6 ms·

I've been a paying customer and advocate of Plausible for over 2 years, and this is not ok. Marko frequently posts on social media about Plausible's revenue gr

I've been a paying customer and advocate of Plausible for over 2 years, and this is not ok. Marko frequently posts on social media about Plausible's revenue growth, currently at over $1M ARR with a tiny team and little overhead. They are doing great financially. Yet in this post he tries to gain sympathy by focusing on "we only make $300/mo in donations". Frequently moving the goalpost on what it means for your product to be open source betrays a lack of integrity and will have me, and probably others, looking for an alternative.

maccard 2y ago
If that is your take away from this post I urge you to read it more carefully.
- FlamingMoe 2y ago
  If you have a counterpoint I urge you to make it.
  - simonw 2y ago
    Near the start of the article: "That license change has helped us build a sustainable open source project with 8 core team members and several paid external contributors at the time of writing. We don’t have any investors, so all this is solely funded by the fees our 12,000+ subscribers pay us." Then later on while talking about the self-hosting option: "We make $300 per month from donations from our self-hosted users. It would take us more than ten years of donations to pay one month of salary for our small team." That's only misleading if you skim the article. They clearly differentiate between the 12,000 paying subscribers who fund the operation compared to the $300 in donations from self-hosters.
    - maccard 2y ago
      Thanks - this is exactly it.
    - tedivm 2y ago
      I'm a paying customer. I paid for it because of the open source license. The thing that is misleading is pretending that being open source only makes them $300/month while ignoring the number of customers who chose them because they are open source.
      - maccard 2y ago
        > The thing that is misleading is pretending that being open source only makes them $300/month while ignoring the number of customers who chose them because they are open source. No, that one line without the entire preceeding part of the blog post makes it sound like that. However when the blog post opens with > That license change has helped us build a sustainable open source project with 8 core team members and several paid external contributors at the time of writing. It's abundantly clear that they attribute that success to their open core model.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
HuwFulcher 2y ago
They make $300/mo from donations from those that self-host. The point they are making is that enterprise level users are self-hosting and not putting back into the running of Plausible. I still think the way they've done this stinks though.
- otherme123 2y ago
  I understood that the biggest problem is that some people self host and resell. Sometimes offering a shitty service that might be confused as Plausible-Cloud, damaging the brand: "Plausible is shit, back to Google Analytics".
- dewey 2y ago
  > I still think the way they've done this stinks though. What would you do in their position? This seems like on of these things, just like changing the design of your product where you will never be able to make everyone happy and there will always be a small group complaining.
tedivm 2y ago
They might only be making $300/mo in donations, but the only reason I'm a paying customer of theirs is because the product is open source. When Fathom stopped maintaining their open source version I moved to Plausible, even though I am not self hosting. The $300/month is absolutely ignoring the free marketing they get, plus the fact that many users such as myself only use their paid product because it is open source.
- codegeek 2y ago
  Curious. If you are using the hosted version, why do you care about it being Open Source ? More of a backup plan in case they go under or is it more about Trust or both ?
  - tedivm 2y ago
    It's a bit of both. It gives me confidence that I have a backup plan, but really trust is the bigger issue. An analytics tool gets a lot of data from people and being able to validate what they're doing is important. Additionally though I signed up to support an open source company, because I think open source is better for society. I like giving money to open source projects. I would rather give money to an open source group than use a free product like Google Analytics. I like being able to support open source companies, and I get annoyed when they do rug pulls like this.
    - codegeek 2y ago
      Thx. Yea I figured but wanted a confirmation because I am looking to start an Open Source project and getting feedback on the WHY Open Source part from potential customers.
martypitt 2y ago
Counterpoint: I've been a paying customer of Plausible for ~2 years, and this is totally fine. $1M ARR with an 8 person team is by no means "doing great". Assuming 20% of income goes to overheads (such as hosting, marketing, legal, accounting), that leaves a salary of $100k for each staff member. Even if they had 0 overhead, this is still only $125k each -- that's hardly big money. Also, in reading the post - I find little to object to. They're not changing their license. They're not doing anything to prevent self-hosting. They're making it clear they're not offering support to people who don't pay (completely reasonable), and gatekeeping a few features that add value - while still giving away a huge amount for free. That's a fair deal to ensure the company remains viable, which is in everyone's best interest. In practice, this decision is unlikely to materially impact anyone. Open source is a gift, not a right, and certainly not an obligation - and from what I can see, they're not doing anything here that undermines the Open Source-ness of their offering. FWIW, I'm not sure you'd find an alternative analytics offering that's both commercially viable, and "more open" than what Plausible are offering today.
- diggan 2y ago
  > this is still only $125k each -- that's hardly big money. That works out to be about $10.5K (9.7K EUR) per month, pre-tax. I'm not sure where you're from/at geographically in the world, but in most places where I have lived that would be considered a large salary for just software development. Outside of the major cities in the US, wouldn't that also count as a fairly large salary?
  - tssge 2y ago
    Just so you know businesses have other expenses than just salary. These can range from insurance to office space to accounting to server hosting and so on. $1M ARR is not very much when you have almost 10 employees. This would be considered rather modest. Generally the rule of thumb for me has been that each €100k ARR is an absolute minimum to hire an additional employee, thus €1M ARR would be an absolute maximum of 10 employees.
    - diggan 2y ago

maccard 2y ago

If that is your take away from this post I urge you to read it more carefully.

FlamingMoe 2y ago
If you have a counterpoint I urge you to make it.
- simonw 2y ago
  Near the start of the article: "That license change has helped us build a sustainable open source project with 8 core team members and several paid external contributors at the time of writing. We don’t have any investors, so all this is solely funded by the fees our 12,000+ subscribers pay us." Then later on while talking about the self-hosting option: "We make $300 per month from donations from our self-hosted users. It would take us more than ten years of donations to pay one month of salary for our small team." That's only misleading if you skim the article. They clearly differentiate between the 12,000 paying subscribers who fund the operation compared to the $300 in donations from self-hosters.
  - maccard 2y ago
    Thanks - this is exactly it.
  - tedivm 2y ago
    I'm a paying customer. I paid for it because of the open source license. The thing that is misleading is pretending that being open source only makes them $300/month while ignoring the number of customers who chose them because they are open source.
    - maccard 2y ago
      > The thing that is misleading is pretending that being open source only makes them $300/month while ignoring the number of customers who chose them because they are open source. No, that one line without the entire preceeding part of the blog post makes it sound like that. However when the blog post opens with > That license change has helped us build a sustainable open source project with 8 core team members and several paid external contributors at the time of writing. It's abundantly clear that they attribute that success to their open core model.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

HuwFulcher 2y ago

They make $300/mo from donations from those that self-host. The point they are making is that enterprise level users are self-hosting and not putting back into the running of Plausible. I still think the way they've done this stinks though.

otherme123 2y ago
I understood that the biggest problem is that some people self host and resell. Sometimes offering a shitty service that might be confused as Plausible-Cloud, damaging the brand: "Plausible is shit, back to Google Analytics".
dewey 2y ago
> I still think the way they've done this stinks though. What would you do in their position? This seems like on of these things, just like changing the design of your product where you will never be able to make everyone happy and there will always be a small group complaining.

tedivm 2y ago

They might only be making $300/mo in donations, but the only reason I'm a paying customer of theirs is because the product is open source. When Fathom stopped maintaining their open source version I moved to Plausible, even though I am not self hosting. The $300/month is absolutely ignoring the free marketing they get, plus the fact that many users such as myself only use their paid product because it is open source.

codegeek 2y ago
Curious. If you are using the hosted version, why do you care about it being Open Source ? More of a backup plan in case they go under or is it more about Trust or both ?
- tedivm 2y ago
  It's a bit of both. It gives me confidence that I have a backup plan, but really trust is the bigger issue. An analytics tool gets a lot of data from people and being able to validate what they're doing is important. Additionally though I signed up to support an open source company, because I think open source is better for society. I like giving money to open source projects. I would rather give money to an open source group than use a free product like Google Analytics. I like being able to support open source companies, and I get annoyed when they do rug pulls like this.
  - codegeek 2y ago
    Thx. Yea I figured but wanted a confirmation because I am looking to start an Open Source project and getting feedback on the WHY Open Source part from potential customers.

martypitt 2y ago

Counterpoint: I've been a paying customer of Plausible for ~2 years, and this is totally fine. $1M ARR with an 8 person team is by no means "doing great". Assuming 20% of income goes to overheads (such as hosting, marketing, legal, accounting), that leaves a salary of $100k for each staff member. Even if they had 0 overhead, this is still only $125k each -- that's hardly big money. Also, in reading the post - I find little to object to. They're not changing their license. They're not doing anything to prevent self-hosting. They're making it clear they're not offering support to people who don't pay (completely reasonable), and gatekeeping a few features that add value - while still giving away a huge amount for free. That's a fair deal to ensure the company remains viable, which is in everyone's best interest. In practice, this decision is unlikely to materially impact anyone. Open source is a gift, not a right, and certainly not an obligation - and from what I can see, they're not doing anything here that undermines the Open Source-ness of their offering. FWIW, I'm not sure you'd find an alternative analytics offering that's both commercially viable, and "more open" than what Plausible are offering today.

diggan 2y ago
> this is still only $125k each -- that's hardly big money. That works out to be about $10.5K (9.7K EUR) per month, pre-tax. I'm not sure where you're from/at geographically in the world, but in most places where I have lived that would be considered a large salary for just software development. Outside of the major cities in the US, wouldn't that also count as a fairly large salary?
- tssge 2y ago
  Just so you know businesses have other expenses than just salary. These can range from insurance to office space to accounting to server hosting and so on. $1M ARR is not very much when you have almost 10 employees. This would be considered rather modest. Generally the rule of thumb for me has been that each €100k ARR is an absolute minimum to hire an additional employee, thus €1M ARR would be an absolute maximum of 10 employees.
  - diggan 2y ago