Launched SqlSmash

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#1

My 1st product SqlSmash had been in alpha/beta for the last 2 months with a very bare-bones website. This week, I have officially come out of beta, pushed a new website and started collecting payments.

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#2

Firstof: Congratulations on Launching! :smiley:

A few thoughts on the website and product itself:

The Product

  • Man this is great! Unfortunately I’m still stuck at Management Studio 2010 but I already saved your Plugin because it seems really great functionality wise. I think the best thing is “Format” and the quick search. Nicely done!

The Website

  • I would suggest shorting the headline to something that is more easy to understand. 3 Lines feels a bit long to me…

  • Maybe recreate the video part with the function you renamed? This seems a little bit unprofessional, otherwise the video was easy to understand.

  • May I ask why the download is a zip file containing an (already compressed) msi file?

  • The feature list with screenshots is a little boring (sorry). Maybe you could spice this up a little?

  • Correct me if I’m wrong but on your pricing page the money guarantee is spelled wrong? It could stand out more in my opinion

  • Why is your email address not clickable? You will get a lot of SPAM anyway so you might as well ease the use for the website visitors :smile:

  • I’m a little confuses by the licensing. I’m working (alone) at my company so do I have to purchase a commercial version? What does premium support mean? Is there any difference in features? Will I get updates for free? How long?

I like the company name “Smashing Jedis” :wink: Where are you located? Maybe add an address / imprint to the footer of the page?

#3

@danielherken Thanks for the detailed and honest feedback! All of the points you mentioned are valid and I’ll fix these over the next few days. I plan on redoing the screencast as well, since this was created for the alpha. My todo list is a mile long, but I really wanted to start collecting payments for users who want to pay. So I covered as much stuff as I could during this first update to the website.

All updates will be free for the next year or so until the next major version update. The personal license is locked to a person, so you could buy either (unless you are planning to fire yourself from your company :smile: ).

Fyi, you can use SSMS 2012 to connect to older versions of Sql Server (all the way back to 2005 I believe).

#4

Thanks for the clarification! I would add the “all non major updates” thing to the pricing page otherwise people will expect free updates forever :smile:

Regarding SSMS 2012: I know this but I’m somewhat hesistant to install unnecessary updates on my live server. Currently I don’t do much SQL development so I’m good for now :smiley:

#5

Congrats! I hope the first sales come very soon.

#6

Thanks @SteveMcLeod Just got my 1st sale 30 minutes ago. Long way to go but I am excited about this milestone!

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#7

Congrats on the launch and 1st sale…So…how did you go about validating idea/customer development?

#8

Sadly, I did not have a very thought out process for either of those.
I had been developing the tool over the last year and showing it at conferences and user groups where I presented. The tool is targeted at developers, and my network is full of them, so I would show it to them regularly too. Also, there were similar tools already in the market that were doing well and I thought I could do a better job than some of them.

I built an email list during alpha/beta releases. Some traffic trickled from my blog, and some came from Reddit/HN.

#9

Congrats on the 1st sale…It’s an awesome feeling, isn’t it!