How to survive as a SaaS during a recession

A startup can survive the same way every other business survives, by offering a product or service that people need, at a price they are willing to pay and in a manner that allows them to make a sufficient profit to survive. Same is true for any business.

The gold in this post comes from his call to get back to basics and shore up what you can. Like his reminder to have a way to deal with failed payments.

If you're using a subscription model, failed payments can have a big impact on your revenue. While it's important to hedge against involuntary churn with email reminders about approaching card expirations, notifications about failed payments, and so forth, don't forget about the basics: Run it again. It turns out that over 20% of failed payments are fixed simply by retrying the payment.

So set up automatic retries. If your payment platform allows it, customize them so that they occur during the day, as refusals are higher at night. And since refusals are also higher at the end of the month, it may pay to wait until the 1st in some cases. But whatever you do, don't retry a charge more than four times, as that may get it flagged as potential fraud.

This is really solid advice SaaS companies.

But for the indie hackers behind the companies, there's more to the story — how can you diversify your income? Is it new products? New services? New investments?

There's a delicate balance here, because splitting focus away from the SaaS can hurt it. But not doing so, can hurt you. It's a tough balance to strike.

I, for one, am always thinking about new micro-products that can provide some passive income. I also do some freelancing. And I have some investments that are growing little by little. The more (passively) diversified I am, the more comfortable I feel with uncertainty.

Surviving as a SaaS during a recession is not easy, but it's not impossible. And, if you've made it through the last two recessions, you know that you can survive and thrive in almost any economic environment.

Here are our tips for getting through the next recession:

1. Focus on your customer's needs—not just their business needs, but also their personal needs. When times are tough for your customers' businesses, it's easy to forget that they need to get home and see their families too. Make sure your product offers them both support and flexibility so they can keep their jobs while also keeping their personal lives in order.

2. Stay optimistic! Don't let your fear of the future take over—instead, use it as motivation to do better than ever before. It's easy to focus on what could go wrong instead of what could go right—but think about how awesome things could be if you kept working hard and kept making progress toward your goals every day!

Has anyone decreased his/her pricing b/c of upcoming recession? Would love to hear if this has helped with getting new customers and/or retention

In a recession, the business focus needs to be on retaining customers and more value-added to existing subscriptions is one way on the external front.

On the internal front, question expenses based on important vs critical along with strategic initiatives.

just make sure you are "default alive" and you'll be fine :)

Start research on your product
& make your product unique... untill recession is over....
When recession is over you will grab the market...

Sell more, and control churn. Eliminate the need to add features.

Introduce new tools and incentives, give them the opportunity to earn, for example, use crypto currency in your referral programs (it's better to issue your own)

Go back to survive on r&d mode and try to pounce on recovery.

Finally some data-driven advice on this topic.

What about cashflow?

I found this interesting: "Don't have cross-sell, create an add-on. Priority support is easy $$."

Anyone here charging for premium support?