Refusing to provide self-hosted instances of your SaaS?
Hi, I have a SaaS that I'm developing. I would love to know if have ever refused to provide self-hosted instances of your SaaS.
What inspired you to that?
How did it go?
Would you recommend such practice?
Thanks in advance
I wouldn't offer self hosting of any saas product unless they are paying for an enterprise support contract($$$) and hardware rental to go with it. You're opening yourself up to tons of support costs letting customers run it on their own systems as you try to figure out which bits of their systems are breaking yours.
This is the right answer. Self Hosted SAAS means that you have 100 new ways of messing things up because customers have access to do whatever they want. So make sure it is worth your time and the cost has to be "enterprisey". I mean min. 5 figures (in USD) per year but ideally 6+.
Following on from this, not every SAAS product makes sense as a self-hosted product. It wouldn't make sense to self-host Mailchimp or Invision. There are plenty of good potentially self-hosted SAAS products too like Jira, Slack and, Octopus. If I was to offer self-hosting it would definitely be in the +5 figures range. If the customers are serious enough about the product then they'll pay it.