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Comment by _1kfq | Hacker News Reader

[name redacted] started a few months before Plausible.

Giving it away for free didn't help, but "making money" was never really a goal as such. I think "being free" is important if you want to be a viable alternative for Google Analytics. €9/month is nothing for a business, but who is paying that for a blog or hobby site (or even some small businesses)?

I already decided a few years ago that "covers hosting" is good enough. It's just that circumstances conspired to put in this rather uncomfortable position.

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> but who is paying that for a blog or hobby site (or even some small businesses)?

I was trying to. I highly recommend you to bring back the paid plans. Just leave it as it was. Opt-in for personal and for small commercial websites, paid plan. Like someone else mentioned, for a business, invoices helps a lot to bill as expense if they want to pay you.

Always ALWAYS have a way to give money that results in a professional-looking invoice for a professional-sounding product. That’s a great way for people in business to get the cost expensed.

As much as i admire that: The language you wrote that in, only exists, because google found a way to grow by making money.

To be fair, not sure if this is a pro or contra: [name redacted] wouldn't need to exist, if google didn't find the way they did, to make money.

Anyway, cool product. Love OSS but don't mind paying for simple solutions as a business. It's not only about saving time but also about keeping focus.

Thank you for making it free! I've used it on my blog (https://vgel.me) forever, since back before I ever would've paid for analytics, and it's been rock-solid the whole time. Some of the most "set it and forget it" software I use. I definitely owe you a donation so I'm glad I saw this!

It’s very very risky to optimize for just “good enough”. You have to build some reserve, or you risk being in the situation you are in.

You don’t need to optimize to earn tons of money, but minimum threshold should more than just good enough. So, if things go wrong, you can spend that reserve and actually be on a “good enough” position until you figure things out

One difference I see is I heard very little about [name redacted] (first time was mid 2023), but Plausible pops up every few months to the top of HN. So they for sure have marketed harder.

This also validates that maybe something like Setapp for SaaS or Spotify for SaaS might be a good business model.

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