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There are a lot of IPs out there. Unlike Pokemon we can't catch them all. It varies but we run less than 50 honeypot nodes in 15 different countries (because I

There are a lot of IPs out there. Unlike Pokemon we can't catch them all. It varies but we run less than 50 honeypot nodes in 15 different countries (because I pay for them out of the kindness of my heart each month as we are not yet profitable) right now that would collect this kind of data. Our goal is if we get more people to signup we will add more nodes. Obviously more nodes = more data.

mkagenius 10y ago
Why not price a little higher, lower it when you get profits?
- fragfester 10y ago
  We never considered it I guess. Like someone else already mentioned there are other options out there but their prices are insanely ridiculous. Starting at $10 /month the three of us devs/creators feel like a competitive price will keep big and small customers happy hopefully long-term.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Look up articles on pricing plans. $10 is really low and makes your product seem less valuable (if it's so good why are you almost giving it away?). Cheap and free customers are often not worth the headache. You probably want the entry-level plan to be at least $39, $49 or so. Maybe more. Offer a free trial, and let that be enough for the cheap customers. I don't think there are 100s, let alone 1000s, of low-maint customers that are thinking "hmm, this abuse issue is really a problem on my site, consuming at least an hour a month of my time, but I can't afford $49 to fix it". Think about it, you're asking for $25 for a million checks. Typically that'll be sign-ups or some sort of interaction. So their volume is probably what, 10-50x times that. Even if they used your API for checking before anon comments, that means they're getting millions of pageviews/visits per month. If such a site can't afford a, I dunno, $199 plan, maybe they aren't worth dealing with. If you really think you need a charity-level plan, perhaps include a contact link for "open source and educational projects". Someone will probably point out some wildly successful freemium model. Suppose that's possible too. But even then you'll want to make a large gap between free and premium. No one wants to deal with $10/month business customers.
    - fragfester 10y ago
      Thats really great advice, we're talking about it on Slack now. Thanks
      - true_religion 10y ago
        As a converse to this.... If you raise your price, you will only end up dealing with businesses that have identified a need for your product, and know exactly how much fraud and other issues cost them. With your price as is anyone can use it for any purpose, including those that don't involve losing money because of a fraud transaction. I considered using you for my site just to get GEO-IP. Sure, I could setup a geoip database myself and keep it in sync manually, but at your price point... it was a no brainer. Plus I'd get threat analysis thrown in so I can know if one of my users isn't able to see the site because Cloudflare is blocking them for being a tor exit node. But of course if you charge $1000 a month for that, I won't use it for 'any purporse'. I'll just use it for pre-screening new subscriber accounts (and not free ones) because that's the only time it'd make sense.
        MichaelGG 10y ago
        Look at the numbers again. 1,000,000 checks a month for $25? Even for an ad-supported site (using the checks for commenting) will get vastly more revenue and be able to afford it. Remember, at $10 for $100, he has to convert 10x the number of accounts. People that are considering setting up their own DB usually don't fall into the category of "good SaaS customers".
        fragfester 10y ago
        Thanks for all the great feedback everybody. We are still looking at pricing. Obviously with all the signups today we will honor original pricing forever if we do decide to make any changes in the future.
        true_religion 10y ago
        True, but if i weren't a technically enabled client then I would want real fraud scrubbing, not this simplistic stuff based solely on someones IP address. This is something you can add to your own heuristic, but not really use as-is.

mkagenius 10y ago

Why not price a little higher, lower it when you get profits?

fragfester 10y ago
We never considered it I guess. Like someone else already mentioned there are other options out there but their prices are insanely ridiculous. Starting at $10 /month the three of us devs/creators feel like a competitive price will keep big and small customers happy hopefully long-term.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Look up articles on pricing plans. $10 is really low and makes your product seem less valuable (if it's so good why are you almost giving it away?). Cheap and free customers are often not worth the headache. You probably want the entry-level plan to be at least $39, $49 or so. Maybe more. Offer a free trial, and let that be enough for the cheap customers. I don't think there are 100s, let alone 1000s, of low-maint customers that are thinking "hmm, this abuse issue is really a problem on my site, consuming at least an hour a month of my time, but I can't afford $49 to fix it". Think about it, you're asking for $25 for a million checks. Typically that'll be sign-ups or some sort of interaction. So their volume is probably what, 10-50x times that. Even if they used your API for checking before anon comments, that means they're getting millions of pageviews/visits per month. If such a site can't afford a, I dunno, $199 plan, maybe they aren't worth dealing with. If you really think you need a charity-level plan, perhaps include a contact link for "open source and educational projects". Someone will probably point out some wildly successful freemium model. Suppose that's possible too. But even then you'll want to make a large gap between free and premium. No one wants to deal with $10/month business customers.
  - fragfester 10y ago
    Thats really great advice, we're talking about it on Slack now. Thanks
    - true_religion 10y ago
      As a converse to this.... If you raise your price, you will only end up dealing with businesses that have identified a need for your product, and know exactly how much fraud and other issues cost them. With your price as is anyone can use it for any purpose, including those that don't involve losing money because of a fraud transaction. I considered using you for my site just to get GEO-IP. Sure, I could setup a geoip database myself and keep it in sync manually, but at your price point... it was a no brainer. Plus I'd get threat analysis thrown in so I can know if one of my users isn't able to see the site because Cloudflare is blocking them for being a tor exit node. But of course if you charge $1000 a month for that, I won't use it for 'any purporse'. I'll just use it for pre-screening new subscriber accounts (and not free ones) because that's the only time it'd make sense.
      - MichaelGG 10y ago
        Look at the numbers again. 1,000,000 checks a month for $25? Even for an ad-supported site (using the checks for commenting) will get vastly more revenue and be able to afford it. Remember, at $10 for $100, he has to convert 10x the number of accounts. People that are considering setting up their own DB usually don't fall into the category of "good SaaS customers".
        fragfester 10y ago
        Thanks for all the great feedback everybody. We are still looking at pricing. Obviously with all the signups today we will honor original pricing forever if we do decide to make any changes in the future.
        true_religion 10y ago
        True, but if i weren't a technically enabled client then I would want real fraud scrubbing, not this simplistic stuff based solely on someones IP address. This is something you can add to your own heuristic, but not really use as-is.