For Business-only SaaS should I blacklist generic email domains
Happy new year everyone.
I am building a SaaS for businesses (HR tool, product really doesn’t have use-case for individual users). Onboarding page will require business email which will be used to onboard tenant and set that person as admin of the tenant (for free tier). With this approach prospect will not be able to use generic email (e.g. someone@gmail.com) because someone else might already use @gmail.com domain.
I want another opinion on this approach. If potential customers cannot use personal/throw-away emails for onboarding/using free tier, could it significantly affect bounce rate?
PS. I am planning to also block temp email domains (I think I saw a blacklist on github somewhere, not yet sure how to keep it updated).
I'd second what have been said above.
I can only add that I always open the door wide (i.e. don't restrict too much) and only implement rectrictions in reactive way when really necessary. That way you don't filter out unexpected but genuine/valuable behaviour
Thank you all for the helpful replies. I won’t be doing blacklisting nor coupling between tenants and email domain.
I myself own 4 different emails on company emails and have bunch of inboxes from free providers as well.
I sometimes just use my gmail for signing up.
If someone want to abuse your service, you can't do much to prevent them, even upfront credit/debit card authorization won't do. You can buy these online and use them on any site.
Relax, don't put pressure on your onboarding process and limit your customer base.
If you're aiming/pricing for smaller businesses, I think you'll find quite a lot of them run on free email accounts.
I've seen other SaaS apps tackle this with whitelisting. You can sign up and have a root admin user at any domain, then you can whitelist the company's domain to auto-approve any new users that try to register (and permit invites at any domain if an admin approves it). I think Yammer did this once.
Why would you want to care what email your customers use?
To prevent same company from onboarding twice and abusing free tier, and maybe inform them that there is already someone from the company that is using the product. To prevent unserious users from onboarding. I might be wrong with this approach, that's why I'm asking for another opinion.
This is really not something you should worry, nor care about at this stage.
Focus on your core product only—these kind of worries only slow you down.
If you want to screen out people that won't pay, do a free trial with a credit card upfront, or have a high-touch sales process.
If you want to prevent free-tier abuse, time-limit the trial (14 days is usually enough). If a business uses your app and loads a bunch of data into it, the cost of doing that all over again on a second instance might well be higher than just paying for the first one.