My SaaS, Snip Salon Software, is profitable as of today. I wrote a blog post about it: http://www.jasonswett.net/snip-is-profitable/
Hopefully this is inspiring to those of you who have not yet reached profitability. I started Snip on January 7th, 2011, so it took me just under 3 years to get from “first Git commit” to profitability. (Maybe one reason it took me so long is because I started with a Git commit.)
I love the post. I guess I’ve never considered it as profitability, but I suppose that’s true. My saas product (SharpPLM) would be profitable too. I think I just pay $6 a month right now (free Azure hosting through BizSpark).
I have 3 paying customers right now, and one of them has never used it despite paying for a full year. I’ve done the same thing, calling, emailing to help them get set up, but they say they are busy and will let me know when they’re ready. When it’s early customers, having them use it and getting the feedback is more helpful than the actually money to a certain extent.
Anyway, congrats and keep truckin’!
Whoohoo! Congrats! This must feel great! I hope to reach that point one day! Great blog post too. Thanks for including financial details – it really helps with putting things in perspective.
Congrats on getting profitable, but…
$25 per domain for email & $95 for hosting a month seems crazy for 5 customers, I pay less than that a year and host around 10 client sites, some of which are reasonably busy. Business can be as much about cutting costs as it is about getting new sales.
Have a look for a cheap VPS, digital ocean charge $5/month and would probably be adequate for your needs.
Thanks for the congratulations, guys.
I realize I’m paying a lot for hosting. I’ve been sticking with Heroku because sever migrations are a total pain in the ass, plus I wanted to get some Heroku experience because it’s a marketable skill and I do client work to earn an income.
I second what @Charlie is saying, I think you could optimise a bit your costs.
I know that moving hosts is a pain, specially if coming from a fully managed solution like heroku, but if you are doing it also for the experience, you could go straight to the “bare” Amazon AWS and use that instead, the skills on that platform are as much and maybe more valuable than just Heroku. (plus I’m almost sure you’d be within the AWS free tier http://aws.amazon.com/free/ )
For google apps: which plan are you subscribed to? I have two addresses for my spazidigitali.com on Google Apps for Business and they are 5 USD per month each (so 10 USD in total)
Actually, $25 is inaccurate, sorry. That’s my total Google Apps charge, which I believe includes 5 different addresses. So the charge for just Snip would be $10. So hey, my profit is $30/mo, not $15.
You’re right that I could be paying less for hosting, but I’m not really interested in moving from Heroku.
I would agree, stick with Heroku. The time it takes to switch is better used on marketing, etc. Plus take a look at the security thread. If you think long term, the few dollars you save is barely anything. Focus, focus, focus…
You could equally argue that the money saved would be better spent on marketing. For the sake of an afternoons work you’d save the best part of 100 bucks, that buys a few ads. And as @lmea says Aws or server config skills are far more valuable than knowing your way round heroku, which you now already know.