My SaaS portfolio will become fully self-hostable.
And like also fully open-source too.
It's something we're working on.
And I've been thinking about what I would actually charge for if I open-sourced my SaaS products.
I don't think I would feature gate them.
So my options are basically narrowed down to:
- Hosting
I'm all for self-hosting, and I'd absolutely encourage users to self-host my products. But some people will still want the convenience of a one-click setup with managed backups, monitoring and updates. Offering hosting to those users is probably the easiest revenue model. Ghost has built a great business around exactly this.
- Enterprise
Maybe we get bigger customers.
They'll need SSO, permissions, audit logs and compliance. That's basically the n8n enterprise model.
- Support
If a company depends on the software, having an SLA and somebody to call when stuff breaks is worth real money. Red Hat has done this for decades.
- Integrations
WordPress is the obvious example here. Selling integrations/plugins.
Right now, all my products are heavily gated.
Closed-sourced, paywall gated, and little accessible.
But honestly, I'd happily give away the code if it meant more people adopted the product. Software is getting cheaper to build and easier to copy anyway.
Quick overview 👇
@SimonHoiberg