6 ms·
I've posted about this about six months ago, the original post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11583488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11583488) was
by anakic 10y ago
I've posted about this about six months ago, the original post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11583488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11583488) was fairly well received, and I thought I'd follow up.
Back then the plugin was called ThingieQuery, which turns out not to be a great name for a product aimed at enterprise customers. Since then, I've been quite busy, I've incorporated, rebranded, sold (licenses), polished, and other verbs as well. I've also adjusted the pricing and switched to a freemium model.
Here's the free vs. paid breakdown:
- Free stuff: basic IDE functionality, full SQL support for tables in Excel, query automation, non-commercial use
- Paid stuff: (in addition to all the free stuff) connectivity to external databases, advanced IDE functionality (autocomplete, error squigglies, etc.), commercial use
The free feature set is pretty useful on its own. Offering it makes sense from a business perspective - to drive adoption, but also from a personal standpoint, since it's a product I'm proud of and would like as many people to make use of it as possible.
The paid licenses come in two flavors:
1. Professional
- for people paying out of pocket
- can activate 2 machines at the same time (e.g. work/home)
- licenses can be transferred ad-hoc to other machines with a 1-min procedure (e.g. when working on a client's computer)
2. Enterprise
- a per-seat license for purchase by companies
- includes support
- can also be transferred from machine to machine
The license types were in large part influenced by the feedback I got in the original post.
I should note that I'm running a December discount promotion; you can use the following key to get a cool 40% discount on a Professional license: RZHDNDT4
In any case, please do take a look and give it a try. The trial licenses (for the premium features) have been reset since last post, so you can use a new one even if you've used a trial before.
Feedback, customers, and free users are most welcome and appreciated:)
- patates 10y agoHi, this is great. I'd gladly pay $99 for having such a convenient helper. However, I'm sad to see it's a temporary license. This is not SaaS, but priced like one. Can't you make it $X for the product + 1 year of updates? I understand that you need sustainability but you can seek for that on enterprise support deals and by convincing users to renew their license after a year to get a newer version.
- HCIdivision17 10y agoWith the coupon code in this thread, I was willing to go in on it, because it's comparable to what I pay for SSMS Tools. It's really really handy to be able to query an Excel table; a raw query window in SSMS is just about my favorite tool, but you can't beat being able to just get your hands right on the data like in Excel. Ideally though? I would really like to have a one-time purchase option. I buy this for myself, though I work in a company, because this is a tool I particularly find useful. In a year it's going to just stop working, and I won't remember why, because I won't remember paying a license for it. Then I'll have to look up the email and do all the nonsense to figure out what my login is and buy it again. And that just sucks. I've dropped a lot of services because I just don't need them enough for that. But I'm hoping this works into my flow well enough.
- anakic 10y agoThanks for your purchase!:) I'm really glad you like it. One thing to note - since the db engine is running in the same process as Excel it can interact with it. There are some nice things it can do because of this, for instance, SQL-based conditional formatting (e.g. there's a SetFontColor function), calling VBA functions from SQL and a bunch more. There are also some other quite cool functions, e.g. replacex and regex_split, levdist, eval and others. The QuickQueries dialog has some built-in queries to check out if you're interested in what these can do. As for permanent licenses, I understand the concern. If I do end up going offering permanent licenses for professional licenses, I'll either upgrade the existing licenses or offer a paid upgrade to the permanent license to cover any price difference.
- HCIdivision17 10y agoI'll be honest, I didn't read the full feature list. I looked at some of the quick queries and was really happy to see some of them. Yeah, the amount of intellectual violence I'll be able to perpetrate against my data is just staggering. Regex in Excel has always be a bit of a slog, but to do it in SQL in Excel? Gosh. That's almost worth the price of adminssion right there. (Ever try to conditionally refactor a screwy OPC itempath based on an arbitrary spec and bad naming conventions in a cobbled together dump from an overworked customer engineer? Swiss army chainsaws are the only elegant solution there.)
- gregn610 10y agoExcellent new name and your pricing plans sound about right. If I may ask, how are you managing the licensing?
- anakic 10y agoAbsolutely. I actually built a reusable infrastructure of my own. It was technically very cool to work on, and at the time I still hadn't yet made the mental shift of buying services that weren't my core domain. The infrastructure revolves around keys and licenses. A license allows one user (or machine) to use the product. It's a digitally signed file that gets downloaded to the client PC and specifies the product, max version, issue/expiry date etc... A license is created by my server when a valid key is entered into the licensing dialog. The key knows what product is for and what kind of licenses to create. I named the service "Keystodian", the website is up but isn't pretty. The infrastructure underneath works nicely, though. I plan to offer it as a SaaS product at some point, though there is a bit of competition there.
- conception 10y agoI liked ThingieQuery! But I understand. Still an amazing little product!
- anakic 10y agoThanks, your comment made me smile:)
- devoply 10y agoHow's the business end working out for you right now? After 6 months. This is ycombinator, we're a bunch of entrepreneurs. We want to know these things.
- anakic 10y agoIt's going slowly. For now, I make enough to cover my expenses, but I earned more as a contractor working for a corp. Some days, though, I earn way more from QueryStorm, I just have to make those days more common. People seem to like the product well enough, but I'm kinda stumbling my way around marketing and sales. I think it's going to do well, though, I'm getting better at it, and I'm also likely getting reseller partners soon. I'm also applying for an EU grant which would allow me to hire some sales/marketing people. That would be great since right now it's difficult to focus on specific things (e.g. SEO, Adwords etc...), mostly it's throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks.
- hihihduybd 10y agoI just tried this out and I like it. One thing I noticed was that the alert dialog boxes (eg. do you want to save query) all still have the ThingieQuery name on them - FYI.
- anakic 10y agoNice catch!
- voltagex_ 10y agoThank you - the discount makes the pricing sane for a weak Australian dollar.
- anakic 10y agoThank you for buying it!!
- a-saleh 10y agoThis looks like something I would like to build one day :) What I woul like to ask is, how do you find your customers? Especially the enterprise ones? Because anytime I barely finish something I might be thinking about selling to people (even though I didn' manage to create anything as polished and useful as QueryStorm :) I kind-of freeze at the step "but who would buy this and how would they find about it?" Often I read that you first need to build an audience, with blog or mailing list, before you start selling something, but it looks like you just built a really cool thing first :)
- anakic 10y agoI had the same problem. Transitioning from having built the thing to asking people to pay for it felt quite awkward at first. I feel a lot less awkward about it now that I do have paying customers who are happy with it and use it daily. It feels great, when someone who isn't legally obliged to, pays you for something you built because it makes their work easier. >> how do you find your customers? Especially the enterprise ones? Haphazardly and slowly thus far:) A couple of enterprise customers actually found me, but my own reach into the enterprise world is not really substantial. Some of my customers are consultancies who work with banks and such so I started talking to a few of them about partnership. It's not something I can completely outsource, but partners could certainly help a lot. We'll see how it goes. Building an audience is a good idea, although it's easier to do if you have something to show people, I think. I'm not a businessy person (maybe I become), I just enjoyed building it, so that's what I spent time on. That's not to say that I wasn't hoping to make a business out of it, I certainly was, from very early on:)