Being Sustainable in Saas Projects

[lesseo]

Hello Friends; I have been involved in a saas project for about 1.5 years.

We mostly meet the monitoring needs of websites;
Uptime, Keyword, Dns, Server, Change, Blacklist, Domain etc.

The project has been around for 4 years and we are a very small team (3 people)..

We have really worked hard for Peoje, we update it every year, add new features, we try to give much more features than our competitors at much more affordable prices. We allow users to open a free account so that they can see our features and use it indefinitely. (There is only a usage restriction.)

The problem is; although we entered the market 4 years ago, there are much older, well-known websites that are at the top of Google. Advertising costs are very high, so we do not advertise. There are a few organic visitors and monthly subscribers from references.

We can think that on average 2 new customers come per month. But if we consider that the monthly subscription is around 15-30 dollars, it seems quite low.

As a result, we are not making serious profits, but we do not want to stop fighting. How sustainable do you think these data are..

 

[Ozzy]

How sustainable do you think these data are..

This is the benefit and the problem with the SaaS business model.
You need a lot of cashflow (float) to ride the early years because of the pricing model, but assuming you have effective marketing in place and enough float then long term the business model is very attractive.

The issue you may find is that many SaaS businesses pop up all the time with the dream of subscription revenue, but they under estimated how much money they need to market and stay afloat for the first few years - and don't survive.

At a price point of 15-30 dollars a month you need hundreds, if not thousands a month; not two. I'd encourage you have another look at your numbers and your marketing plan.

I run a 'SaaS' company, have done for more than 15 years. Very narrow market, we do only need 2-3 customers a month; so our price point to remain sustainable is £500+ a month subscription.

 

[fisicx]

@lesseo - what does your tool offer that is better than the competition?

Is Peoje the name of the product?

Either way, if you aren't advertising what marketing do you do?

 

[lesseo]

This is the benefit and the problem with the SaaS business model.
You need a lot of cashflow (float) to ride the early years because of the pricing model, but assuming you have effective marketing in place and enough float then long term the business model is very attractive.

The issue you may find is that many SaaS businesses pop up all the time with the dream of subscription revenue, but they under estimated how much money they need to market and stay afloat for the first few years - and don't survive.

At a price point of 15-30 dollars a month you need hundreds, if not thousands a month; not two. I'd encourage you have another look at your numbers and your marketing plan.

I run a 'SaaS' company, have done for more than 15 years. Very narrow market, we do only need 2-3 customers a month; so our price point to remain sustainable is £500+ a month subscription.

I am grateful for the response. We have several large customers. We also participated in Appsumo launches twice in 4 years. This provided us with a cash inflow and we can say that we have come this far.

Our prices are very low, yes, but we want to capture customers at every stage. Big or small.

 

[lesseo]

@lesseo - what does your tool offer that is better than the competition?

Is Peoje the name of the product?

Either way, if you aren't advertising what marketing do you do?

We joined Appsumo twice in 4 years. This saved us some time.

Apart from that, we usually try to catch up with Reddit users.

We also managed to get to the first page of Google for the word Free Website monitoring. We have nearly 3,000 free users. After a certain period of time, they can want to become paid members. However, as I said, our monthly subscribers are very limited. So this number does not exceed 50 at the end of 4 years. But we hope it will increase faster.

 

[fisicx]

Just done a search for 'free uptime monitoring' and 'free website monitoring'. Loads of them to choose from. Can't see any reason why I'd want to pay you.

And I don't see you on page one of Google for anything. Are you checking in incognito mode?

 

[lesseo]

Just done a search for 'free uptime monitoring' and 'free website monitoring'. Loads of them to choose from. Can't see any reason why I'd want to pay you.

And I don't see you on page one of Google for anything. Are you checking in incognito mode?

Thank you very much for your interest.

The ranking is valid for US Serp, but you should see it on the first few pages globally. In free website monitoring searches.

We provide the following: We offer 12 tools for free.

Our competitors usually define a 30-day trial account. In other words, they do not have an indefinite service for free. They also provide this service for an average of 4-5 tools. We provide all 12 tools for free.

Our customers are generally users who need much more monitoring. For example, e-commerce sites, SEO companies, hosting companies, Saas projects. Some of our large customers offer these services to their customers for free through us.

 

[FreddyG]

The issue you may find is that many SaaS businesses pop up all the time with the dream of subscription revenue, but they under estimated how much money they need to market and stay afloat for the first few years - and don't survive.

THIS!

SaaS only really works if you can become the industry standard for something. Adobe Creative Suite, Avid, Final Draft, AutoCad, ProTools and a few others come to mind. They do this by making sure that the universities use them to the exclusion of the competitors. And for what the customer gets, they are relatively cheap.

And as @fisicx points out, oodles of free competitors.

 

[lesseo]

THIS!

SaaS only really works if you can become the industry standard for something. Adobe Creative Suite, Avid, Final Draft, AutoCad, ProTools and a few others come to mind. They do this by making sure that the universities use them to the exclusion of the competitors. And for what the customer gets, they are relatively cheap.

And as @fisicx points out, oodles of free competitors.

Yes, I agree.

 

[fisicx]

We provide the following: We offer 12 tools for free. You can view the features we offer here. robotalp.com/free-website-monitoring

How did you research if people want these 12 tools. I only want one tool: is my site up or not. If not I can login to my cpanel and fix it.

Everything else in your list is inconsequential.

The service I want from you is to monitor if the site is down and if so fix it. I'd pay for that.

 

[fisicx]

Our customers are generally users who need much more monitoring. For example, e-commerce sites, SEO companies, hosting companies, Saas projects. Some of our large customers offer these services to their customers for free through us.

And there are umpteen competitors who can do this. You don't offer anything they can't get elsewhere. I'd prefer to go with someone I have heard of and trust rather than you - a complete unknown.

 

[lesseo]

And there are umpteen competitors who can do this. You don't offer anything they can't get elsewhere. I'd prefer to go with someone I have heard of and trust rather than you - a complete unknown.

Your comment was a bit harsh but thanks anyway. Other tools may be meaningless to you and we are working on what other tools we can offer. I don't think this is a bad way to go.

 

[fisicx]

What market research did you do to find out what tools were wanted?

How are you differentiating your product from all the others?

How do you plan to market your product if you aren’t paying for adverts?

If you want paying customers you need to offer something worth paying for. Because you have a free service that does what most people want there is no incentive to upgrade.

 

[lesseo]

What market research did you do to find out what tools were wanted?

How are you differentiating your product from all the others?

How do you plan to market your product if you aren’t paying for adverts?

If you want paying customers you need to offer something worth paying for. Because you have a free service that does what most people want there is no incentive to upgrade.

We get feedback from over 4,000 of our users for this.

We developed a roadmap system, where we ask our users what they want and let them vote on what they want. Then we add the highest voted tools or features to our system.

You can see our customer reviews on Appsumo here. We made our 2nd launch 1 month ago.

Unfortunately, we do not have an advertising budget, but we still aim to do our best.

 

[fisicx]

No point in asking your users. You need to ask people who don’t use monitoring tools. This means paying for proper research.

You may not have an advertising budget but there are many other ways to market your product.

Personally I think you need to rethink your whole business model and stop trying to compete with the established players. Find a new niche.

 

[ctrlbrk]

No point in asking your users.

Why not?

 

[fisicx]

Why not?

Because they already use the product.

The OP is trying to get new people signed up who are willing to pay. The current users just want the freebie so aren’t going to give useful answers.

 

[FreddyG]

1. The prices are waaaay too high. Just look at what one gets from Adobe! It's massive! and for much less! Enough to run a newspaper, multiple websites and a TV production studio.

2. You guys are not using easy marketing tools like explaining videos on YT. It's free and a no-brainer!

3. Go to a marketing specialist for direct 1-2-1 marketing who puts you on the straight and narrow. I would recommend Dayton Bird, but others are available - at least read his book! Study 1-2-1 marketing techniques!

4. As @Ozzy has pointed out, it's all about marketing. Study what the big boys did to get where they are. Adobe and Autodesk and all the others did not get where they are today with a "Build it and they will come attitude!" That is the road to oblivion.

Good luck and all that!

 

[Nudge]

You’ve put in the work, and 4,000+ users prove there’s demand. The challenge now is getting more of them to convert. Maybe the free plan offers too much, or the value of upgrading isn’t clear. Have you tested making key features paid only or showing real ROI? Also, without an ad budget, content could be your best play. YouTube, LinkedIn, and deep-dive case studies.

 

[ctrlbrk]

Because they already use the product.

The OP is trying to get new people signed up who are willing to pay. The current users just want the freebie so aren’t going to give useful answers.

Well, let's say I sign up for the free tier.

Then I realise my WP site has crashed with a "DB connection refused" error and that's not covered by OP's offering.

I might ask @lesseo if they can add this particular type of monitor to their service and they add it to the paid tiers.

If it's compelling enough, people on the free tier may go for that.

 

[fisicx]

I agree. The freemium model can work very well.

The problem they have is there are already many competitors all doing the same. Unless they invest in marketing no-one will ever know they exist.

But key for me is not knowing my website has gone down, what I want is someone to get it back online at 2am when I'm asleep.

That being said, in the 10 years I've been with my current host the only time a site crashed is when a farmer cut trough the fibre whilst digging a trench killing the whole network.

If @lesseo offered a monitoring product with a paid 'fixit' module they would have something quite unique.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Your comment was a bit harsh but thanks anyway. Other tools may be meaningless to you and we are working on what other tools we can offer. I don't think this is a bad way to go.

I suspect that harsh is what you need, you may be falling into the common trap of selling your idea to yourself and taking a lack of negative as a positive.

Which it clearly isn't. You currently have 3 or 4 thousand users (that escalated quickly!) Silently telling you that they aren't really interested.

That boils down to product offer or marketing (or any mix of the 2)

 

[KM-Tiger]

But key for me is not knowing my website has gone down, what I want is someone to get it back online at 2am when I'm asleep.

I am reminded of drills and holes. Monitoring is not in itself of any great value, and why would anyone pay for it when you can get it for free? What my clients want is to know that their website is up, and in the event of it being down for it to be fixed promptly. So for me monitoring is merely a tool that enables me to provide a service.

Years ago I used to give clients access to my monitoring system so they could see the status of their servers. But I don't any more as I found that the vast majority of clients were simply not interested.

Coming back to drills and holes, you can sell a drill as it will produce the hole that the buyer wants. But I don't see much future in trying to sell monitoring, as it cannot produce what the buyer wants, which is to fix the problem.

 

[fisicx]

Years ago I used to give clients access to my monitoring system so they could see the status of their servers. But I don't any more as I found that the vast majority of clients were simply not interested.

One of the features of @lesseo tool is the dashboard. Lots of graphs and whatever and all very pretty. But pointless. As you say, I really don't care when the site went down, I want someone to get it back up again before I've even been notified.

 

[Paul Carmen]

You're competing against Uptime Robot and a few other companies that people have heard of. There strategy to not offer as much "free" is because you ended up with loads of people who never pay you that way.

The harsh responses are valid unfortunately. You are neither targeting the right search terms, or customer user base with your current site, pages and content.

As an example; in the UK 50 people a month search for "free website monitoring", 40 a month for "free uptime monitoring", a coupel of hundred for varainst of bith. But, these are unlikely to pay for anything and even if you're No 1, will only yield a handful of sign ups per month.

 

[lesseo]

Thank you very much for your comments, friends. I agree with you all. Your observations are very valuable to me. You are right in what you say.

Let me even raise it, 10 of the 30 best applications in the "Uptime monitoring" Market were closed 4 years ago.

In 2024, at least 5 applications and at least 5 open source projects entered the sector. In other words, you are right that it is a very difficult sector and some of the services provided can be provided for free. We are already trying to provide this service for free with a certain limit. Our paid plan is for those who want more monitors.

We developed 2 new tools this year. Change monitoring and Blacklist Monitoring. We continue to focus on what we can do differently. Thank you for your interest and comments.

 

[fisicx]

I ask again, how much market research did you do before developing the tools.

You may have asked your existing users but as they still haven’t upgraded their plan it’s clearly not working.

I don’t want blacklist monitoring. I want you to fix the problem. Why do I even need change monitoring?

 

[Porky]

@lesseo
I fear you will have your work cut out for you on this one.Thing is anyone can do free, but nothing is free: you have the cost hosting those free accounts.No point in being busy fools, paying clients is what counts.

What you need to do is work on your financial modelling, establish what your true Client acquisition cost (CAC) is to go from Prospect>Fremium SIgned>Paying look at the long term value of the client, how long before they convert to paying, what the triggers are and as @Ozzy has pointed out twice ensure you have enough working capital to finance the marketing and costs of it until profitable.

I really wish you well but from my own experience, i think you will need significant capital to establish this busines with any real market traction to secure paying clients and you will find that a challenge especially as you are in a saturated market with what looks like only a minor USP difference against some big wallet players - Good luck

 

[Paul Carmen]

You need a market research and brand positioning piece of work undertaken. We've done this for several clients, and they are always surprised at what potential customers actually search for, and why they are likely to go for a competitor over them.

There needs to be a clear path for the free customers to get upgraded from free to freemium; e.g. limit what they get more, charge a small amount for some of the extra services, even if it is £2 or £3 per extra a month, that way these are generating some income instead of costing you money, or offer X amount of months free, but then there is a small charge.

Your site content and pages do not target what paying customers search for. There are on average 1,000 UK searches a month for "Uptime Robot". 2,000+ relevant searches for "website monitoring" that does not include the word "free".

There may be additional services you can offer this way, but if you don't know what potential customers search for, you are just guessing, or going on feedback from people who are not paying you any money. There are also other potential routes to market that don't involve ranking on Google.

You need a budget for research, content creation and messaging, that can be turned into a marketing plan that will deliver a roadmap to profitability, even if that means investing some money upfront for future return. To keep doing the same thing is madness.