Standalone vs. SaaS
Before starting every project I always have a lot of doubts about this.
For example, I want to make a tool to help you crawl & scrape websites. It can work in both models.
A) Would be better to make it as a "standalone" product that a user can pay (one time) and download?
Pros for me:
- Seems less hassle, you can move to other things later
Pros for the user:
- One time payment
Cons for me:
- Updates and maintenance
- The product could be reverse-engineered easily
Cons for the user:
- ¿? Not sure
B) Would be better to make a SaaS (where the client has to pay every month).
Pros for me:
- MRR
- Easy to maintain
Pros for a user:
- Always updated version
- Nothing to download? Platform independent.
Cons for me:
- Difficult to move to other things, or maintain more than 1 SaaS
Cons for the user:
- Recurring payment
What do you think? When you start, is it the same one way or another because you'll see it later?
I think you're on the right path and that the particular product is the biggest (or nearly the biggest) factor in deciding how to deploy. It does seem many companies / products are moving to a SaaS model and many users are getting more comfortable with the subscription based software purchases now a days.
I personally do almost solely SaaS based products because I'm always expected to maintain the product and across multiple platforms / clients. The most effective way for me to maintain the product in this scenario is SaaS because a stand alone I have to worry more about disparate systems that the clients run. I work in the B2B market by day (meaning my clients are all businesses not individual users), in businesses it's not uncommon to have a Windows XP machine sitting next to a brand new mac and servers running various Linux distros. It's not feasible for me to run VM's and test my products compatibility with the enormous array of different end points that exist at a single client.
Short version, SaaS is likely the way to go assuming you can monetize it and that the usage of the app doesn't surpass what you can charge for it. Small example, one of my side projects is a crypto trading platform. The bandwidth and data storage required to keep the platform in sync with different trading sites can get really expensive. Maybe more expensive than the subscriptions I can charge. In this scenario offloading data storage and network bandwidth to the user saves me the costs that might make the idea implausible.
Feel free to reach out directly if you'd like to discuss your product more directly and I'll see if I can help shed some light on the cost / profit ratio's (as well as general logistics). You can reach me via email or Skype using my email address dmayor@digivance.com.
What's the product? Is it something that provides me value one time? Or am I getting continuous value delivery? Is your customer used to buying subscriptions?
Or an app that helps you track your time spending. What model you would use?
Time tracking app should be SaaS no doubt. Because what if you are tracking time in your home office (laptop or desktop) as well as when on the road (mobile) or perhaps even at your day job (work computer). IMHO
Make sense. So a good point to consider is how expensive is to hold their data.
Imagine for example that the product is an app (tool) that helps you crawl and scrape webpages.
I'd probably want to pay for this on a transactional model. Charge me for the scrapes I use. I don't want to pay every month if I'm not using it, but paying 1 time for unlimited access also doesn't make too much sense if it's leveraging your infrastructure.
I don't know why but I hate paying per usage.
I always thought about $1 service too... if you want to use it, 1 time, pay $1.
so you do a deposit or something?
It's interesting:
a) deposits (saas)
b) anual license (standalone)