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.)<p>Over ~10 years running SaaS apps I generally managed to pretty consistently find ways to spend 40% of revenue.<p>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 <i>skyrocket</i>. 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
: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!)
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.
I wanted a "total total" and calculated it. For the curious: $17,593.10.<p>Obviously not all months are equal, but that's about $517.45 per month.<p>Look like an awesome tool!
First, thanks for boldly sharing. It's quite an accomplishment to finish anything.<p>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.<p>appname+app.com was probably not the best idea. Domain name hacks are confusing, and you are now indirectly working for appname.com<p>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<p>Alright I'm done with the unwarranted advice. Really good job.
It's surprising to see the cost of Intercom compared to everything else on the list.<p>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.
For Stripe analytics, Profitwell is free. And awesome.<p><a href="https://www.profitwell.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.profitwell.com</a>
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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".<p>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.<p>1. <a href="https://helpsite.io" rel="nofollow">https://helpsite.io</a>
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?
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?