5
4 Comments

[Feedback] Payment Cost Calculator - help me make it useful to you

Hello fellow hackers,

I am working on a small tool to help you calculate the costs of your payment service providers / gateways. But because price alone is not enough basis for decision-making (cue VAT/GST, merchant of record, availability, etc.) I aim to include as much information as is helpful to help every maker find the right provider.

So, I would like to hear your general feedback: what do you think about the idea? How do you like the tool? What is missing or too much? Is the functionality clear or is it too confusing? What would you need in order to say it is useful?

Right now, it’s quite raw but working and I would love to hear your feedback before I decide in which direction to go further.

SaaSculator - https://saasculator.com

  1. 2

    I just did this damn thing in a spreadsheet. Please be faster next time :)

    So.. i think this is something that most indies will need and will do (though some just go Stripe without thinking)

    But... i don't think anybody is going to pay for it. Doing the spreadsheet didn't take that long. And actually my spreadsheet had much more "features" than your web app.

    And... this is one-time need for small audience, so ads are not going to monetize well either.

    1. 1

      I am so sorry, I just noticed your answer right now!

      First of all thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it! I agree many founders will go with Stripe, but as far as I know it's not available in every country yet and I saw a number of other founders that preferred a payment provider that acted as a merchant of record, especially in the beginning, which is why I thought a tool could be helpful in this space.

      As for now I'm not interested in monetizing it at all (though I have some ideas in the back of my head), but I wanted to create this on the side as a helpful tool for starting founders. At the same time I hope it gives me some insights in the space in general.

      I'm very interested in the spreadsheet you mentioned. What other features did it have, if you don't mind my asking? Are there some things you would've wished for that it didn't do?

      Thanks again for the feedback, and my apologies for the long delay

      1. 2

        The main two things were:

        .. Results in format that can be actually used (exact numbers instead of chart that you need to hover over one-by-one)

        .. Revenue growth scenarios in 2 dimensional format (instead of single revenue for which you'd need to enter 20 values one by one)

        So basically I saw 500 numbers at once and the spreadsheet colored the cheapest alternative for each entered revenue amount, yielding result like "PaymentJunction is cheapest until X licenses per month and after that Adyen becomes cheaper"

        1. 1

          That's really helpful, thanks!

          I get the point about usable numbers. In an earlier version I only used a large table (a different one is still available at the end of the page), but I thought it to be too cluttered. I wanted to be able to immediately see the differences visually, but better access to the numbers is definitely a good idea.

          The revenue growth is one of the things I also thought about, but haven't implemented yet, because I wasn't sure how to properly estimate future growth. But you've just given me a great idea!

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 17 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments