destroytoday

Oooo nice! Thanks for the link.

Currently, we pay for a single Slack user (me), but each person who works on Cushion-related things are single-channel guests. I work with one other full-time dev, so he's in the #dev channel. I work with an editor in the #content channel. Growth guy in the #growth channel, etc. It's actually refreshing not having everyone in one channel—a lot less sifting.

Thanks!

Crap—I'm one of those people who didn't scroll. :( I hate when that happens. My b.

Thanks for the info!

We would, but unfortunately, we need their "old" SSL add-on to get SSL to work with the root URL of our invoice url, in.vc. Apparently, the new SSL doesn’t work the same.

I haven't, but I'll check it out. Seems like it's still beta? (says not to use in production)

Fortunately, I was able to find a really great lawyer who is actually affordable (previously interviewed a few law firms who were $700+/hr). Besides incorporating, legal costs haven't been too high. Just the occasional contract here or there, or updating our terms.

Spot on. It's also tougher with individual users where $10-$15/mo is the norm. B2B services have it good.

The name is Cushion.

Oh, okay—I browsed the website and couldn't find anything about a paid tier. nod

Cushion is a tool for freelancers to manage their schedule, forecast their income, and track invoices. Time tracking is also dropping soon.

Hi! Great question. I love static websites, but we hit a point where we were updating the site constantly and needed dynamic content, like the running costs (which pulls its data from a google spreadsheet). There are certainly ways to do this with a static site, but with the size of the site and frequency that we update it, I really wanted to be able to hit save and it was live, rather than wait for everything to compile and publish. I still use Siteleaf for all of my other websites, but cushionapp.com is a different beast.

Also, lol at "marketing team". I am marketing team. :)

Looks nice, but I'd never not pay for a service because you're paying somehow, or the service won't be around for long.

I noticed them a while back, but I'm happy with Intercom. They're good people.

I think I wrote that when they had their older pricing, or I didn’t realize their real value. Also, I’m pretty sure we could run Cushion on a single dyno, but I like having two around to balance.

Thanks! Not entirely sure, but I think we’d at least cut the cost in half. Aside from user count, we still use a lot of their packages, which have a decent base price.

We just made the page static to handle the HN traffic, so there were a few seconds between the switch. pulls collar Didn’t expect to get featured today.

Yes! I should actually add that expense, too... Thanks for the reminder. :)

It’s less about distinguishing the app with another font and more about designing the app with what I had in mind—the system fonts and more affordable fonts didn’t feel right to me.

Even though I consider myself more of a developer, I went to school for design and it’s a big part of my work, so the look and feel is just as important to me as whether the app works or not. Sure, we could’ve saved $500, but I wouldn’t enjoy using the app as much, or working on it.

I also got to support two type foundries that I really respect. (JAF & Dalton Maag)

Let’s Encrypt wasn't around when we started, but we do use them for our marketing site and will migrate the app when we need to renew our current cert.

Heh. I was curious if anyone was still subscribed.

Thanks!

In all honesty, we're way over Heap's free limit, but they haven't throttled us or reached out, so shhhhhh.

Intercom is so worth it. We wouldn't be in the same position without it. The reason it's so high (as I mentioned in another answer) is that we also use it for sending our monthly newsletter. We could definitely get the cost much lower, and we're planning to, but I just need to sit down and do it. We've got our hands full with our current roadmap, so I haven't had the chance to move everyone to a more affordable email marketing service, but sooner than later.

When I used Baremetrics, they were changing their pricing a lot and experimenting so much with growth tactics that I don't agree with, like removing the ability to cancel on your own—you now need to contact them.

I tried ChartMogul and they've been absolutely wonderful. The team is so kind, helpful, and responsive. They also don't make drastic changes, which is refreshing since I only need them to track my Stripe metrics.

We've thought about it, but Cushion is incredibly lightweight and doesn't need to be used constantly, so our load is very low. We've only needed 2 dynos since we launched and we're nowhere close to needing more than that. As much as I'd like to lower the cost, they truly take so much weight off our shoulders. I gladly pay what we're paying now, so it's not an issue for us.

We switched to Intercom for sending our monthly email simply because its email editor is so good. I wish a proper email marketing service would come close to their simplicity, but I haven't seen anything yet. We might be moving back to Mailchimp soon because the per-user cost for Intercom has really skyrocketed since we've used them for email marketing. Granted, Intercom actually don't want people to use them for sending batch emails. I wish they'd come out with a standalone service for it—remain as dead-simple as their editor is now and they'd make a killing.

Ha! Not at all. It was a big expense, but I think it’s worth it for how we use it. The domain is "in.vc" and it’s used when sending an invoice link to clients. Instead of sending a super long link and possibly confusing clients with our app name, they see a short, generic link.

I wish we had cushion.com, but last I checked, it sold for $120k in 2012, so that's off the table. :)

Hi! The crossed-out costs are ones we no longer use. We either no longer needed that service, or we found a better alternative.

:waves: Hi, I'm the founder of Cushion. I'd be happy to answer any questions about our running costs or transparency. (Thanks for posting, @Sujan!)

Unfortunately, no—that's a different license, which is strangely much more expensive than a web license.

Thanks! I do all the design, too. I went to school for design and I've been coding all my life—it's a useful balance.

The majority of paying users are monthly, but mostly because of the demographic—freelancers. Most freelancers aren't full-time freelancers, so they don't always freelance (and don't always need a freelancing tool). That makes churn the biggest challenge. I follow up with users who leave and have learned that they either don't have a lot of freelance gigs at the moment and plan to come back, or they took a full-time job.