The Church Co
High Quality, low cost websites for churches & nonprofits.
Church websites really need some love.
This is devastating for me but having public numbers is starting to affect us. This will hardly be my last product though so I look forward to joining the ranks again and starting over. If anyone ever wants an update just send me a message. Happy to share how we are doing.
So about starting over.... that was much harder than I thought it would be. It seems like such a great idea until you realized just how much code you've written for version 1.
Here's my 6-month update.
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We have a working prototype of version two complete with Auth, emails, accounts, white-labeling, billing and media management.
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Instead of launching right now, we are going to spin up a smaller product in the same space to test the infrastructure and learn before we start the process of migrating people to version 2.
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There's still a lot more to be done. Up next is building a CRM into the product for better management of people.
Some lessons I've learned in the process.
There so much more to running a business than writing code. I try to code every day but typically get about 8 hours in a week of development. The rest is the day-to-day running of the business. I miss the coding but the business side is just as important and because of it we've grown $19k MRR since the last update.
I'll try and post more going forward. Love the IndieHackers community!
It's safe to say that this idea has been validated now. We have 1000 customers and $42k MRR. When we started we wanted to be the best website builder for churches. We used WordPress to get up and running quickly and put a ton of effort into custom functionality. Basically, you can't install a plugin and rebuild what we have currently done.
I went down the route of building a headless option for WordPress using React for a custom Admin Interface. It worked great but at the end of the day, it was still hacking WordPress to get it to do what we wanted.
A month ago, I decided to start fresh and give myself two weeks to build something custom. I focused on Authentication, Stripe Subscriptions, and a simple UI. It worked great! So well, that I can't imagine not using this moving forward.
Today, I forked my repo and started Version 2 of Version 2.
Wish me luck!
We did it! 1000 active customers. It took about 3.5 years since turning on payments. Here's a break down by year.
Year 1:
- 121 Customers
- $2,810 MRR
Year 2:
- 348 Customers
- $12,661 MRR
Year 3:
- 830 Customers
- $34,167 MRR
Today:
- 1013 Customers
- $42,629 MRR
My favorite part of this is that it is entirely word of mouth growth. We only spend a couple hundred a month on ads but happy customers tell their friends in the space. It just goes to show that if you do good work and value your customers, people take notice.
Be kind :)
We've officially doubled in revenue since I decided to go full time in December.
Letting go of control is hard but it's for the best.
Every time I hear Intercom beep, I have to stop myself from chatting back instantly to allow our staff member to do it. I thought this would get easier but it didn't so much so that I had to delete the app from my browser and phone. Turns out this was the best thing I could have done. Sales are up and he's becoming really comfortable talking potential customers through the sales process. It's also freed me up to continue work on v2.
We've just set a new goal of $45k to end the year. So far we are a few hundred overpaced.
Also, I just moved to Sydney so if there are any Sydney Indie Hackers, I'd love to connect!
The last two months have been crazy. I never realized how many people just didn't have websites before or hadn't touched their site in years. We've done around 200 new customers in two months which has led us to make a few changes.
- We've made our first full-time hire!
- We've brought on someone to manage ads and marketing.
- I'm moving into a higher-level role managing the code and partnerships.
All of these changes have freed us up to start working on v2!
Excited for the future!
The rush to move everyone online has made March the largest month we've ever had. We doubled our new customers, lowered churn and upgrades are up 400%. We're pretty much working around the clock to keep up with demand. Looking to bring on more support next week.
Let's see what these servers can handle. Now that gatherings of more than 100 in some places have been canceled. Churches have turned to their websites to host their services. There's no way to know what amount of traffic we will get today so I bumped everything up multiple tiers and scaled to multiple servers. We'll see if that was enough. I'm ready to keep scaling all day.
It took about three full weeks of solid dev to clear the backlog. Now I'm strategizing about the best way to market and grow the platform. My goal is to hit 1000 active customers by the end of the year.
Things that I've noticed since being full time:
- Churn hurts way worse when this is your only income.
- Client demos and phone calls aren't nearly as fruitful as I thought they would be.
- New features don't drive sales but they reduce support tickets so that's still a win.
Finally.
This was long overdue and I'm so excited to be here! To wake up at a normal time, work during the day, and spend time with my family in the evening is incredible!
Here's the journey I took to get here.
2015
I started writing code as a hobby to help me with various client work.
2016
I took on a few free customers and kept improving the product. I worked on the platform for about 5 hours a month.
2017
I started taking payments in July and had half my customers quit the same day. We ended the year at $900 MRR. I was working roughly 10 hours a month on the product.
2018
I started to get involved in Facebook groups and helping people with website questions and this resulted in a lot of growth. We did around 150 customers that year. I was working 5-10 hours a week. We ended the year around $6000 MRR.
2019
The growth caught up to me. I was working 10-20 hours a week in addition to my regular day job. We did 338 customers this year. I rarely slept more than 5 hours a day and was always awake and working by 6:30 AM every day. We ended the year at around $19,000 MRR.
2020
I put in notice, quit my job and am full time as of this week. We've done 50 customers already this year and are growing rapidly. We are currently at $21,000 MRR and adding around $1500 a month.
The future is bright! I can't wait to update this in a year.