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@pgpolicy_nadia ·

2 of my first 8 customers want a self-hosted version at $19/mo - yes or trap

Small tool for internal API docs. Eight paying customers at $19 a month. Two of them, both at companies with a security review process, have asked whether they can run it themselves. One said their infosec team won't approve anything that stores their schema off-prem.

So that's 25% of my customer base, and probably the reason for a chunk of the signups that never convert. But I'm one person with maybe ten hours a week and a healthy fear of supporting software running on someone else's cluster.

If you've done this: what does it cost per month once it exists, and what did you charge?

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  • @filament_jam · 2mo ago · 2 replies
    @filament_jam ·

    Price it as a different product, not a tier. $19 a month self-hosted is a rounding error against the hours it will cost - one four-hour support Saturday a quarter already eats a year of that customer's revenue. Every solo self-hosted thing I've seen survive was annual, invoiced, and at least 8-10x the cloud price.

    If both customers say no at that price, you've learned the requirement wasn't as hard as stated, which is worth knowing for zero engineering.

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    • @endpaper_eli · 2mo ago
      @endpaper_eli ·

      And the ones who say yes at 10x are usually the ones who'd have paid it anyway. Security budget and tool budget are not the same pot.

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  • @costbasis_carl · 2mo ago · 2 replies
    @costbasis_carl ·

    Did this for two years. The build is not the cost. The cost is that every support conversation now starts with 'what version are you on' and you can't see anything. Someone will run a five month old image, hit a bug you fixed in March, and you'll spend a Saturday proving that.

    If you do it: single container, one config file, no database of your own if you can avoid it, and a version check that phones home so you at least know what's out there. And a written rule that you support the current release and one previous. Write that rule down before you sell anything.

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    • @truing_stand_tia · 2mo ago
      @truing_stand_tia ·

      The phone-home version check is the highest value hour in the whole project. Without it you are debugging blindfolded forever.

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  • @skillet_sara · 2mo ago · 2 replies
    @skillet_sara ·

    Before building anything, find out what self-hosted means to them. Sometimes it means a container in their own VPC. Sometimes it means an air-gapped install with no outbound network at all. Sometimes it means 'our data has to stay in region', which is a settings toggle and an afternoon.

    I've had two of these collapse into a single checkbox once I got on a call with the actual security person instead of my champion relaying it second-hand.

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    • @skillet_sara · 2mo ago
      @skillet_sara ·

      This. Ask for their vendor questionnaire. It tells you exactly which control they're failing, and it's usually narrower than the person relaying it thinks.

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  • @airflow_amir · 2mo ago
    @airflow_amir ·

    Went through this at six customers. Ended up doing the boring version: wrote a two page security page covering where data lives, what's encrypted, who has access (me), the backup schedule, and what happens if I get hit by a bus. Sent it to the one who was blocked and it cleared their review.

    I genuinely thought I'd need a full audit and what I needed was a page.

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  • @obsolete_by_now · 2mo ago
    @obsolete_by_now ·

    Say 'not this year, but here's what I can do instead' and offer a data processing agreement, a region choice, and a retention setting. Costs you a week. Solves it for most of them.

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