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I wouldn't say this one to be frugal, but then frugality varies by different parameters. What they priortize (Eg: a dedicated marketing tool vs sending marketin

I wouldn't say this one to be frugal, but then frugality varies by different parameters. What they priortize (Eg: a dedicated marketing tool vs sending marketing through app itself), what their expertise in (hosting in vps vs aws vs heroku, etc), the type of service, team size and so on. As there are 10 ways to do the same thing all with a different tradeoffs. Being solo myself, I aim to keep my costs as low as possible as well. Until my last product, all my previous products I kept the running costs to $3 per month (just for the server on hetzner). Rest all were free services (tawk.to for CS, Zoho for email, postmark for emails, and so on). Granted they weren't making much, just couple of hundred dollars per month, but then it was pure profit and it got fun to measure the returns in profit than just revenue. For the latest one, all in all I spend around $30 per month with close to $1250 in mrr. So it has generous spend to return ratio. The only three running cost are the helpscout (for customer support, docs, etc.), google workspace and the servers with Hetzner. HelpScout and Google workspace were my way of "splurging" the costs. Last I checked I was using close to 16 services (ranging from marketing to revenue tracking), so weren't really skimping on tools to save costs either. The free tools (including several the op mentioned) are awesome to get started, but many of these services' costs would jump multi-fold even if you add one other team member or go just above the limit. That's anyway all these services' business model as well.

swaggyBoatswain 3y ago
I think the author here is prioritizing simplicity of deployments above all else, because he realizes time is money. The amount of time to build something VS paying to use an off the shelf item is an important decision to make, and I think the author made good decisions across the board The author does come across more as a business/operations person first, developer second. Most developers would not consider tools like ahrefs or intercom or even realize that marketing is generally more difficult/important than the develpment work itself Relatively speaking even at all these costs I would consider this to be frugal. If your a skilled developer you would easily be worth at least $100/hr Taking off the shelf solutions with easy scalability of services for adding additional people operationally is important time saved is time earned, time is money, and money saved is money earned
dml2135 3y ago
Would you be able to share what your products are? I'd love to host a small service like this, but struggle to come up with something that would be both useful and profitable at a small scale.
- avinoth 3y ago
  Sure. Broadly this is the list. Many of these are my go-to's for all my products. Only the Project management, I had to keep trying new things. Most favorite for now is Trello. Also, I use dokku for deployment, so it's very similar to heroku and uses heroku buildpacks. Hetzner - Servers. Helpscout - Customer helpdesk Google - workspace Email Github - Source code Airbrake - Error monitoring Posthog - Analytics Shortcut - Project management Canny - Feedback & Changelog announcement Stoplight - API documentation Slack - For app testing UptimeRobot - Uptime monitoring MRR - For subscription tracking Mailgun - Transactional Emails Reform - One time used for feedback collection Calendly - Call bookings Paddle - Payment platform

swaggyBoatswain 3y ago

I think the author here is prioritizing simplicity of deployments above all else, because he realizes time is money. The amount of time to build something VS paying to use an off the shelf item is an important decision to make, and I think the author made good decisions across the board The author does come across more as a business/operations person first, developer second. Most developers would not consider tools like ahrefs or intercom or even realize that marketing is generally more difficult/important than the develpment work itself Relatively speaking even at all these costs I would consider this to be frugal. If your a skilled developer you would easily be worth at least $100/hr Taking off the shelf solutions with easy scalability of services for adding additional people operationally is important time saved is time earned, time is money, and money saved is money earned

dml2135 3y ago

Would you be able to share what your products are? I'd love to host a small service like this, but struggle to come up with something that would be both useful and profitable at a small scale.

avinoth 3y ago
Sure. Broadly this is the list. Many of these are my go-to's for all my products. Only the Project management, I had to keep trying new things. Most favorite for now is Trello. Also, I use dokku for deployment, so it's very similar to heroku and uses heroku buildpacks. Hetzner - Servers. Helpscout - Customer helpdesk Google - workspace Email Github - Source code Airbrake - Error monitoring Posthog - Analytics Shortcut - Project management Canny - Feedback & Changelog announcement Stoplight - API documentation Slack - For app testing UptimeRobot - Uptime monitoring MRR - For subscription tracking Mailgun - Transactional Emails Reform - One time used for feedback collection Calendly - Call bookings Paddle - Payment platform