9 ms·

Good news and bad news for you. Good news: You want to create something for a market that already exists. Good. Bad news: You assume that cheaper pricing will

Good news and bad news for you. Good news: You want to create something for a market that already exists. Good. Bad news: You assume that cheaper pricing will make you win. Not even close. There are tons of SAAS clones out there for every successful saas. Do you know how many Trello clones are out there ? Slack ? What matters is your ability to execute and sell. Cheaper pricing is one small factor that may get you a few clients but in order to run it as a successful business, you will need a lot more things. Some checklist: - What significant advantage are you offering over existing ones that you are cloning ? Please tell me pricing is not the only differentiator. Most clients won't care. Trust me. - What is the reputation of your company ? Even if you are starting out, you need to show that people can trust you. - How easy is your UI/UX ? Are you creating a better clone or a worse clone ? - Can you win on customer support ? Lot of people want to switch from their current provider due to customer support. Pricing does influence that decision but not a whole lot.

tmaly 9y ago
I second this notion, there are so many clones. If you can niche down on one specific feature for a segment of the market that is not being served, you would have better luck.
- funzofactofive 9y ago
  Freshdesk seems to have done well pretty much cloning zendesk, so there are examples of it working out, but few and far between
  - sumedh 9y ago
    If I remember correctly the founder of freshdesk read on HN that people were frustrated with zendesk and had lot of of complaints. So its not exactly a clone of ZD, I am assuming they understood the customer's pain points worked on those features not just compete on price.
arielm 9y ago
I completely agree. These questions should be the ones you ask before starting any kind of business, and regardless of your pricing. It's really hard to convert a user that's already using a competing service just on price because they're probably already used to it, too the time to set it up, etc. If you give them a little improvement it'd be as hard, but if you give them something they just can't get anywhere else you might have a chance. At that point the lower price isn't necessarily even a consideration but rather just a nice to have for them and probably a growth challenge for you because you'd be undercutting the revenue potential of a feature no one else has. On a side note - price is what many founders believe potential consumers base their entire decisions on. While that's true for some products, it doesn't mean that it is for you. It's always best to figure out how to reach users first, then experiment with pricing.
wiradikusuma 9y ago
"What significant advantage are you offering over existing ones that you are cloning" -- I keep hearing this. How do people answer this? Because, let say you add feature X that Trello doesn't have, but since they're bigger than you, they can simply add feature X as well.
- Mahn 9y ago
  Then you have to think bigger. If you are cloning Trello for example, have it have a different UI that is more useful for a particular niche, but that they can't simply add because they would alienate their existing user case. Make it better by doing things that the competitor can't or won't do.
- DenisM 9y ago
  Just adding features is a deadend. Look for things Trello wouldn't want to do. For example, features specific to a subset of customers. Larger companies are not able to focus on specific smaller segments because people in charge won't have the attention span to handle that many, but you can survive with just one. Another example is addressing some scenarios with fewer / simpler features. Established products cannot remove features, hence even simple uses cases end up over-complicated over time.
  - ProblemFactory 9y ago
    Trello itself is the perfect example of "remove features to serve simpler use cases". All sorts of business and development process tracking software has existed for decades. JIRA, FogBugz, PivotalTracker, MS Project, and so on. Trello got rid of 90% of their features, and just kept "list of lists of short text snippets". That makes it great for planning small software projects, but also shopping lists, travel plans, or sales pipelines.
- codegeek 9y ago
  Notice that I said "Advantage" and not "Features". Users don't care about features necessarily. They care about how it helps them. If a feature helps them, then it is a good feature. If not, then it won't matter. Figuring this out is the hard part of running a business because every user is different.
d_luaz 9y ago
It's still possible in the case of Digital Ocean vs AWS: 5-10x price reduction, focus on a subset of core service. You still need to deliver friction-less service in the beginning, reliability and customer service eventually. Not all will move from AWS, but the price saving is significant for small players who doesn't need the full suite of AWS.
- Mahn 9y ago
  DO just happens to be cheaper than AWS for certain use cases, but they didn't get there by out competing on price alone, it ticks a lot of other boxes: it's easier and simpler to understand for a new developer looking to get started, you can calculate and anticipate usage costs with ease, etc. It's not just a good copy with better pricing, it brings something to the table.
  - throwawayAf7jD 9y ago
    Exactly. DO launched with great pricing, SSDs, and an attractive UI. If they launched with only one of those three we wouldn't be talking about them today.
  - slinger 9y ago
    not to mention the excellent tutorials and documentation they produce
    - pvsukale3 9y ago
      that is a big difference maker. Those tutorials are really extensive and they paid people to write them
      - wolco 9y ago
        The one click installs, api access, dns, monitoring. Price is only one of many things.
  - itwy 9y ago
_pctq 9y ago
On the bright side, you can expect your clone to actually not be a clone. When initial product you want to clone was made, its makers had to solve a lot of problems and made choices, which are not documented anywhere. You will face some of those problems and may make different choices, even have new ideas to solve them. Ultimately, your product will have its own DNA and strengths, most likely. There's a say I really like in the world of music composition : don't be afraid to copy your favorite composers, you won't do the same thing anyway.
- johns 9y ago
  You'll also end up cloning their mistakes, except that they know what didn't work out and you won't for a while.
  - issa 9y ago
    I'm not sure I agree with this. Most big software platforms are used differently by different users. They have a wide range of features that most of us don't need (and maybe don't even know exist). What I think ends up happening when you clone something is you end up improving the product for YOUR type of user. This may or may not make up the bulk of the market, and may or may not be an improvement for typical users.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    There will always be some mistakes that you can't learn from someone else's experience, but a close examination of the history of a forerunner can be very informative and allow follow-on products to avoid many of the same mistakes.
- thenomad 9y ago
  This is absolutely true, and equally applies to other artforms as well - films, games, etc. Copying is an excellent way to get started. You're very unlikely to end up with a copy at the end.
nutanc 9y ago
Agree with this. We have a successful cloud call center product Cloudagent in India and it has an enterprisy pricing structure. We wanted to launch in the US this year and we came up with a new simplified product getkookoo.com and went with a drastic price change to capture the market. We removed per agent pricing and said a flat $19.9 for unlimited agents and pay for only the calls you make. We thought the super simple and cheaper pricing is all we need. Turns out, its not. Though we have got customers, its been harder than we thought. In our case, it looks like the second point above, trust, is what we have not been able to communicate. So yeah, pricing is just one very small factor. It is a factor, but only after all other factors have been taken care of :)
- adambratt 9y ago
  Your website is honestly really confusing. The design is nice and clean but the messaging is really lacking. I've ran multiple small businesses and I have no idea what "Zero agent rental forever" would ever mean to a business owner. I also had no idea what IVR meant and I've actually built automated message systems on Twilio. Are you providing me the agents or do I have to supply themselves? It looks like you're just the software but once again the wording/copy made things incredibly confusing. Your messaging should reflect that you provide easy to use call center software. If you're competing mainly on price then the "pay only for the calls you make" should be a tagline somewhere... that's a powerful message but I don't see it anywhere on the site. I also don't really like the design on your features pages..at first I thought they were lists of blog posts. There's so much spacing with big faded images that don't make it easy to see the product. Not to mention you're peppering me with that free trial button when I really just want to read what each feature does...and then you could throw me the CTA at the end of the page if I liked this feature.
  - nutanc 9y ago
    Hey, thanks a lot for the useful input. Will work on this now.
    - avip 9y ago
toexitthedonut 9y ago
Personally I would like a Slack that works on older Mac operating systems. I had to leave the groups I was in since Slack made updates last month, and now I need Mavericks or newer to continue using it.
- whalesalad 9y ago
  <team>.slack.com will work, no?
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Yeah, I've never even installed the desktop client. It's an Electron (JavaScript) distribution, so it's essentially just a self-contained version of the site, isn't it? Just go to *.slack.com and you don't have to worry about it.
    - inopinatus 9y ago
      I even prefer it. The desktop client is an energy hog, drains my battery faster than video playback.
- eropple 9y ago
  Having an alternative that works on older operating systems wouldn't help you unless the others in your group want to switch just for you. Network effects win.
miles_matthias 9y ago
Absolutely. MailerLite vs Mailchimp is a great example of this. Half the cost, but just as good, if not better, experience and execution.
tlogan 9y ago
Your checklist is wrong. The checklist should be :-) 1) how are you going to acquire customers? 2) how are you going to acquire customers? 3) how are you going to acquire customers? 4) how are you going to acquire customers? 5) how are you going to be better than competition?
- goatherders 9y ago
  This.
alexbanks 9y ago
Wait. > Good news: You want to create something for a market that already exists. Good. Is this good news? I was under the assumption that, unless you were creating something didn't already exist, it wasn't worth the time?
- joshvm 9y ago
  It's far safer to make a product for a market that you know exists, rather than build a product and try to find a market. You differentiate yourself by providing more value than your competitors, whether it's a novel feature, better service, etc. There is obviously an element of risk/reward - if you go for a potentially unknown market, e.g. you have a cool idea and think people will buy it, then you could make a much better return as the only player. Or you find out that there's no market and you crash and burn.
  - greenyoda 9y ago
    "if you go for a potentially unknown market, e.g. you have a cool idea and think people will buy it, then you could make a much better return as the only player" But not necessarily for long. If others see that there's money to be made in that market, you'll soon have competitors, some of which may be much bigger companies that have a lot more resources than you have. Being first to market doesn't assure that you'll dominate the market forever.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- sumedh 9y ago
  It's good news most of the time because you already know the market exists, you can see what the competitor is doing good or bad and learn fast from it. Windows, Google Search engine, Facebook did not create a new market they built something better than the incumbents.
oDot 9y ago
An important thing you should consider is the cost of change. I once built a screenplay editor in Hebrew for Israeli screenwriters. It had everything on your list. For free. The competition was practically Microsoft Word + macros. The problem, though, is that the pain of moving away from these carefully crafted macros was too high.
- jonny_eh 9y ago
  What about new users? Did you try advertising to film students?
  - oDot 9y ago
    Yes, but we have very few of them and they don't write enough
- hsuresh 9y ago
  This. We tend to underestimate the cost of switching. A new service doing the exact same thing as another (and not just software - the support, help, documentation, community etc) is still not good enough to get someone to switch, in spite of price. It might be easier to get new customers though, but remember, your competitor probably has an upper hand in marketing, and in general acquiring new customers.
sharemywin 9y ago
The biggest problem with cheap is no marketing and or customer service budget.

tmaly 9y ago

I second this notion, there are so many clones. If you can niche down on one specific feature for a segment of the market that is not being served, you would have better luck.

funzofactofive 9y ago
Freshdesk seems to have done well pretty much cloning zendesk, so there are examples of it working out, but few and far between
- sumedh 9y ago
  If I remember correctly the founder of freshdesk read on HN that people were frustrated with zendesk and had lot of of complaints. So its not exactly a clone of ZD, I am assuming they understood the customer's pain points worked on those features not just compete on price.

arielm 9y ago

I completely agree. These questions should be the ones you ask before starting any kind of business, and regardless of your pricing. It's really hard to convert a user that's already using a competing service just on price because they're probably already used to it, too the time to set it up, etc. If you give them a little improvement it'd be as hard, but if you give them something they just can't get anywhere else you might have a chance. At that point the lower price isn't necessarily even a consideration but rather just a nice to have for them and probably a growth challenge for you because you'd be undercutting the revenue potential of a feature no one else has. On a side note - price is what many founders believe potential consumers base their entire decisions on. While that's true for some products, it doesn't mean that it is for you. It's always best to figure out how to reach users first, then experiment with pricing.

wiradikusuma 9y ago

"What significant advantage are you offering over existing ones that you are cloning" -- I keep hearing this. How do people answer this? Because, let say you add feature X that Trello doesn't have, but since they're bigger than you, they can simply add feature X as well.

Mahn 9y ago
Then you have to think bigger. If you are cloning Trello for example, have it have a different UI that is more useful for a particular niche, but that they can't simply add because they would alienate their existing user case. Make it better by doing things that the competitor can't or won't do.
DenisM 9y ago
Just adding features is a deadend. Look for things Trello wouldn't want to do. For example, features specific to a subset of customers. Larger companies are not able to focus on specific smaller segments because people in charge won't have the attention span to handle that many, but you can survive with just one. Another example is addressing some scenarios with fewer / simpler features. Established products cannot remove features, hence even simple uses cases end up over-complicated over time.
- ProblemFactory 9y ago
  Trello itself is the perfect example of "remove features to serve simpler use cases". All sorts of business and development process tracking software has existed for decades. JIRA, FogBugz, PivotalTracker, MS Project, and so on. Trello got rid of 90% of their features, and just kept "list of lists of short text snippets". That makes it great for planning small software projects, but also shopping lists, travel plans, or sales pipelines.
codegeek 9y ago
Notice that I said "Advantage" and not "Features". Users don't care about features necessarily. They care about how it helps them. If a feature helps them, then it is a good feature. If not, then it won't matter. Figuring this out is the hard part of running a business because every user is different.

d_luaz 9y ago

It's still possible in the case of Digital Ocean vs AWS: 5-10x price reduction, focus on a subset of core service. You still need to deliver friction-less service in the beginning, reliability and customer service eventually. Not all will move from AWS, but the price saving is significant for small players who doesn't need the full suite of AWS.

Mahn 9y ago
DO just happens to be cheaper than AWS for certain use cases, but they didn't get there by out competing on price alone, it ticks a lot of other boxes: it's easier and simpler to understand for a new developer looking to get started, you can calculate and anticipate usage costs with ease, etc. It's not just a good copy with better pricing, it brings something to the table.
- throwawayAf7jD 9y ago
  Exactly. DO launched with great pricing, SSDs, and an attractive UI. If they launched with only one of those three we wouldn't be talking about them today.
- slinger 9y ago
  not to mention the excellent tutorials and documentation they produce
  - pvsukale3 9y ago
    that is a big difference maker. Those tutorials are really extensive and they paid people to write them
    - wolco 9y ago
      The one click installs, api access, dns, monitoring. Price is only one of many things.
- itwy 9y ago

_pctq 9y ago

On the bright side, you can expect your clone to actually not be a clone. When initial product you want to clone was made, its makers had to solve a lot of problems and made choices, which are not documented anywhere. You will face some of those problems and may make different choices, even have new ideas to solve them. Ultimately, your product will have its own DNA and strengths, most likely. There's a say I really like in the world of music composition : don't be afraid to copy your favorite composers, you won't do the same thing anyway.

johns 9y ago
You'll also end up cloning their mistakes, except that they know what didn't work out and you won't for a while.
- issa 9y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with this. Most big software platforms are used differently by different users. They have a wide range of features that most of us don't need (and maybe don't even know exist). What I think ends up happening when you clone something is you end up improving the product for YOUR type of user. This may or may not make up the bulk of the market, and may or may not be an improvement for typical users.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  There will always be some mistakes that you can't learn from someone else's experience, but a close examination of the history of a forerunner can be very informative and allow follow-on products to avoid many of the same mistakes.
thenomad 9y ago
This is absolutely true, and equally applies to other artforms as well - films, games, etc. Copying is an excellent way to get started. You're very unlikely to end up with a copy at the end.

nutanc 9y ago

Agree with this. We have a successful cloud call center product Cloudagent in India and it has an enterprisy pricing structure. We wanted to launch in the US this year and we came up with a new simplified product getkookoo.com and went with a drastic price change to capture the market. We removed per agent pricing and said a flat $19.9 for unlimited agents and pay for only the calls you make. We thought the super simple and cheaper pricing is all we need. Turns out, its not. Though we have got customers, its been harder than we thought. In our case, it looks like the second point above, trust, is what we have not been able to communicate. So yeah, pricing is just one very small factor. It is a factor, but only after all other factors have been taken care of :)

adambratt 9y ago
Your website is honestly really confusing. The design is nice and clean but the messaging is really lacking. I've ran multiple small businesses and I have no idea what "Zero agent rental forever" would ever mean to a business owner. I also had no idea what IVR meant and I've actually built automated message systems on Twilio. Are you providing me the agents or do I have to supply themselves? It looks like you're just the software but once again the wording/copy made things incredibly confusing. Your messaging should reflect that you provide easy to use call center software. If you're competing mainly on price then the "pay only for the calls you make" should be a tagline somewhere... that's a powerful message but I don't see it anywhere on the site. I also don't really like the design on your features pages..at first I thought they were lists of blog posts. There's so much spacing with big faded images that don't make it easy to see the product. Not to mention you're peppering me with that free trial button when I really just want to read what each feature does...and then you could throw me the CTA at the end of the page if I liked this feature.
- nutanc 9y ago
  Hey, thanks a lot for the useful input. Will work on this now.
  - avip 9y ago

toexitthedonut 9y ago

Personally I would like a Slack that works on older Mac operating systems. I had to leave the groups I was in since Slack made updates last month, and now I need Mavericks or newer to continue using it.

whalesalad 9y ago
<team>.slack.com will work, no?
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Yeah, I've never even installed the desktop client. It's an Electron (JavaScript) distribution, so it's essentially just a self-contained version of the site, isn't it? Just go to *.slack.com and you don't have to worry about it.
  - inopinatus 9y ago
    I even prefer it. The desktop client is an energy hog, drains my battery faster than video playback.
eropple 9y ago
Having an alternative that works on older operating systems wouldn't help you unless the others in your group want to switch just for you. Network effects win.

miles_matthias 9y ago

Absolutely. MailerLite vs Mailchimp is a great example of this. Half the cost, but just as good, if not better, experience and execution.

tlogan 9y ago

Your checklist is wrong. The checklist should be :-) 1) how are you going to acquire customers? 2) how are you going to acquire customers? 3) how are you going to acquire customers? 4) how are you going to acquire customers? 5) how are you going to be better than competition?

goatherders 9y ago
This.

alexbanks 9y ago

Wait. > Good news: You want to create something for a market that already exists. Good. Is this good news? I was under the assumption that, unless you were creating something didn't already exist, it wasn't worth the time?

joshvm 9y ago
It's far safer to make a product for a market that you know exists, rather than build a product and try to find a market. You differentiate yourself by providing more value than your competitors, whether it's a novel feature, better service, etc. There is obviously an element of risk/reward - if you go for a potentially unknown market, e.g. you have a cool idea and think people will buy it, then you could make a much better return as the only player. Or you find out that there's no market and you crash and burn.
- greenyoda 9y ago
  "if you go for a potentially unknown market, e.g. you have a cool idea and think people will buy it, then you could make a much better return as the only player" But not necessarily for long. If others see that there's money to be made in that market, you'll soon have competitors, some of which may be much bigger companies that have a lot more resources than you have. Being first to market doesn't assure that you'll dominate the market forever.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
sumedh 9y ago
It's good news most of the time because you already know the market exists, you can see what the competitor is doing good or bad and learn fast from it. Windows, Google Search engine, Facebook did not create a new market they built something better than the incumbents.

oDot 9y ago

An important thing you should consider is the cost of change. I once built a screenplay editor in Hebrew for Israeli screenwriters. It had everything on your list. For free. The competition was practically Microsoft Word + macros. The problem, though, is that the pain of moving away from these carefully crafted macros was too high.

jonny_eh 9y ago
What about new users? Did you try advertising to film students?
- oDot 9y ago
  Yes, but we have very few of them and they don't write enough
hsuresh 9y ago
This. We tend to underestimate the cost of switching. A new service doing the exact same thing as another (and not just software - the support, help, documentation, community etc) is still not good enough to get someone to switch, in spite of price. It might be easier to get new customers though, but remember, your competitor probably has an upper hand in marketing, and in general acquiring new customers.

sharemywin 9y ago

The biggest problem with cheap is no marketing and or customer service budget.