Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo
duetapp.com
duetapp.com
I also have the sense that you could probably raise your price significantly. Considering what businesses pay for a service like basecamp, they aren't going to blink if you charge them, say, $250 instead of $45 if the software is good. For a business of any size, $250 and $45 are essentially the same as a one-time cost--negligible.
I think the thing to note with regard to price points is that I might be willing to pay $45 "just to try it out", but that definitely wouldn't happen at $250. I'd have to first make a sound decision about the software (through the demo, etc).
At any rate, nice work!
Which should be easy... Just offer a hosted version.
You could do both: Keep selling the $45 version that maybe includes access to a general support forum, but sell a $299 version with premium support for one year. Then sell renewals for support agreements! It'll be worth it to most businesses to avoid the headaches of having to deal with self-hosted software on their own, and you'll have a good source of recurring income from existing customers.
I wouldn't go more than $69 or $79 if you raise your prices at all. If you have future build plans you can always charge for the next version upgrade or specific enhancements. If you want this to be the product you work on and support, try to charge what you can to sustain yourself and grow, but you're going to turn off a bunch of freelancers at some $295 price point that people are suggesting on HN. Somebody said, "for businesses of any size the difference between $250 and $45 is negligible." Um no, These same people (thousands of comments worth) are royally pissed about the Adobe Cloud pricing and are looking for alternatives.
I wouldn't even consider it at $295 price and many others wouldn't either. Why? Because I can get a proven system for many months or permanently at that rate. And for the FOSS ones, I might even become a contributor or leverage the community for enhancements or plugins in those cases.
HN is full of people trying to charge more and a ton of them are going to fail or become irrelevant. Basically your product is for freelancers, not enterprise. That's a fact, luck of the draw, however you want to look at it. Enterprise might trickle in after enough freelancers are rocking your system. Enterprise use Mantis, and that's free. Why should they be turned off by a low price. You might even find small businesses you didn't think of using you product that will be more attracted to your price. There are other things you can do, like try to get bundled with something else, or offer installation service at a rate.
Sell it on your own if you can using Stripe or some other managed provider that isn't taking so much of a cut. Or don't sell it exclusively on codecanyon. you should be making the majority of the money, a lot more than half.
I'm currently using http://www.fusioninvoice.com/ which is a free open source Bootstrap/PHP/MySQL invoicing system. Has clients, estimates, invoices, etc.
Very pretty, but doesn't have project management. This does. So I bought it. Pretty sure I wouldn't have if it was three hundred bucks.
And yes, I'm a solo freelancer, so you're spot on.
I didn't know of: buggenie, bugify, bugkick.
Fusioninvoice is nice, but buggy and targets ONE language only, that English. (Why don't people think about i18n and l10n from the beginning, when designing something that's going to be used internationally.)
Nobody in their right mind would do this. Envato rob you blind if you don't sell with them exclusively.
As it stands, I have no real use for this product because I already use Pancake, but I am inclined to check out the codebase. The benefit of Pancake is that it is built on Codeigniter and Codeigniter is a great, easy-to-use framework to modify.
* Adding PDF.js or pdf2html
* MDV based templating system for invoices and the core
* Web-Component based eCommerce addon
* Integration of Payment Gateways (klarna/paypal/cc)
* Filestorage classes with seamless access to:
rsync, owncloud, aws, dropbox, google drive etc.If someone is interested to build something with docker.io please contact me :)
You can export the VM from EC2.
A free-to-download "test my environment" script could be a good idea to mitigate some of the installation issues. Write a simple one-file PHP script that a prospective buyer can download for free, and run on their target environment. That script can give them a report showing them what works and what doesn't.
This could save you a lot of post-purchase support requests.
In the Java world there is a concept of a .war file which packages everything up so it's easy to deploy on app servers that handle it like: Tomcat or Jetty.
Also what's wrong with giving out a prebuilt virtual image for a single server install? Github enterprise does this.
I have a Puppet script that sets up deployment on a new server. Puppet does not care how many machines the application is running on. Neither does the load balancer/reverse proxy in front of it; it takes a list of IPs and does its thing across them.
I have never seen an app server do anything that wasn't essentially this process, only with more XML and aggravation.
The most important thing is to separate the "self installed" users from the ones using the hosted version (which you might try to monetize at some point).
Point self hosted users to a "community" that can help them while users on your system can email you directly.
It's worked out pretty good for us. We have a much shorter response time for hosted users than self installed. We typically answer most questions on both but it helps separate what's most important (hosted users).
As a side note, this is the reason I hate PayPal. They didn't like my refund percentage apparently and simply banned my account. It sucked being treated like some scammer by countless customer support reps just because I couldn't provide tech support to all customers and had a higher refund rate. It's all for the best now though :) Subscription model + Stripe is a godsend.
Stupidly we have this mailing list software running on our production web server (the same one our customers use to access our apps), so we can't do that. I mean I trust the guy to not go in an install a backdoor or delete all of our files (maybe I shouldn't trust him?) but I've always wondered what the liability is there.
Would we basically have to prove he did something malicious if our server crashed the next day or turned into a spam box?
In the meanwhile, I guess you can mitigate risk by making strict permissions for the user they ssh in with. Are they usually manipulating data on the production server, or changing code? If it's just code, you can give them access to a development server and push code to production by yourself after you've done a review.
When people say "ssh access" they usually mean root. The software that's running there, if the server is properly set up, will be running on a restricted account with restricted privileges. Now, granted, even with that there can be quite a bit of damage, but not as much as giving somebody root access to your system.
I think that the proper solution to any paid, self hosted application would be ... to provide hosting for less tech savvy users. Granted, your main selling point is to be self hosted, but you should not alienate people who are interested just by the product itself. And having a less costy per month plan is a great mean to let users try your app before deciding they should takes time or money to educate or hire a sysadmin.
My point is more that it's probably a good thing to provide both webservice and installable app (github, with its github enterprise is a very good example of that, even if way too expansive), to let user choose your product based on what it does instead of what are its requirements and implications.
And b) assuming you have done your due diligence on the developer in the first place, why not trust him with access to your machine? And again - you shouldn't grant him root of course, but a shell account with privileges similar to the application would be fine.
But really - Purchasing a script from some back-alley developer you have no knowledge of and placing it on your production server? That's the reckless part.
Since you're asking for feedback, I thought this one thing was a little odd:
* Click on a Project (http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/1) * View the calendar tab (http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/1/calendar) * Click on a different Project (http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/2) * The calendar tab is no longer being displayed.
Is there a way to view an overall calendar -and/or- switch between projects without leaving a calendar view?
There isn't an overall calendar. I thought about adding one. I wasn't sure how valuable it would be though.
I totally understand. You've put together a great product where you can (and should) build more features based on customer feedback (rather than trying to build every feature imaginable and never launching).
Kudos!
By the way, you point out that people get the full source-code so they can edit it. Have you figured out how well this would work with updates? It might be wise to add some customisation methods you have more control over (like a box to add custom styles), since otherwise people might edit the source and then break things come updates.
So why not ~$50 with no updates, then $250 with updates for next n months, $500 lifetime and then add support options, or something along those lines.
One of my favorite features of Basecamp is that it's not opinionated towards one form of project. It gives you the ability to add anything to a project, whether it's dates, tasks, files, discussions, etc., but it doesn't show features unless you're actually using them. If you don't have any discussions in a project, it doesn't show a "Discussions" section on the project overview; just a small link to "add the first discussion" if necessary.
Perhaps hide the more specialized features such as Reporting, "On Schedule" indicators, Clients, Invoices, due dates for projects, etc. until the user needs them for their type of project. This would make your product more universally appealing without sacrificing underlying functionality if the user wants it.
Here is the codecanyon page for the same project: http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/4613916
Customer reviews and comments: http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/discussio...
+ Feedback:
1. I did not find any word on -- updates, documentation, support or future upgrades from the developer. These things are more important. Who will maintain this project on long-term? And that's why SAAS based offering sells.
2. Also without a trial, I will never buy a solution, self-hosted or SAAS! I need to use it often to know that its the best-fit for my workflows.
3. And this being a company's project-management tool, should be tried and tested well: stable, secure and should work perfectly out of the box! I don't want to put time in maintaining another project. :)
4. Lock-in? Is there an import or export option from-and-to Basecamp or others?
There's no lock in. It's on your own server so you have full access to the mysql database with all of the info.
You can sell the "infinite" (the bits) for low price (price IS different than value), and sell the "scarce" (your time on customized plugins, install time, training, etc...) for more, and the customer will often be very happy with this arrangement.
As well, this should get you more sales, and a larger community. This is an important point to consider, as an active community can often make or break a product like this.
As a side note, I am considering purchasing this for my own consulting use. At that price, it becomes almost an impulse buy. Thank you for making this an option!
Just my 2c.
Price your product in this way:
- single user: $79 ($49 for updates)
- agency/small business: $299 (+ $129) + $199 for optional install
That's a pretty simple pricing, and it'll make you 1,000 time more sane than putting it on CodeCanyon and fighting with dads and moms trying to setup this on their shared host with a thousand other app and site.
This month estimate earnings on CodeCanyon: 100 (sales) x $45 x 0.7 (best case) = $3,150
Support overhead: 100 person.
You'll need 20 single user license sales, and less than 6 sales in the enterprise edition. That's just 26 person to support. Don't forget that enterprise people are more inclined to give you the $200 and get the thing setup.
- An overall calendar would be good. - Software updates would be good, including what you're about to update and what type of php version the updates need. - Is it possible to change the text in the html ? I'm thinking about using another language because I live in Europe. - Not sure I understand the concept of using the timer. When I click on something else, the timer stops, and when I go back, it starts again, and eventually I end up with a list of numbers. Also, the timer stops at 99 minutes, is that right (didn't check it) ? The site's not loading right now. Is the customer able to see the timer ? If so, give us the ability to remove it. - Not sure you should stay on Codecanyon for this if you plan on giving support. - Make sure you offer good support, even if it comes at a price. - It's not really loading very well right now but that's probably because of HN. I now see 2 screens underneath each other. I will have to come back and give it another try. - Make How To videos.
The fact that it can be purchased and installed is the differentiating factor and may target a market audience that's largely ignored.
While there is usually the potential for higher sales with a SaaS approach, that doesn't mean it's always the correct fit when entering a market.
You could undercut Basecamp by a sizeable margin and still turn a nice profit.
Of course, as mentioned above, saving time not having to support customer installations could (easily?) offset hosting costs.
...and it's free (FOSS).
I noticed the website uses Foundation while the actual app uses Bootstrap. Any reason? Having used both, do you prefer one or the other?
What are your thoughts on Bootstrap vs Gumby Framework (http://gumbyframework.com/)?
At this stage, it just seems weird to start a new web project and not use at least some framework.
As to the difference in number of components - the Bootstrap ecosystem is massive -checkout:
http://www.bootstraphero.com/the-big-badass-list-of-twitter-...
I've been slowly collecting links for a similar Foundation list and it hasn't been going so well.
Duet mentions a name, and 23&W has a contact form also, but there is just nothing.
I tried googling, but kept getting asked "Did you mean amazon?"
Looking at the invoicing system, it's hard to figure our all the options. But if it's good I may decide move from http://freeagent.com/ to host my own. Are there any more plans to extent the financing side of the app ? Or any particular roadmaps for the product ?
What I think you are missing however are Discussions. I find discussions to be the single most valuable feature that Basecamp has to offer. I also love that for any todo or file, project members have the ability to comment on that item, which is essentially a discussion in itself.
The ability to keep all of the conversations that are taking place with various members of both my internal and external teams in one place is incredibly helpful. It eliminates the need to track disperate conversations across gchat, gmail, skype etc, and gives all team members transparency into the various facets of the project.
I think adding these features would make your app much more robust and compelling.
But when I see a for-profit script I know that the creator has an incentive to keep pushing updates and maintanance and design.
Also, you should sell your script yourself AS WELL as selling it on CodeCanyon. That way you can funnel people towards your site and make more money per sale PLUS get the benefits of being on CodeCanyon's community.
The internet is NOT Walmart, there's no exclusivity contract, you don't have to sell your product or service in only one place.
Check out patio11's online talks for more rational.
FYI: I had no issues accessing your page this morning, however a couple of hours later and I'm getting this from Sophos AV:
Access has been blocked as the threat Mal/HTMLGen-A has been found on this website.It would be great if there was some sort of auto invoice (it seems you have to enter the time details in manually)
The calendar seems to always require scrolling down, it would be great if it fitted in the view
Also, mobile support if its not there, for iPad at least with a home icon
And agree with other posters here, a timer that work across page refreshes and overall calendar showing all tasks / deadlines for all projects would be awesome.
* Sir, can I help you by contributing??
* I can code/sysadmin/design
The one thing I can really agree on here is the installation procedure involved with users. I know someone brushed on it but it may be worth looking into Linode StackScripts and Amazon EC2 Images?
It might not even be a problem or suit your needs but I think it might help in some cases
A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.
Script: http://www.duetapp.com/demo/client/js/libs/less-1.3.0.min.js...
Apologies as I know you are being bombarded with questions but this looks fantastic for my small office situation.
Edit: I just purchased anyways and will experiment later this week. Would you want to host a forum where users can discuss issues?
PS - More about my setup to help you reproduce:
- Desktop Chrome 26 - 1920x1080 - 125% DPI (Windows) - Zoom Level: 0 (default) - Chrome Font Size: "Large"
I currently use TaskCoach to keep track of all my tasks and invoice my clients on a hourly basis.
A year back I had started building a web based time tracker using HTML5 background workers and stuff. But I lost motivation. :(
I, too, hope you remember to check back :-)
I am definitely going to get this. Though I wanted to ask if it has some sort of import feature. I am switching from BC and it has loads of data and projects there.
syntax error: unexpected token '/' in less.js
How are tax rates configured? I didn't see anything about it in the admin demo.
And it happily runs the script when you view that task.
Annually and/or within major version updates, except [security] bugfixes of course.
"Integrated messaging helpw you keep your entire..."
I just shot you an e-mail via codecanyon.
Looks great! Looking forward to giving it a shot tonight.
One reason why: if you knew the LTV of a customer on a SaaS app, would there be any reason to not sell it to them for self-hosting for that amount?
Software like FogBugz is available in both flavors, self-hosted or hosted by them.
Ones to really watch out for are Godaddy shared hosting (note that updates to .htaccess files can take many hours to actually show and performance is frequently abysmal) and "Hostgator" (they do something funky on some of their shared hosting servers that breaks custom user session support if you use that). You'll soon find there is a huge difference between quality and cheap shared hosting.
I'd like to use this for my own projects, but I'm way out of practice doing this stuff.
(This isn't for cpanel addons, it's for installing packaged applications directly to a user's cpanel-based hosting account.)
It would be PHP-based and might work as an installer, user just needs their control panel login username/password from their webhost. (Too bad cpanel doesn't do oauth2). I've already tested with some of the major web hosting providers.