Axsar Solo

Dear IndieHackers,

We have finally just launched AXSAR Solo on ProductHunt 😊 🚀

Does anybody have any previous experience/successes stories with ProductHunt?

How many visitors and signups did you get from ProductHunt?

Any support and feedback from IndieHackers community will be highly appreciated.

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/axsar-solo

Currently (November 13/14, 2019), Firebase Hosting is experiencing a critical issue when accessing apps via a custom domain, and it has been more than 24 hours since I noticed the issue.

The issue is so critical that my app does not even load, and the users just see a blank screen. The issue is wide spread at the moment, and also other apps are seeing HTTP 404 errors when being accessed via a custom subdomain connected with Firebase Hosting.

You can read more about the issue details at the below blog post:

https://www.axsar.com/blog/firebase-hosting-crashed-my-app-lessons-learned/

Here are lessons learned from this episode:

• If you are using a managed service provider such as Firebase Hosting, do have a back up plan regarding how you will manage if you face similar issues. In my case, it was changing the URLs in the landing page and in the backend point to the default Firebase provided subdomain, so at least the users can access the app.
  Firebase Hosting lets you attach multiple custom subdomains to your app (e.g., app1.example.com, app2.example.com) Do that now! As I learned, the app worked fine on the default subdomains AND any new custom subdomains, but not on the existing custom subdomain (e.g., app.example.com).

• Ideally, you would want to also deploy your SPA to another service provider such as AWS as well, using their AWS S3 Static Hosting service. This will allow you to point your subdomain to another provider if you face any issues with Firebase Hosting, and vice versa.

• If you are using Firebase Functions or any other backend, make sure your app links can be quickly configurable, so you can change it in such scenarios.

• Don't just rely on Google analytics, manually check your SPA (Single Page Application) from time to time as in the above case users were visiting the landing page and the app, but none were able to sign up as the app didn't load at all for those users. And for me, it was working fine as apparently locally I had a cached version of the file in the browser. Only when I refreshed the app, I noticed the same problem.

• If you are running any marketing and promotion campaigns, STOP them immediately as you will loose money and reputation for your app. Whats more bad than bringing a user via a paid campaign to your landing page, and when they click Sign Up to login to your app, all they see is a blank page. They are not going to come back.

• If you have lot of existing users, make sure you have them in your marketing system, so that you can immediately notify them that your app's login domain has changed. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to login to your app.

Update (15 November, 2019) - Firebase Hosting has now finally fixed the issue after three days. AXSAR Solo now works fine on the custom domain as well.

I was recently approached by an existing customer who asked whether AXSAR Solo CRM could be used for managing Contracts Lifecycle. Customer mentioned that one of his clients asked Salesforce for Contracts management feature, and they quoted $1m/year for the added feature which is obviously way expensive. So they were looking for something like Salesforce but simple and cheaper solution for managing Contracts.

So I built the simple Contract Lifecycle Management feature, and happy to announce that it is now live.

AXSAR Solo now supports Contract Lifecycle Management.

• Create / update contracts (Lease, Maintenance, Software Licenses)
• Search contracts & filter them by contract type or status.
• Attach file to a contract
• Add comments
• Forward any contract related emails to a contract specific email inbox. Email contents will be attached to the Contract, so that one had full traceability regarding contract related email exchanges with different suppliers.

Give it a try, and please let us know your feedback - https://solo.axsar.com/contracts

In the future, we will also add email notification capability for expiring contracts, so that one can take action before a contract expires.

AXSAR Solo CRM = Accounts, Contacts, Sales, Help Desk, Contracts, Projects, Tasks, Time sheets, Invoices, Proposals, Notes, To do lists, File, & Diagrams

As a founder of AXSAR Solo, I participated in Y-Combinator Startup School for over 9 weeks.

Apart from being a great program, they also lined up several good deals from big companies for the participating startups.

When it finished last week, I applied for the Google Cloud credits.

Today, I got the below email from Google Cloud:

"Welcome to the Google Cloud Startup Program!

We're pleased to offer your company $3,000 in Start Google Cloud Platform Credits, which can be used for any core GCP product, plus Firebase. "

I would highly recommend Y-Combinator Startup School, so do try to join it next year!

PS: AXSAR Solo is a CRM, and all-in-one workspace for small teams.

It has been really 9 great weeks of learning and interacting with other founders of the startup school.

Today I have 'graduated' now, and have applied to the YC. However, the real success of a startup is when it finds product/market fit, and customers start using the product.

I met lot of super talented founders via weekly video group meetings, building lot of cool products and each founder has been very eager to help out in improving the pitch, questioning the business models, and viability of different ideas.

Founder 'Community' aspect of the Startup School has been really fascinating.

Before joining SUS, I was feeling all alone just building my product without any user feedback.

After joining SUS, I felt energised and more motivated to work on my product. Most brilliant thing happened after the first weekly group chat when I realised that SUS founders are actually also AXSAR Solo potential target customers.

Founders themselves started giving me feedback that a product like AXSAR Solo will be beneficial for founders as well. Previously, my target segments were small teams consisting of mainly freelancers.

PS: AXSAR Solo provides the following features in a single well integrated solution for small teams which will save them subscriptions costs, and reduce the integration complexity. Without AXSAR Solo, they will be using multiple SaaS solutions for these functions, and will pay way more per user in subscription costs, and will have to deal with the integration complexity of integrating multiple SaaS solutions:

CRM : Accounts, Contacts, Sales Pipeline Management, Help Desk management

Project Management: Projects, Tasks Management, Time sheets

Business Management: Invoices, Proposals

Productivity: Notes, To do lists, Files, & Diagrams

https://www.axsar.com/axsar-solo.html

We just launched AXSAR Solo - an all-in-one SaaS solution for Solo Founders and Small Teams.

It allows you to easily manage accounts/contacts, deals, help desk tickets, projects, tasks, invoices, proposals, time sheets, notes, todo lists, files, and diagrams, all in a single seamless SaaS solution.

https://www.axsar.com/axsar-solo.html

Its a soft launch here at IndieHackers. So please let us know about your valuable feedback in the comments.