Pastel
Team and client feedback tool for building websites
We've wanted to add a free plan for a long time, but as a bootstrapped startup we wanted to make sure we're building a product people would be willing to pay for.
After 2 years of doing just that, we had enough data to be confident that people want to pay for Pastel, as well as what would make a free plan useful while not cannibalizing our existing users. We settled on a time limit for canvases - from our data we saw that most feedback was left within 8 hours of creating a feedback link.
We tried this with existing users, and quickly found that even though our data showed 8 hours should be enough for most people, that just felt too short to be confident to share with someone to get feedback. So, we listened to our users and bumped that limit up to 24 hours and have now publicly launched the free plan - it's the currently the main CTA on our site. We're still testing, so things may change in the future, but we're really excited about the possibilities!
Every product has a magic moment.
The 'aha' moment that makes someone understand the core benefit of that product. For Pastel, it happens when someone leaves a comment on an actual element on a live website. It allows them to think about how they can use it make their work easier; get feedback from anyone.
So, we keep an eye on the number of comments people leave as a way of monitoring the ease of pointing something out on a website. Today, it passed 278,000 comments 🎉
More recently, we've started to think about how to optimize our UX to allow everyone to leave their first comment. Is it a demo from the site? Is it a preset one we have on every new user?
We'll continue to learn and share here.
We're excited to launch an update to Pastel today with a much requested feature - feedback on images! You can now start using Pastel earlier in your process: usepastel.com
Three lessons we've learned over the past couple of months:
- MRR ≠ founder salary, it costs money to run a business. Having a buffer helped us set realistic expectations of when to have full salaries.
- Top of the funnel is important, but focusing on conversion early on is key. Make your first customers super happy before trying to open the flood gates.
- Things take time when you're bootstrapping a SaaS business, especially if you're doing other things to pay the bills. We've had to shift our mindset and focus on what matters most to our customers.
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