What are your monthly running costs?
Two weeks ago I was a bit fed up with the work I had to do on my two main businesses. So what does a maker do in such cases? Make something entirely new of course (instead of doing the right thing of moving away from the screen and do something active instead—hey, nobody is perfect!)!
I gave myself one full day to create something new and useful. That's when I created 💰 Startup Costs. Which answers the question: “How much does it cost to run a startup”. I've since—it being a side project of my main business—spent an hour tops most days to tweak things and add the visual design.
I think most of you IndieHackers find this interesting too. If you are adventurous as some other startups/side projects, feel free to add your monthly running costs too: https://www.startupcosts.co/add
Interested in what you think of this and to hear any suggestion. 🙏
Edit: thanks all so far checking out SC. ❤️ Many, many checked it t out and few dozen new startups were added. Focusing on getting more startups to share, if you could help me with that—that would be great! ✨
This is one of the best ideas for a small app I have seen in makers niche in the last few weeks. If you can get more companies to publish their costs, then this will be extremely helpful!
Thanks! ✨
Yes, getting more startups onboard is my main focus for now.
Some interesting ones:
Blurt, side project by @coreygwin — $31.67 per month, using DigitalOcean and Github. https://www.startupcosts.co/blurt
MegaMaker, by @mijustin, — $ 356 per month, using amongst others WPEngine, ConvertKit and Podia. https://www.startupcosts.co/megamaker
Krit, by @AndrewAskins — $2,365.56 per month, using amongst others CircleCi, DigitalOcean, Drip and Heroku. https://www.startupcosts.co/krit
We're around $4000/month these days. https://medium.com/@gercheq/how-500-000-microsoft-azure-sponsorship-might-kill-your-startup-42912f9b22a1
Nice one! 👍
Am thinking it would be really cool to aggregate all the data you have on the startups and rank the top services used by the startups. It can be an overall ranking or a by industry ranking so an Indie Hacker looking to build a similar product in that sector or in a slightly different space can easily figure out the tools needed on a monthly recurring basis to build it. I would find it incredibly useful.
Monetization could be commissions generated through each person who signs up with the services.
First version is live: https://www.startupcosts.co/products-directory ✨
Don't tell anyone else, but I am already working on that. 😊
Quite a lot going on at the moment, so not sure when I will release the first version of this.
Thanks for the suggestion—appreciated!
Great idea, at least it gives us a feel of what others are spending compared to us, nicely done. It helped me even discover UpDown.io for my startup!
Oh, that's great!
I've learned about some great new tools too since launch! 😊
What is your startup?
www.onemasjid.com - websites and apps to help connect Muslim communities with their Masajid.
Looks good! 👍
Have you shared your monthly running costs too?
Good idea.
My costs are open at https://angage.net/open, https://scrapebook.net/open, etc
Cool! Can I port these over?
The one-time cost would be a nice addition for SC.
Yes, one time costs are a good addition. Yes, man. I have an account on your platform but porting these over takes too much of my time :(
Have you considered adding a "Notes" field so that startups that add their services can leave a quick blurb about what they use it for? Some things may be obvious, others may not. I noticed one company using both DigitalOcean and MediaTemple for hosting and I'd be interested in learning about the division of resources there.
Already possible. 😊 They can add “a purpose” for every service they use. But none of this is required.
Best to ask them (on twitter?) about this.
I also added ours (WordPress themes development):
https://www.startupcosts.co/premiumcoding
Nice one! think you are the first WP shop. :)
Nice, Idea
😊
Cool idea, just added https://www.startupcosts.co/contentupgrade really interesting to see what different apps cost to run, but also what tools they use as well. Hope to see more people adding their apps.
Yes, when I got people to add their costs the first time, I learned about so many new tools. Interesting. Main focus now is getting more to add their costs. Got many ideas to go from there. 🙂
Nice one. Updated with mine, too :)
Nice, that would be https://www.startupcosts.co/hustle-mode-on right? Good looking site!
Yes, Sir!
Redesigned it after 2 years. Going to work hard on it from now on.
Just added my startup, Netcrumb. How can I change my icon? Thanks!
Thanks! Might need to change the "end date" for S3 subscription.
It's using Clearbit logo API, as you can see here: https://www.startupcosts.co/startup-costs
Will add an option later to override this with your own hosted logo.
Also I wanted to add different subscriptions per month as when I started as I was paying less than now, but didn't know how to do it.
Yeah—could be a bit clearer. The idea is you can add a start date and an end date or leave the end date if you still use the subscription.
The current monthly total amount will also only be calculated with the current active subscriptions.
Nice idea, i've added mine too :-) https://www.startupcosts.co/likeometer
Interesting business! 👍
Btw. what is “Proxies”—could not find anything about this and thus a link to the service.
Thanks :-)
I mean Proxys, i'm using limeproxies.com (i need them to access some APIs from different locations around the world).
Got it—added that website.
How good are these guys? Do they have dedicated IPv4 or is it all 6
I don't know if they have, but they have a really fast awesome support. Just ask them :-) Never had problems with LimeProxies.
Pretty nice. I'd work on the design a little, and save as much data as possible in a way that will allow some interesting data visualizations. I've added mine: https://www.startupcosts.co/musicbutler
Note: I didn't notice the field to upload a logo (if there was one), I also didn't notice the "secret link" to edit the site's details.
Interesting one! Have you seen https://droptune.co
The logo is currently pulled from Clearbit's logo API. Will soon add an option to link to your own. 👍
Currently working on a better way to get the “secret link” emailed to you. This was the fastest I could get this working.
Have quite a few ideas already, see also https://www.startupcosts.co/roadmap. Happy to hear any thoughts you might have.
@eelcoj yeah Droptune launched like days earlier/later. Its founder signed up to MusicButler and found inspiration for some ideas...I guess it’s the way it woks.
I think behind the scenes (backend) I do things better which will come into play in the long term.
Random thought, if by secret link you mean these long strings like an S3 link or evernote link. Do you think those are secure enough for write access? I mean they usually are stupidly long.
That’s what this site uses, I wasn’t making a suggestion.
I’m not an expert on security, but I don’t like to give write access so simply. For example on my site I use a UUID string to generate RSS feed for each member, but I don’t think I’d use it for write-access stuff. Not without a key.
Then again, prompting to create an account is “an obstacle” in OP’s case.
I was just commenting on your "secret link to edit page" comment which maybe I misunderstood that.
Great idea! Just added my Shopify app https://www.startupcosts.co/personal-discount
Interesting business. Great to see you can utilise so many services for free to start with!
Yeah, it's very helpful that I can use so many services for $0. I also give back by offering a free plan that is pretty usable for starting e-commerce businesses.
I've noticed that many startups listed on your side reveal that they are using services for free. Maybe you could create a list of free startup tools based on these data?
That would be a great idea for a list. ✨
Creating more lists is the next step—not only for SEO juice, but also getting even more value out of the aggregated data. :)
Nice idea!
Cushion has been publishing the costs for a while. You can add them too: https://cushionapp.com/running-costs
Yes, tried to lure them to publish on SC—so far no luck. :)
Been following the journey from Cushion for a few years. Greatly designed app!
@eelcoj I just got a really spammy email from you about startupcosts (lying about me already having created an account).
Don't do that again. If your product is good, you won't need the dirty tricks.
Good luck and please remove me from any/all email lists.
Yikes! You didn't add your company to it? That's the downside of no email sign up, I guess. 😟 Sorry about that—I've removed you from SC.
Edit: I changed the signup flow since launch to require an email address and have been removing startups that looked suspicious.
Thanks
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