September 18, 2018

Giving back to IH, free SaaS billing help - week 2

Last week I started allocating a day of my week giving back to the community by helping SaaS startups with questions regarding SaaS pricing and billing. I spoke to about eight founders, and most of the questions I received was around pricing strategies and mainly SaaS billing architecture using Stripe.

So here we go again. I am dedicating another 7 hours of my time this week to give back to the community by answering all your SaaS billing and pricing questions to my best knowledge.

Here is the link to book an appointment with me for tomorrow: https://calendly.com/servicebot/free-saas-billing-help

Note: there are only seven slots available, so if you do book one, please make sure to respect both of our times and show up :)

Key learnings from last week:

  • Founders love Stripe, but they find it time-consuming to learn the API and integrate with their SaaS. They want a simple solution.

  • Founders want something very fast. Most SaaS founders I talked to didn't scope the work needed to setup SaaS billing. Their launch time is approaching fast and needs a very fast solution.

  • They need something easy. Founders spend most of their time building their products and marketing, and they don't want to focus on billing aspects. They want something easy that doesn't take up much time learning.

  • Don't know exactly how to price their tiers. The initial pricing seems to be a big hurdle for most pre-revenue SaaS companies.

I hope to be able to speed up your SaaS billing research and learn from you as well. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback :)


  1. 3

    Thanks for this Shar. I have blocked your calendar for tomorrow. See you

    1. 1

      Great! Talk to you tomorrow, Kaushik.

  2. 2

    Hi Shar,

    do you think these chats can be useful also in a pre-launch phase (no pricing out yet)? or it's too early?

    1. 1

      Hi Clagio! some of the folks I talked to last week were pre-revenue SaaS startups. Their questions were more around pricing strategies and basics of billing. I think you should scope out your SaaS billing and pricing work early on. So I do think it would be denifitial for pre-revenue startups.

  3. 2
  4. 2

    Hey there, fantastic work!

    I wanted to let you know that I am about to launch my product which answers the first 3 key learnings and problems you just mentioned :)

    https://unleak.io

    Thanks!

    1. 1

      Hi,

      Do you handle VAT ?

      Thanks

      1. 1

        Stripe is where you want to configure your VAT for the moment. You may also need a custom webhook handler on your end to assign the right VAT to your customers.

        Basically, we put a UI layer on top of Stripe so your customers can "self-serve" form what you configured.

        We also add a layer that's missing from Stripe (because they don't need it), which is the features per plan. You can define what features are part of what plan, so you can paywall those features and ask your users to upgrade their plan before they can access that feature.

        Have a good day!