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I have a similar style of business, ~10K customers, ~150k users, ~7yrs. The key points are: - offer email support, but don't offer phone, video calls or remot

I have a similar style of business, ~10K customers, ~150k users, ~7yrs. The key points are: - offer email support, but don't offer phone, video calls or remote support. This works for most people and forces them to properly phrase questions instead of just "jumping on a call" (so you can then effectively train them over the phone, which doesn't scale). - offer as much self-service as possible - work at your own pace and it's ok to just not work some days. - finding a niche is hard, but they can be surprisingly basic. You're just saving someone time, effort, worry etc. - lean on global cloud services for reliability. Let them do that.

webprofusion 2y ago
One trick I may or may not have invented for the enterprise PO problem (manual processes etc) was to offer an Azure Marketplace subscription for the product. That way they can just go to azure and subscribe to the license that way, without needing any azure resources etc, it's just a billing mechanism. They can then bundle that into their usual Azure spend and even do manual POs etc that I never have to deal with.
- 255kb 2y ago
  This is really interesting. I discovered AWS marketplace which offers the same feature. I started integrating but it takes some time, especially with their webhooks. Is it bringing leads directly, from the marketplace listing, or is it just a plus that will help streamlining the purchase process? Edit: another question: do you advertise on your website the possibility to use Azure billing?
  - webprofusion 2y ago
    It does bring leads, but not many. The main advantage is giving them an easy procurement path.
    - 255kb 2y ago
      Thank you for the insights!
  - webprofusion 2y ago
    Yes we offer if as a "Cloud Managed License". We had intended to do AWS etc as well but traditional online purchasing via Stripe or Paypal is still the bulk of our license purchases. Agree all the hooks and infrastructure you need to put in place are a pain and it's also difficult to debug if someone has an issue (one guy couldn't cancel for an unknown reason).
    - 255kb 2y ago
      ok, good to know. I will think about it a bit more before starting the implementation...
- axelthegerman 2y ago
  Huh that's very interesting, need to check that out and keep in mind. Thanks for sharing!
- chwzr 2y ago
  Would love to hear more of that azure marketplace. Does it bring leads on its own?
_xnmw 2y ago
150k users supported by one man holy shit! This is obviously a B2C freemium app, right? Would love to see a writeup on how you handled the devops/deployment for this. Load balancers, serverless, or just one baremetal server?
- webprofusion 2y ago
  Thanks :) - yes 90% of users are using the free version. It's a desktop app you install on servers. The API elements it does have are a combination of cloudflare workers, a windows server (for customer portal), linux for community discourse. Peak API use so far is 350M requests per month (was about $46 on cloudflare) but have managed to curtail that a bit. https://certifytheweb.com https://certifytheweb.com

webprofusion 2y ago

One trick I may or may not have invented for the enterprise PO problem (manual processes etc) was to offer an Azure Marketplace subscription for the product. That way they can just go to azure and subscribe to the license that way, without needing any azure resources etc, it's just a billing mechanism. They can then bundle that into their usual Azure spend and even do manual POs etc that I never have to deal with.

255kb 2y ago
This is really interesting. I discovered AWS marketplace which offers the same feature. I started integrating but it takes some time, especially with their webhooks. Is it bringing leads directly, from the marketplace listing, or is it just a plus that will help streamlining the purchase process? Edit: another question: do you advertise on your website the possibility to use Azure billing?
- webprofusion 2y ago
  It does bring leads, but not many. The main advantage is giving them an easy procurement path.
  - 255kb 2y ago
    Thank you for the insights!
- webprofusion 2y ago
  Yes we offer if as a "Cloud Managed License". We had intended to do AWS etc as well but traditional online purchasing via Stripe or Paypal is still the bulk of our license purchases. Agree all the hooks and infrastructure you need to put in place are a pain and it's also difficult to debug if someone has an issue (one guy couldn't cancel for an unknown reason).
  - 255kb 2y ago
    ok, good to know. I will think about it a bit more before starting the implementation...
axelthegerman 2y ago
Huh that's very interesting, need to check that out and keep in mind. Thanks for sharing!
chwzr 2y ago
Would love to hear more of that azure marketplace. Does it bring leads on its own?

_xnmw 2y ago

150k users supported by one man holy shit! This is obviously a B2C freemium app, right? Would love to see a writeup on how you handled the devops/deployment for this. Load balancers, serverless, or just one baremetal server?

webprofusion 2y ago
Thanks :) - yes 90% of users are using the free version. It's a desktop app you install on servers. The API elements it does have are a combination of cloudflare workers, a windows server (for customer portal), linux for community discourse. Peak API use so far is 350M requests per month (was about $46 on cloudflare) but have managed to curtail that a bit. https://certifytheweb.com https://certifytheweb.com