
be down :)

~~~
1hakr
sending alerts is one things but i cant control if they fix or not :P

~~~
marxdeveloper
Seems to be working again, hopefully it was thanks to those alerts

~~~
1hakr
Point proven why every website owner needs Simple Ops! :^)

------
baxtr
Stupid question: What is a micro-startup? Sounds like an interesting concept.

~~~
1hakr
Basically a startup but at small scale and completely bootstrapped by 1 person

------
z3t4
Nice graphics!. How much time have you spent on manual sales?

~~~
1hakr
Till now zero. Its been less than a month since i made the service available
publicly.

------
rephlex2097
I have this as a template in my naemon. For quasi-free.

~~~
mc3
"dropbox is just rsync"

------
allrok
I am using this service since last 20 days and I am 100% satisfied with the
matrix on simpleops.

Before that for the same reason I was frequently using gtmatrix.

------
jaxonrice
What plan does the lifetime offer get you?

~~~
1hakr
The lifetime plan gets you the Maker plan

~~~
wiradikusuma
Would be great if you have PayPal, as currency rates is fluctuating now and I
keep my USD in PayPal :(

~~~
1hakr
Currently I don't support paypal, but I will see what I can do.

------
leorio
Off topic: curious.. you submitted this post twice recently. why on top now?

~~~
tommoor
Probably just shows how much luck is a part in making HN frontpage

