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SaaS pretty much addresses every downside of selling Desktop software. To the point where everybody who sells Desktop software these days is trying to convert

SaaS pretty much addresses every downside of selling Desktop software. To the point where everybody who sells Desktop software these days is trying to convert to a subscription model for it. Desktop software sees its entire Customer Lifetime Value handed over on day one, and is constantly competing against a free, pirated version of itself that anybody can download if you dare set that CLV value above $50 or so. Software as a Service keeps paying you money every month regardless of what happens, and generally pays you more each month as new customers sign up. And it is by definition un-pirateable. The only downside you mention is that you have to run a webserver. But you have to run a server anyway. And if you pick the right tech stack, those things don't tend to go down all that often. You don't need "Five Nines" of availability for most types of business software, anyway. Three Nines is fine. Even Two won't generally lose you any customers. And, of course, Scaling Problems are a Good Thing in the SaaS world. That means that so many people are giving you money each month to use your thing that they're overloading an entire server. That takes a lot of people, so you can use a tiny fraction of the piles of cash they're throwing you to add another machine to your cage. Let's hope that happens a lot. So yeah, this is not a question that needs asking anymore. Build your thing on the web. Good luck!

stephenr 9y ago
> So yeah, this is not a question that needs asking anymore. Clearly it is a question that needs to be asked, because... it was asked. That's how questions work. > Build your thing on the web. You literally side-stepped all the maintenance bullshittery that is required for a reliable SaaS app with "but you need a website anyway", as if desktop app developers don't use GitHub Pages, SquareSpace, static HTML served from S3, or any number of other "zero maintenance" web SITE hosting solutions that will not in any way support running a web APP.
- jasonkester 9y ago
  > You literally side-stepped all the maintenance that is required for a reliable SaaS app My post was only a few paragraphs long, but one of them does in fact address this. I've spent maybe 400 hours this year working on my little handful of SaaS products. Zero of them were spent maintaining the server that they run on. On the effort scale, it's nothing compared to writing the software and supporting customers.
  - stephenr 9y ago
    > The only downside you mention is that you have to run a webserver. But you have to run a server anyway. Not necessarily. Plenty of desktop app 'brochure' sites use a hosted solution, so zero web server maintenance required. > And if you pick the right tech stack, those things don't tend to go down all that often. What's "the right stack"? I'm sure Amazon and Google would love to know your secrets to maintenance free SaaS. > You don't need "Five Nines" of availability for most types of business software, anyway. Three Nines is fine. Even Two won't generally lose you any customers. Two nines is >7 hours a month downtime. That's basically one business day per month, the app is unavailable. Given that this is in addition to any scheduled downtime for things like upgrades, server maintenance, I'm not sure I'd be aiming for that as your baseline. I get that the OP wants passive income from this endeavour. The way to achieve that is not to half-ass the infrastructure on a SaaS product.
    - jasonkester 9y ago
      I'm having trouble understanding where you're coming from with the hostility. It sounds like your experience must be a lot different than mine. I run a fairly standard Microsoft stack of ASP.NET, IIS, C#, SQL Server. Chosen for its boringness and reliability, because as I've said before, I really don't like having to worry about hardware: http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/happiness-is-a-boring-stack.html http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/happiness-is-a-boring-... I'm also speaking from experience about the downtime thing. I used to have a rather sketchy ISP, and would see those 7 hour downtimes from time to time. I would occasionally get an email or two from customers who noticed, but never lost a single paying account as a result of downtime. Maybe it's just picking a market that can live without your thing for an hour if need be, but then that's the goal we're talking about of a SaaS business that runs itself without your intervention. People worry about a lot of things before starting a business. They use things like "what if the server goes down" and "what if my customers call me every night at 3am" as excuses not to even try. But when you actually do try, you find that none of those things you worried about end up happening. That's not to say it's easy. But the things you're raising as issues just aren't. In my experience.

stephenr 9y ago

> So yeah, this is not a question that needs asking anymore. Clearly it is a question that needs to be asked, because... it was asked. That's how questions work. > Build your thing on the web. You literally side-stepped all the maintenance bullshittery that is required for a reliable SaaS app with "but you need a website anyway", as if desktop app developers don't use GitHub Pages, SquareSpace, static HTML served from S3, or any number of other "zero maintenance" web SITE hosting solutions that will not in any way support running a web APP.

jasonkester 9y ago
> You literally side-stepped all the maintenance that is required for a reliable SaaS app My post was only a few paragraphs long, but one of them does in fact address this. I've spent maybe 400 hours this year working on my little handful of SaaS products. Zero of them were spent maintaining the server that they run on. On the effort scale, it's nothing compared to writing the software and supporting customers.
- stephenr 9y ago
  > The only downside you mention is that you have to run a webserver. But you have to run a server anyway. Not necessarily. Plenty of desktop app 'brochure' sites use a hosted solution, so zero web server maintenance required. > And if you pick the right tech stack, those things don't tend to go down all that often. What's "the right stack"? I'm sure Amazon and Google would love to know your secrets to maintenance free SaaS. > You don't need "Five Nines" of availability for most types of business software, anyway. Three Nines is fine. Even Two won't generally lose you any customers. Two nines is >7 hours a month downtime. That's basically one business day per month, the app is unavailable. Given that this is in addition to any scheduled downtime for things like upgrades, server maintenance, I'm not sure I'd be aiming for that as your baseline. I get that the OP wants passive income from this endeavour. The way to achieve that is not to half-ass the infrastructure on a SaaS product.
  - jasonkester 9y ago
    I'm having trouble understanding where you're coming from with the hostility. It sounds like your experience must be a lot different than mine. I run a fairly standard Microsoft stack of ASP.NET, IIS, C#, SQL Server. Chosen for its boringness and reliability, because as I've said before, I really don't like having to worry about hardware: http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/happiness-is-a-boring-stack.html http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/happiness-is-a-boring-... I'm also speaking from experience about the downtime thing. I used to have a rather sketchy ISP, and would see those 7 hour downtimes from time to time. I would occasionally get an email or two from customers who noticed, but never lost a single paying account as a result of downtime. Maybe it's just picking a market that can live without your thing for an hour if need be, but then that's the goal we're talking about of a SaaS business that runs itself without your intervention. People worry about a lot of things before starting a business. They use things like "what if the server goes down" and "what if my customers call me every night at 3am" as excuses not to even try. But when you actually do try, you find that none of those things you worried about end up happening. That's not to say it's easy. But the things you're raising as issues just aren't. In my experience.