Something is wrong with starting a SAAS
I started my first ever SAAS last week. One of the first things I had to do was to make a landing page to collect user emails. I never thought that this process could be so frustrating.
Buying a domain: I've never bought a domain before. So, I went to GoDaddy. Bought my domain. BUT... GoDaddy's UI is very busy. Lots of offers, products, features, etc. I could even be lost on the website tbh.
Custom email address: I decided to create an email address with the domain name I just bought. To be honest, I couldn't figure out how it worked. First, I saw that I need to buy an email address. Huh. I thought I was a joke. I did my research. No, I was not a joke. So, I bought an email address 😐.
Landing page: I decided to go with cruip.com because their templates look gorgeous.
Email subscription service: I did some research here and there on this topic. And went with Mailchimp. I took me some hours to get the whole thing working together. But Mailchimp decided to suspend my account. IDK the exact reason. I guess that's because I was testing the sign-up form on the localhost. I also need to figure out the email templates 😐.
Analytics: I chose to use Google Analytics.
AND... here's the result: https://atomik.design
It's a very simple web page but I spend so much time and effort to get it working. It was frustrating how these things work together. I wish there was a product that just combined all of this together. Beautiful design, fast website, analytics, email service, blog, etc.
I've seen some products that are trying to do something similar. But there's a reason I didn't choose to use them. It's design. Yes. I guess 90% of those products were built by developers without the help of a professional designer.
If you are building a product that solves this problem or you know one, please let me know. I would love to check 'em out.
Also if you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment )
Thank you for reading 😊
When you do something for the first time, it will take four times as long as you think. Or ten times as long. Same with costs.
The value is in learning what not to do. So your next effort might only take twice as long as you think.
As mentioned elsewhere, don't use GoDaddy. I use gandi.net, which does include free email hosting.
I use tinyletter, which is actually owned by MailChimp.
How much would you pay for such a product? Be honest :)
I have never heard about TinyLetter, thanks!
Hey Todd, thank you very much for your feedback.
I see that everything you said above makes sense )
I'd be willing to pay $20-50/mo. The price is based on my experience. I mean, I haven't gone far from just a landing page and email service. If there are other difficulties within this area I may pay more tbh.
In the nicest possible way...
If you think that was a lot of work and you found it frustrating, you might be in for a surprise because it definitely doesn't get easier from here :)
Haha, "it definitely doesn't get easier from here" this makes me excited even more.
Domain: Godaddy is bad in customer service. Why not use Namecheap, porkbun, google domain or others? Namecheap service is good in general. Porkbun is a younger domain company with slick ui and cheapest .com domains
Email: you can buy an email at gmail. There are free email from zoho as far as I remember. If you don't want to buy, just create an alias with your company email, like [email protected]
Email subscription: MailChimp is getting enterprisey in terms of ui / ux / pricing / overall service. I use Google forms. You need a form builder not email marketing solution. They can be separated.
Landing page: I usually buy a bootstrap theme or use beautiful free theme. Make tiny changes and host it on free static site platforms.
Recently, I built 3sname.com to help new founders find suitable names and domains.
I have used name cheap and have been happy with them. Google also works well. Either way, I would setup cloudflare as soon as you get a domain. Some time in the future you will probably want to use one of the features of cloudflare and it is 100x easier to setup when you first buy a domain rather than after you have everything setup.
Yes, you are right. But don't worry about domain transfer. Even you are using the dns of another registrar, you can transfer to cloudflare without downtime. The process is almost smooth
Some domain registrars will sell cheap on the 1st year and raise the price to 2x - 6x after that. This is what I found when I was working on my naming generator project.
Buying a domain - Get it from Google domains, much better UI, no upselling crap and domain privacy options. Another good option is gandi.net
Custom email address - Use gsuite. Dealing with email deliverability is a pita and honestly this is one of those places I suggest to throw money at.
Landing pages - No particular preference here.
Email subscriptions - Use emailoctopus. Much better. Mailerlite is another good option.
Generally speaking, most good tech products are marketed towards techies, not towards normies. Which is a shame.
Pretty sexy looking landing page though.
+1 for Google Domains. It's a great UI and they make setting up Gsuite really easy (Not that it's terribly hard otherwise, but an added bonus).
Hey Shash, thank you for sharing your opinion.
I think there are a lot of email subscription solutions. And I think I need try at least a few to find the one I like.
So it took you one week to setup a full blown landing page with no experience.
And you think it's too long?
There is nothing wrong with starting a Saas, it just takes a huge amount of time.
Patience is your best ally.
Thanks for sharing this )
This gave me relief, haha )
Don't be frustrated with what actually is a normal working process. If somebody or something (app) would do everything for you, you don't get this experience. And you always may ask advice from indie hackers. We are here to help you :)
And please, don't use GoDaddy anymore. It's an awful service. Try Namecheap, for example. They give you a 2-month trial email with your new domain (they recently made the process slightly more complicated but still doable!)
Good luck!
Good to hear that I am not alone here!
I will consider transferring my domain before launching which I think is gonna happen in a few months.
Everyone else here gave great answers.
I totally agree with you though (not sure what you meant by buying an email address and that unfortunately I never plan to support). That's what my new product's future goal - to make the whole process you described seamless.
Except for the email, I never plan on supporting a whole email service. It would be a massive pain to get right and between HEY, G Suite, Proton Mail, FastMail and all the others I don't think there's a need for it. You even have Zoho if you want to start for free.
Either way, your DMs aren't open or I would have messaged you directly but follow me if you're interested in my initial solution. Or email if you have ideas/want to talk, I'd love to get additional input.
Ah, I didn't mean an email app like Hey or ProtonMail. What I meant was an email address with my domain name. e.g. [email protected]
I'd be happy to try your product out )
I didn't know IH had a DM feature. But I added my email address now. Thanks for mentioning that )
If you plan on blogging we built http://versoly.com/. It also comes with analytics. Only thing we miss is email service but that is a huge beast.
Versoly analytics gets around ad block as we control your domain and can do proxing with no extra work required from yourself. Also much simpler than google analytics :)
Hey Volkan, thank you for replying.
I've been following Versoly for a while. I just tried it out. And I want to give my honest feedback.
First of all, you've built a very powerful app. When I wanted to start a SaaS I just wanted to have beautiful looking website. I didn't want to go deep into designing and coding it. So this is why I chose cruip.com. I think I would use Versoly if it had beautifully designed templates that just work out-of-the-box so I don't even have to go to the page editor. Because once I see the editor I get a bit anxious. I think that's because there are too many things that are going on (code editor, component editor, device previewer, etc). I think it just has too many options. Being in front of too many options is not so good for me. Just give users less but meaningful options. I think this is just psychology. I understand that it's easier said than done to design something simple but powerful.
I hope my feedback was valuable for you )
Thanks for the feedback.
Makes sense, we're developers not designers (means our landing pages load fast etc but not 10/10 design)
We're looking at adding a marketplace that will solve this problem.
Also I think templates aren't good to be honest but customers request them a lot. Your website should fit around your copy not the other way (if you care about conversions).
Makes sense. I did have a pro mode which hide/shows the code editor and right hand side bar.
I need to watch more customers sign up and try the app.
I can suggest https://www.fullstory.com/ if you want to watch how your users use your app. FullStory has been crucial to identifying the pain points of our onboarding flow at one of my previous companies.