[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Would you pay for a SaaS even if its open so...
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Ask HN: Would you pay for a SaaS even if its open source and can be
selfhosted?
I'm building an opensource self hosted app on GitHub and wanted to
know if its worth it to setup Stripe and gain some money through
cloud offering. So lets go for a practical example: You find a
task manager that does pretty much _exactly_ what you need BUT its
also open source and you can self host it, would you still pay
around $5 to get the cloud version of the app? Also SaaS owners
what are your thoughts?
Author : throwaway4738
Score : 13 points
Date : 2023-06-02 20:21 UTC (2 hours ago)
| knubie wrote:
| > You find a task manager that does pretty much exactly what you
| need BUT its also open source and you can self host it, would you
| still pay around $5 to get the cloud version of the app?
|
| If it's for personal use: Probably. The cheapest droplet on
| Digital Ocean is $5 anyway (I know there are cheaper
| alternatives, but that's what I use), and I don't have a general
| purpose VPS that I use to self host stuff already.
|
| If it's for business: Absolutely. The set up time and maintenance
| time cost dwarfs whatever pittance of savings you might be able
| to achieve with self hosting.
|
| This also depends on the SaaS pricing and how complex the self
| hosting set up is.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| I use anonaddy [0] _because_ it 's open source and self-hostable
| [1]. I don't have to worry about the service going under or
| jumping the shark, since I can always just self-host it on my own
| hardware and import my config should that happen. Of course I'd
| much prefer to pay someone else to run it, especially in the case
| of mail servers where self-hosting is notoriously tedious.
|
| [0] https://anonaddy.com/ [1]
| https://github.com/anonaddy/anonaddy
| Jemaclus wrote:
| I don't self-host, with a few exceptions. Generally speaking, my
| value proposition is app feature development, not managing the
| operational complexity of self-hosted software.
|
| For personal projects, I either try to leverage a free tier (if
| available) or just not use that software, because very few of my
| projects make any money, and most of what I do is just for
| fun/learning, anyway.
|
| For projects that make me money, I would absolutely pay $5 or
| whatever for the basic tier, and as traffic/revenue goes up, I'd
| happily pay for more. That hasn't happened yet for me, but I
| would if I made any money ;)
| XCSme wrote:
| What if the self-hosting installation was a simple one-click
| installation on a DigitalOcean server? It would probably cost
| 10x or 100x less than a SaaS and also you have full control
| over the server and data.
| brimstedt wrote:
| Yes. Self hosting for me can come because of a few different
| reasons: - I want to ensure my data is safe - I want to ensure
| uptime or performance - I want to ensure continuity if the SaaS
| company disappears
|
| Pricing matters of course. I get really ticked off at the
| overprice of many SaaS.
| openplatypus wrote:
| If done right, with right transparency, disclosures, yes SaaS it
| is.
|
| When building Wide Angle Analytics, we spent a lot of time on
| getting the legal, compliance, and transparency right. We were
| mocked by the "move fast, break stuff" crowd.
|
| When we were looking for vendors and SaaS partners, we stumbled
| upon some very dodgy "businesses".
|
| No address? Nope. No director name? Nope. Dodgy jurisdiction?
| Nope. Parroting privacy and data, or poor or outright invalid
| security statements? Nope.
|
| Do your due diligence.
| rozenmd wrote:
| I've been paying for Plausible Analytics (OSS & self-hostable)
| from day 1 of OnlineOrNot.
|
| I don't want to save a few bucks a month at the expense of hours
| of messing around with servers and config, I want to build my
| product.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| Are you asking us for our perspective as hobbyists, or as b2b
| customers?
|
| If the latter, yes, absolutely. I have seen a few major successes
| in my career thay involved a migration from a self-hosted
| solution to a managed offering. Trying to self-host is often
| "penny wise and pound foolish" in the long run.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| It's still the same fundamental SaaS purchase decision, build vs.
| buy.
| ungawatkt wrote:
| - If I'm using it for fun, learning, or testing it out: I'll
| probably self host it, I already have a server and enjoy that.
|
| - If any of my friends use it who don't do self hosting normally
| (techy or otherwise): they'll probably use the cloud offering.
|
| - If I'm using it for business use: cloud offering unless its
| mission critical or core infrastructure, then it depends.
|
| - If it's one of my few "don't live without it" personal apps:
| cloud offering or I'll buy a license/do a donation.
| codeptualize wrote:
| I do this for a number of services, obviously pricing needs to be
| reasonable. My reasoning:
|
| - I don't want to deal with upgrading, managing infra, backups,
| outages, security etc etc
|
| - For products I rely on it's good to pay, as that (usually)
| means getting support if I need it
|
| - I want the developers to continue development and maintain the
| product, happy to pay for that
|
| That said I only pay for apps that are great and I need and use.
| If you have a crappy app that I sort of need at some point, I
| might try installing from source.
| lastofus wrote:
| I'm not sure if it is still an option today, but I have chosen
| paid SaaS Sentry over self hosted Sentry in the past.
| nadermx wrote:
| I made https://github.com/nadermx/backgroundremover which can be
| installed and used fully with no restrictions, MIT licensed. Yet
| people still feel the need to pay for API usage or my GUI at
| https://backgroundremoverai.com
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