SaaS Status

Thanks for the comment! Glad you agree — it’s easy to get stuck in the idea of a “unique” product, but validating the market first really saves time. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts!

it feels like the more you understand about marketing, the harder it gets.

Totally agree — marketing is the key skill for modern indie founders. I come from a dev background too, and it took me way too long to realize just how much it matters. You can build a great product, but without knowing how to get it in front of people, it’ll just sit there. The more I learn about marketing, the more I respect how deep and complex it really is. Definitely not something you can “just figure out later.”

That's awesome, glad to hear it's working for you! I’ll definitely try outreach later too — right now I’m focused on testing inbound first.

Absolutely — building in public can work really well, especially when your target audience is developers or indie founders who hang out on the same platforms. But if your product is for a different kind of user, it might not convert to sales directly. In that case, it’s still worth doing to grow an audience for future launches. Having people who follow your work makes every launch easier — even if just a small percentage turn into users, it compounds over time.

Thanks! Good luck with the beta — what's the product about?

For me, I wouldn’t build the product first. The key is to find clients who are willing to pay. I’d aim to get at least 10 paying customers before moving forward with development. There are different ways to go about it — a landing page is just one way to get the message out, but you can also do outreach, calls, or even create a presentation. It depends on the niche and your starting point.

If it were me, I’d probably start with a landing page that clearly shows what the product is about (which is necessary anyway). From there, I’d use lead forms or outreach to gather leads and sell to them. Once I had at least 10 people who were ready to pay, that’s when I’d focus on building the product.

Thanks! Glad you liked the approach. Execution and distribution really are the key. Appreciate the feedback!

Exactly, So what are you planning to bring further?

It might depend on the type of business and what you are selling

Yes, in my case, the landing page includes a registration button as if the product is already available, followed by a form to request a trial. I mention that a checkout with a card is required and that I'll send a link to start the trial via email. I also make it clear that no charges will be made before the trial ends.

This is important because it helps attract leads who aren’t scared off by having to enter card details — I’m confirming upfront that they’re ready to pay. Otherwise, you could end up with hundreds of leads who aren't actually willing to pay and just wanted to "check it out."

agreed, i would articulate it as people don't want new, they want a different flavor.

New = Unknown
most people fear the unknown

A different flavor is familiar, but a nice change of pace.

I agree with you on the uniqueness point. A lot of people try to solve unique problems, which often leads to solving problems that don’t really exist. But uniqueness doesn’t always have to be about the product itself — it can be in your marketing (selling on Instagram when everyone else is focused on SEO), design, or even something subtle that makes you stand out.

A good example would be bottled water — the market is huge, there are thousands of producers, and the product is essentially the same: drinking water. Yet, these businesses thrive because their uniqueness lies in the bottle design, the taste (everyone has their own audience), where it’s sold, and even the exclusivity of it in certain stores. It’s still just water, solving the same problem, but there’s always a way to create differentiation.

So, I totally agree — marketing and positioning can create a unique angle that matters, even in a crowded space.

Use the same strategy again and act swiftly.

There is no One fit Strategy for all buddy, It changes as per product and market..

I think it’s less about being solo or not — if you can’t sell your product, then there’s no point in building it. Otherwise, what’s the purpose? I can understand that some people might feel more comfortable selling a ready product, but if it doesn’t work out, you’ve just wasted time. I’ve been down the road of building the product first, and then struggling for a long time to make my first sales. I got lucky in the end, but it could’ve gone the other way.

Thanks! Appreciate it 💯

Right now, I’m testing my first channel — Google Ads. I’ve actually written a post about it here: Why I'm Testing Paid Ads Before Building My SaaS Product.

The ads are still in the learning phase, so I’ll share the results once I have more data. If this channel doesn’t work out, I’ll move on to others, like cold outreach or getting listed in classified directories.

I’ve just started using X myself, so the results are still limited and I’m not an expert in this area either. But I’m giving it a try. Once I gather more experience and insights, I might share what I’ve learned.

I would like to know about the results too.

The ad campaign is still in the learning phase. It looks like the search ads need a lot more time to optimize, while the social media ads learned in about a day. The search campaign has been in the learning phase for a few days now, so we're still waiting on results.

On the organic side, I've gotten about 200 visits from content on IndieHackers and X, and so far there are 4 leads. One of those has an invalid email, and 3 others haven't responded yet.

To draw any meaningful conclusions, I need to fill the funnel with at least 100 leads. Based on my experience, about 10% of them should convert to sales, so anything less than that means the data isn't complete yet.

Once the ad campaigns start showing results, I’ll write a post sharing the insights and the next steps.

Of course, if you’re focused on a niche and differentiate yourself from others — that's great. But even that’s not always necessary. In large markets, there’s often room for multiple similar products. It's a misconception that all users know every product on the market and compare them. Some people might discover your product first and buy it without ever having compared it to others.

So, standing out doesn't always require a completely unique product. Even identical products can be sold and promoted differently, and that in itself can be a form of uniqueness. For example, you could market in a different way, use different channels, or target a different audience, which can make your offering stand out, even if the core product is the same.

Yes, I’ve got some organic traffic from X and Indie Hackers. So far, I’ve had 4 leads from there — one with an invalid email and three that didn’t respond. The ad campaign is still learning, so no leads from that yet, but I’ll share results once I start seeing them.

To really make conclusions, I need at least 100 leads in the funnel. From my experience, the conversion rate from lead to sale is around 10%, so it’s still too early to draw any conclusions. There have been very few leads, and I haven’t had contact with anyone yet.

Thanks a lot for your thoughtful comment — really appreciate it!

Totally agree with you: search ads with strong intent perform much better than display or social — even with a small budget. The volume is lower, but the clicks are way more relevant. Most of my accidental traffic came from a mobile game app (likely misclicks in India), and those users didn’t even wait for the site to load. Lesson learned 😅

As for early leads — yes! I’m collecting emails and qualifying them manually for now, just like in early sales. I ask when they need monitoring, whether they’ve seen pricing, and if they control the budget — the idea is to identify people who’d buy today if the product existed. Only those I count as real potential customers.

Then I ask which features are must-haves for them to buy. That’s already helping me shape the roadmap around what’s essential, not just what I think is cool. Of course, I’m partly building this for myself (I run other SaaS products that need monitoring), but I’m not the market, so I want to stay grounded in actual demand.

Once I get around 20 qualified leads, I’ll calculate CAC and see if it’s even viable to move forward with the build.

Let’s definitely stay in touch — would love to swap learnings as we go!

Completely agree with researching competition to validate demand. Learned that the hard way with a product I'm currently considering launching. Completely ignored looking at competition and thought only about the problem and how broadly it seemed to be felt.

It's also fair to use the approach as Charlie outlined, to test out your specific landing page and intake funnel. I think that's more for after you've validated there's a market though.

Thanks — you're totally right that the existence of successful competitors already validates the general demand. I probably didn’t phrase that clearly enough in my post.

What I’m actually trying to validate is not just “does the market exist?”, but:

1. Can I attract traffic for this specific angle?

2. Can I sell this concept to real people before the product even exists?

3. Will it be profitable without needing VC-level burn?

Many founders build first and then struggle to get traffic. That used to work in the early days of the web and app stores — not anymore. Now, “product-first” is often “traffic-last”. Marketing must come first.

That’s why I’m running ads: I want to test channels, positioning, pricing — and see if I can reliably get qualified leads. Then I qualify them manually (like in a real sales process), figure out their urgency, budget, deal-breaker features — and if they’d buy today if the product existed.

Only after that do I ask: would this even be profitable? Based on CAC from real leads, I’ll see how many months of subscription I’d need to break even. If it’s more than 3 months — it’s not worth pursuing, unless I’m going for a venture model (which I’m not).

Regarding uniqueness — I think it’s overrated in big markets. When demand is high, there’s space for many tools with overlapping functionality. Coding is cheap these days — the hard part is acquiring customers.

So instead of betting on a “unique” product, I’d rather prove I can profitably acquire and convert users. That’s the real moat in 2025.

Sure, I actually shared some thoughts on that earlier. You can check it out here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/why-i-m-testing-paid-ads-before-building-my-saas-product-blAUxNSaF616mG1D7TdU?commentId=VPzRqbLDjBGZLyclZuM1 — it covers how I’m handling early leads

No, I’m not running a crowdfunding campaign.

Thanks a lot! Appreciate it

Hey, thanks so much — really appreciate the kind words!

Totally agree — for indie founders, simple and fast wins. That’s exactly the pain I’m solving: avoid scrambling during downtime and cut support tickets with a tool that’s dead simple to set up.

I’ll definitely share a post soon comparing SaaS Status to other tools (like Statuspage, Better Uptime, etc). My focus is on:
– fast setup without docs
– sane pricing (especially for solo founders and small teams)
– no-bloat features you’ll actually use

Glad to hear you'd be interested in trying it — once it's ready, I’d love to send you early access :)

Thanks so much — really appreciate you sharing that! Yeah, exactly the same pain here: one small hiccup and suddenly it's a flood of support messages. That’s what I’m hoping to reduce with a super simple tool that just works.

Great to hear you dropped your email — weirdly, I didn’t see a new lead come through 🤔 Maybe there was a glitch on my side? Mind trying again or DM’ing it to me here?

And yes — custom domains + webhook/API support are definitely on the roadmap. I’m still validating what features are most important early on, and you nailed two that keep popping up. Will keep you posted as it takes shape!

Appreciate it, brother! Glad it helped — let me know if you’re working on something too, happy to exchange ideas 👊

• Yes, I use AI for the posts. I write my thoughts and provide the context, and AI helps me polish the text to make it more readable and well-structured. But the content and ideas are definitely mine.

• Glad the info was helpful!

• I'm also new here, don’t have deep knowledge of the platform, just sharing my thoughts. It seems it was useful to many, and I’m happy it helped.

• I wrote more about the ads here: link to the post.

• Thanks for the feedback on the page, I’ll definitely consider that when I work on it further!

Thanks!

Hey, thanks! Great question.

There are a few ways to price, but for most classic SaaS (not AI or high-cost-per-request stuff), “cost + margin” doesn’t make much sense — server costs are usually negligible.

For me, pricing starts with understanding customer acquisition cost (CAC). Ideally, the first or second payment should cover CAC. But I don’t know my CAC yet — that’s what this landing page is for. So I picked a middle-ground price based on market research and competitors.

One key thing: don’t go too cheap. Low prices might get you more signups, but if the economics don’t work — you don’t have a business. Better to start with market-level pricing, then experiment.

After launch, I’ll test prices continuously. If raising prices doesn’t hurt conversions — great, now I earn more per user. The product’s value > price.

There’s a saying: “If 20% of users don’t say it’s too expensive, you’re underpricing.” That’s been true in my experience too.

I’ll probably write a full post on pricing later — stay tuned :)