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Tiiny Host hits $2,000 MRR 📈🎉

Tiiny.Host grows past $2,000 MRR! 🎊

Stripe:
Stripe

Paddle (for PayPal):

Considering we barely had any traffic for the first 12 months, I honestly didn't expect it to reach this far.

It amazes me that over 230 people out there like the product enough to pay for it. I'm extremely grateful to each and every one of them.

But I've begun to realise why they do, more on this later.

Here are some facts for you:

💼 Part-time
💰 MRR: $2.2k
🔗 Subscriptions: 235
⬆️ Sites uploaded to date: 40,000+
👥 Average monthly visitors: 13,000+
🌍 Top countries: India, USA & Vietnam (last 30 days)
⏲️ Average session duration: ~5 mins

Why is Tiiny Host so popular amongst Vercel, Netlify, Github pages etc?

Because Tiiny Host has simplified web hosting, which is often a daunting task for beginner/non-technical users. Alternatives concentrate on the developer market, optimised to convince you to build your next startup or move your company's infrastructure to them.

But what about if you just want to upload a simple web page to the internet? That's what Tiiny Host's niche is, and I'm sure there's many other niches out there like this💡.

How have we marketed ourselves?

SEO, SEO & SEO. That's our main channel for users. We rank highly for terms like "host zip file" & "html hosting". I talk more about this on my podcast.

What are our biggest problems?

Convincing our 15k monthly users to sign up to a subscription. We have a low conversion rate right now.

TL;DR: Tiiny Host is capturing the beginner/non-technical niche in the huge market of web hosting.

You can read more about our journey here or listen to me on a podcast here.

I genuinely couldn't have done it without the support of this community, indie london and weekend club. Thank you to all 🙏

I genuinely want to give back to this community. AMA below👇(or tweet me)

  1. 3

    What a nice tiny saas, congrats! One question: how do you handle violations of your TOS? I mean what if someone will host copyrighted materials, porn, or something like that? Do you review each upload manually or there's some automation?

    1. 1

      Thank you 🙏

      It's not easy for sure! And a bit of cat and mouse game. We've been blocked of the internet a few times due to bad content 😫

      It's currently a combination of automated code scanners & manual review. We have IP blocking and fraud detection through Stripe. We're also planning on utilising AWS's ML image recognition service for an extra layer of security soon.

      1. 2

        Thanks for the explanation mate! and good luck with your project

  2. 3

    How do you handle custom domains + ssl for users in node js?

    1. 1

      Shameless plug - I'm solving this for SaaS devs with https://appmasker.com. I'm happy to talk shop if you're curious how it works.

    2. 1

      We used AWS exclusively. CloudFront + Certificate Manager is a good combination.

  3. 2

    I also want to make small saas. 😃

  4. 2

    Heey! Congrats 🤗

  5. 2

    Congrats! I remember when you were just starting out. You’ve come so far! Can’t wait to see ya go father!

    1. 1

      Ah wow, thank you for following since Day 1 Brayden! Yup, it's definitely been a rollercoaster and I've learned so much in the past couple of years. Definitely couldn't have reached here without the support of the community so really keen on sharing as much advice as I can. If you every need anything, just DM me :)

      1. 2

        Cool. I’ll let you know!

  6. 2

    What generator do you use in the backend? Hugo, Jekyll?

    1. 1

      We don't currently use any generator. If you're talking about our templates? Then they're just pre-compiled templates.

  7. 2

    Nice job! Congrats! 🚀🚀

  8. 2

    Congratulations..!

  9. 2

    Please share your tech stack, i have been using NextJs for recent saas i want to build but seems like its better to just go with react since its increasing a lot of time to do basic stuff because of limitation can you share your experience

    1. 2

      I've never used NextJS so can't speak for it. Ours is quite simple:

      • ReactJS
      • NodeJS
      • AWS (EC2, S3, CloudFront, DynamoDB)

      I recommend using a stack which you are comfortable with and can iterate quickly on. The most important thing is shipping, not a fancy tech stack.

      1. 1

        Could you please tell a bit about the cost? I'm planning to run my own saas on AWS and am having hard times figuring out how much it can cost when all their free periods are over. saas is about to be light-weight in terms of resources it'll need

      2. 1

        also i heard your podcast (indie bites) the thing you mentioned about going full time and managing time really connected with me i am working full time on my apps

        anyway will love to have a chat with you sometime let's connect on twitter

        1. 1

          Thanks for listening! Glad it helped.

      3. 1

        the reason for using nextjs was i want to use SEO and i have heard react landing page don't rank well so does the blogs with react

        how do you manage your blog and is you landing page made with react ?

        1. 1

          Yep you're right, we dont use react for our blog or landing pages, just pure HTML. Our blog is made with Jekyll and landing pages are pure HTML.

  10. 2

    Hi, congrats on these great results! Your case just proves one more time that a useful product and consistency are kings :)))

    Wonder, what exactly you did for your SEO (SEO, SEO)? Do you write a blog, articles, or something else? Thanks!

    1. 1

      Thank you!

      It's a combination, but I highly recommend creating landing pages targeting specific keywords. Heres a few of ours:

      But also blog posts and general content around a topic all get fed to Google to increase the presence of your domain. https://tiiny.host/blog

      1. 1

        hey, are you using Wordpress for blog?

        1. 1

          To me, it looks like a Ghost blog, but I may be wrong.

  11. 2

    Congrats! How did you land on SEO as your main growth channel? Did you try that from the start or did you try other things first?

    1. 1

      We tried many different things. I think it's important in the beginning to sprinkle your seeds all over the internet and seeing what sends you the most growth.

      Having said that, certain products are well suited to certain channels. Tools are definitely suited to SEO because people search for solutions to problems like "host html page"

  12. 2

    Amazing! don't give up and keep improving your product! Do you have any tips/recommendations for a better SEO?

    1. 1

      Yep definitely!

      Get a subscription to ahrefs or semrush just for a trial (expensive but we'll worth the investment)

      Search for keywords related to your product and app, low key word difficulty but high search volume.

      Create landing page and content relating to them.

      I talk about it here: https://www.podpage.com/indie-bites-1/600-mrr-and-150-new-users-per-day-with-seo-and-marketing-elston-baretto-tiiny-host/

  13. 2

    That's nice! Did you consider affiliates for getting new paying customers?

    1. 1

      We have been meaning to, it's definitely something we'll release over the next few weeks.

      Thanks for the suggestions 🙏

  14. 2

    Incredible to watch man - and just the beginning!

    1. 2

      Thanks Charlie 🙌🚀

  15. 2

    Interesting journey! Can you share some details on how you expect to solve your biggest problem (Convincing your free users to sign up for a subscription.)?

    And I'm curious, why do you use both Stripe and Paddle?

    1. 1

      Thank you! 🙌

      We use Paddle to accept PayPal subscriptions. It was the quickest and easiest way. Wish stripe accepted it. A surprising amount of people feel safer paying through PayPal online. You can see that a quarter of sales come through it. I'd definitely recommend accepting it early. It makes sense when it's a product that you've come across for the first time.

      Regarding conversions, currently thinking along many lines such as attracting higher quality customers, targeting new niches, tweaking price plans and onboarding flows. I think a lot can be achieved through refining the smaller things.

      1. 2

        Thanks that makes sense. Curious to see a new post in a couple of months on which refinements worked and which did not 😁

  16. 2

    Amazing progress - very inspiring

    1. 1

      Thanks Jack 😊 glad to inspire!

  17. 1

    Amazing progress, I'd be interested in knowing if you faced any issues when it comes to scaling? Because with hosting people would be expecting fast load times and availability across multiple zones, how did that work out for you? Did you use S3, or any CDN maybe?

    Thanks in advance! Just curious!

    1. 2

      You're right, speed is important! We use S3 + Cloudfront so are as quick as our users need us to be. Haven't needed to scale past that at the moment.

      1. 1

        Awesome, good to know!

  18. 1

    Congratulations! Do we need our own PayPal account to charge user through PayPal on Paddle?

    1. 1

      Thanks Ellen! Nope you dont, thats the best part. You just need an account with Paddle and they handle everything. Simplest integration. The PayPal API is a mess.

  19. 1

    Nicely done! Way to create a niche in a highly crowded market.

    1. 1

      Thank you 🙏 Niching down is definitely the way at the beginning.

      1. 2

        Your post was the inspiration for my post https://www.indiehackers.com/post/pizza-products-vs-google-search-e51feb079f. And your success gave me a needed pick-me-up on a day I was feeling discouraged. I'm also working on a niche product in a crowded market. So thank you too! 🙏

        1. 2

          Wow, awesome! Love the analogy, and great point that all business cant form niches (Google competitors) but there are plenty out there!

  20. 2

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