Comment by ksec
2 days ago
As much as I like the ONCE idea, even 37signals have found it hard to be sustainable. I think they intend to have an improved version of ONCE idea coming out later.
Other than that I hope this project succeed. May be another idea is that you offer paid hosted model as well as the ONCE product. This is similar to a lot of OSS web analytics. People are happy to pay for subscription / services as long as they know they are not locked in. i.e They are happy to pay for $20 - even $2K per month due to Opex rather than Capex reason or saving the manual labour hassle. And they have the choice to move their data to ONCE product when they see fit.
All the best I hope this work out.
I follow 37signals updates on ONCE, but I don’t recall them mentioning sustainability issues. Could you share a link?
Thanks for the suggestion! A hosted solution could definitely be an option. That said, some people have mentioned that having an indie dev behind it can be a turn-off. I’ll keep exploring ideas that make sense, though.
I want to vaguely recall that they had like 4 products in planning stages for ONCE, released Campfire, then released Writebook for free, and then made Campfire free.
Lately on the podcast I only hear about Fizzy and one other unannounced SAAS that they're putting dev energy behind, nothing about other ONCE products.
I suspect that without a critical mass of usage driving word of mouth the long tail of sales was basically nil, and long-term even fairly small products weren't looking to recoup dev costs any time soon.
Fizzy uses SQLite for multitenancy. I suppose that’s why it takes up so much of their time. Being a fan of SQLite, I hope this approach succeeds. P.S. I know Campfire has made “six figures”