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:waves: Hi, I'm the founder of Cushion. I'd be happy to answer any questions about our running costs or transparency. (Thanks for posting, @Sujan!)
by destroytoday 10y ago
:waves: Hi, I'm the founder of Cushion. I'd be happy to answer any questions about our running costs or transparency. (Thanks for posting, @Sujan!)
- Sujan 10y agoHa, that's what you get for finally posting to the journal (How it's made blog from Cushion [1]) again. That's why I still love my feed/RSS reader. [1] https://cushionapp.com/journal/ https://cushionapp.com/journal/
- destroytoday 10y agoHeh. I was curious if anyone was still subscribed.
- mijoharas 10y agoHi, I was interested in what the crossed out lines represent?
- destroytoday 10y agoHi! The crossed-out costs are ones we no longer use. We either no longer needed that service, or we found a better alternative.
- FanaHOVA 10y agoDo you regret spending $2000+ on a domain name?
- destroytoday 10y agoHa! Not at all. It was a big expense, but I think it’s worth it for how we use it. The domain is "in.vc" and it’s used when sending an invoice link to clients. Instead of sending a super long link and possibly confusing clients with our app name, they see a short, generic link. I wish we had cushion.com, but last I checked, it sold for $120k in 2012, so that's off the table. :)
- csomar 10y agoIs Cushion trademarked?
- destroytoday 10y agoYes! I should actually add that expense, too... Thanks for the reminder. :)
- csomar 10y agoI was actually asking because I got an ethically-questionable, evil idea: If you are owning the Cushion word, can you sue for the domain name cushion.com?
- marban 10y agoNo. The trademark must be registered and exist at the time the domain was registered and that the domain owner knowingly and intentionally registered the trademarked domain name.
- tmaly 10y agohow sure are you of this? I have owned a domain since 2003. a few years back a new startup named <domain> inc tried to buy it from me. they ended up getting domain.org but I checked recently and they registered the trademark. I was reading that I have only a few years to appeal it showing I am harmed by them. I did not read anywhere that they could not sue me
- paulgb 10y agoNot legal advice, but fun reading: http://nissan.com/ http://nissan.com/
- rhizome 10y agoIf you mean trademark, it must be registered under one or more of the many[1] categories of business in which a trademark can be registered, which means the same mark can be registered by different companies as long as there's no "substantial likelihood of confusion," so whatever you mean by "owning the Cushion word," it's going to have to be something else. It's not as easy as registering in all possible classes, which in itself is quite expensive. 1. http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/trademark-classes.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/trademark-classes.htm...
- altern8tif 10y agoAny particular reason you moved away from Mailchimp? Do you do any form of email marketing now?
- destroytoday 10y agoWe switched to Intercom for sending our monthly email simply because its email editor is so good. I wish a proper email marketing service would come close to their simplicity, but I haven't seen anything yet. We might be moving back to Mailchimp soon because the per-user cost for Intercom has really skyrocketed since we've used them for email marketing. Granted, Intercom actually don't want people to use them for sending batch emails. I wish they'd come out with a standalone service for it—remain as dead-simple as their editor is now and they'd make a killing.
- cdelb 10y agoHave you considered Drift as an alternative to Intercom? I have a small SaaS app as well, and my Intercom bill is about $130 a month compared to $50 with Drift.
- destroytoday 10y agoI noticed them a while back, but I'm happy with Intercom. They're good people.
- OoTheNigerian 10y agoGreat stuff!destroytoday! Regarding Heap Analytics, their pricing model is quite confusing. I'd like to know how many users/visitors to your website are you getting that allows it to be free. To you, is the almost $5k you're spending on Intercom worth it? How much does it come to per user? You moved away from Baremetrics to Chartmogul, something with not as good a design. Why?
- ezekg 10y agoI'm also curious as to why you moved from Baremetrics to ChartMogul.
- destroytoday 10y agoThanks! In all honesty, we're way over Heap's free limit, but they haven't throttled us or reached out, so shhhhhh. Intercom is so worth it. We wouldn't be in the same position without it. The reason it's so high (as I mentioned in another answer) is that we also use it for sending our monthly newsletter. We could definitely get the cost much lower, and we're planning to, but I just need to sit down and do it. We've got our hands full with our current roadmap, so I haven't had the chance to move everyone to a more affordable email marketing service, but sooner than later. When I used Baremetrics, they were changing their pricing a lot and experimenting so much with growth tactics that I don't agree with, like removing the ability to cancel on your own—you now need to contact them. I tried ChartMogul and they've been absolutely wonderful. The team is so kind, helpful, and responsive. They also don't make drastic changes, which is refreshing since I only need them to track my Stripe metrics.
- OoTheNigerian 10y agoRe: Newsletter. I cam across Email Octopus and I found setting them up easy. You may want to check it out. https://emailoctopus.com/ https://emailoctopus.com/ You should save as much money as you can. Any idea the new cost if you stop using Intercom for newsletters?
- destroytoday 10y ago
- marban 10y agoHave you ever considered any Heroku alternatives? I've had quite disappointing cost experiences last time i used it.
- destroytoday 10y agoWe've thought about it, but Cushion is incredibly lightweight and doesn't need to be used constantly, so our load is very low. We've only needed 2 dynos since we launched and we're nowhere close to needing more than that. As much as I'd like to lower the cost, they truly take so much weight off our shoulders. I gladly pay what we're paying now, so it's not an issue for us.
- cobookman 10y agoHave you looked into Appengine Flex. Appengine flex is a PaaS like heroku, and will scale up any docker container. Its a great solution for your early days, and when you do need to move to a 1000+ node cluster its easy to switch from Appengine Flex to kubernetes. You also might get a lot of free startup credits https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/ https://cloud.google.com/developers/startups/ (Disclaimer, I work for Google). [1] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/ https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/flexible/
- marban 10y agoYou should mention Python 3 support specifically.
- destroytoday 10y agoI haven't, but I'll check it out. Seems like it's still beta? (says not to use in production)
- AsyncAwait 10y agoSo I am wondering about heroku: you say that it's quite expensive, but $25/mo doesn't seem that much. How many users can one $25/mo server actually power?
- destroytoday 10y agoI think I wrote that when they had their older pricing, or I didn’t realize their real value. Also, I’m pretty sure we could run Cushion on a single dyno, but I like having two around to balance.
- AsyncAwait 10y agoAha, makes sense. Thanks!
- simooooo 10y agoWhy is directory listing turned on
- destroytoday 10y agoWe just made the page static to handle the HN traffic, so there were a few seconds between the switch. pulls collar Didn’t expect to get featured today.
- moeamaya 10y agoHey Jonnie! I'm super curious about the move away from Siteleaf (esp since you're so close to the Oak guys), and how you+marketing team ended up on Craft?
- destroytoday 10y agoHi! Great question. I love static websites, but we hit a point where we were updating the site constantly and needed dynamic content, like the running costs (which pulls its data from a google spreadsheet). There are certainly ways to do this with a static site, but with the size of the site and frequency that we update it, I really wanted to be able to hit save and it was live, rather than wait for everything to compile and publish. I still use Siteleaf for all of my other websites, but cushionapp.com is a different beast. Also, lol at "marketing team". I am marketing team. :)
- moeamaya 10y agoAh okay that makes a ton of sense with how dynamic the site now is. Looking back now, would you have still gone with a static site generator or started with something dynamic (question we're pondering now with monograph.io which is middleman)? Also on the marketing team, I got head-faked by the growth freelancer, and assumed you went with a dynamic CMS to get more help. But man impressed with how much you still do!
- shanecleveland 10y agoThanks for the insight this provides. Any chance you could share this spreadsheet template?
- AtheistOfFail 10y agoWhy don't you guys use the new Heroku beta SSL feature so you can bank that extra $20 a month? It's not much but it makes a difference if you're spinning multiple sites up. https://blog.heroku.com/announcing_heroku_free_ssl_beta_and_flexible_dyno_hours https://blog.heroku.com/announcing_heroku_free_ssl_beta_and_...
- gkop 10y agoFYI I don't think it's beta anymore :)
- destroytoday 10y agoWe would, but unfortunately, we need their "old" SSL add-on to get SSL to work with the root URL of our invoice url, in.vc. Apparently, the new SSL doesn’t work the same.
- AtheistOfFail 10y agoThere's a guide for converting your certs, it's just a format issue most of the time.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Rezo 10y agoHi fellow NY SaaS developer :) I ran a similar report for our year end books, and it's amazing the amount of SaaS it takes to run a SaaS. Or put another way, the incredible ecosystem now available that allows you to focus on your core business. I don't see any third party Stripe dunning service, did you build something similar yourself? Otherwise it might be worth looking into, it's one of those things that pays itself back in no time.
- aidos 10y agoFor anyone else looking into recurring billing I'd highly recommend Chargebee (not affiliated at all). We've tried a few different solutions and were a little apprehensive at first because it looked a bit clunky but it's actually one of the best bits of software I've used. You don't realise the number of features a subscription billing platform needs until you use something like chargebee and discover how wonderful it is to have someone do it all for you. What's really great is before changing anything they give you a pop up showing what's going to be billed now, what will happen in the future etc. We used stripe before switching and I was a nervous wreck before ever pushing any buttons. My co-founder and I were saying just the other day that we think it's one of the best investments we've made as a company. https://www.chargebee.com https://www.chargebee.com
- stevrodr 10y agoOh wow, this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for sharing!
- aidos 10y agoGlad to have helped! I discovered them when trying to find a solution for the insane EU Vat regulations (which they handle gracefully). We've been with them through a big few tasks now (like when they added Xero integration - which is also an amazing feature) and if there's any confusion with mapping data or whatever they'll always jump on a video call to make sure everyone is 100% clear on what's going on.
- cpncrunch 10y agoCare to share your revenue (or at least a ballpark?)
- fredgrott 10y agoThank you for the info as it helps me formulate how to do a small non unicorn start-up in a smaller fashion..very helpfull
- wwalser 10y agoThus far legal has been one my most significant cost (incorporation + NY qualification). Perhaps I'm doing it wrong -_-. What do your numbers there look like?
- destroytoday 10y agoFortunately, I was able to find a really great lawyer who is actually affordable (previously interviewed a few law firms who were $700+/hr). Besides incorporating, legal costs haven't been too high. Just the occasional contract here or there, or updating our terms.