Always Cost Out Your Ideas
25 Mar 2024
If there’s an external service you’re using, always check their pricing. In detail.
Work out your costs

I once spent some time building a SAAS app that would send text messages on a regular basis, up to 6 per day.

It was a consumer app, so I'd costed it at $10 a month.

Not great in terms of income, but it was in the weight-loss market, so the total revenue could have been interesting enough to work with.

So I spent a few weeks getting it built, then I realised something. I'd costed out using US customers (even though I'm in the UK).

US customers would run at 1.40 USD per subscriber per month. Not a bad mark-up.

But SMS messages in Belgium via Twilio are 0.10 USD per message.

0.1*6*30 = 18.00 USD.

Oops.

What about here in the UK? I'd be running at just over 7 USD.

So I canned that idea for now.

Get Updates

I don't post here frequently. So if you'd like me to let you know when I post something, subscribe below.

    I won't send you spam. You can unsubscribe at any time.

    RECENT POSTS

    Cursor running and fixing code

    I've recently started expanding my usage of Cursor to let it run commands, tests, etc and fix it's own issues. Here's my experience.