Started by looking up "SaaS meaning" — what did I learn in year one of my own SaaS?

Honestly 42 subscribers and 38,000 TL MRR for your first year is pretty decent, don't beat yourself up... But 450 TL is way too cheap for B2B. If you'd doubled your price you probably wouldn't have lost even half those users, and your support load would've dropped by half too.

We're in our third year now. During year one, our monthly churn was hovering around 8%, and we were basically running ourselves into the ground. We bumped our price from 350 TL to 1,200 TL and offered two months free on annual plans. Churn dropped to 3%, and the upfront cash injection easily covered our server bills.

The biggest hidden costs are always transactional email and SMS. If you're sending an SMS on every route update, your revenue goes straight into the telecom carrier's pocket. Lean into webhooks and browser push notifications; save SMS strictly for critical security steps.

All that passive income talk online is pure fiction. Running a SaaS is basically operating a digital factory where you're on call 24/7. If you aren't waking up in the middle of the night to fix a downed server, no one's going to keep paying that subscription for long.

support burned me out completely too. anyway i had people calling me at 11 pm on a saturday saying "bro i forgot my password". writing clear docs and embedding tutorial videos dropped support tickets like crazy.

There are three key takeaways for anyone starting their first year: 1) Price on value delivered, never on your underlying costs. 2) Build a self-serve help center from day one. 3) Push annual billing hard to lock in healthy cash flow.

How do you handle things contractually if a client on an annual plan wants to cancel and get a refund after three months because they arent happy? Thats one of the things were most worried about.

edit: fixed a few typos.

The experience you shared offers a very valuable lesson for micro-startups in the space. Accurately analyzing your infrastructure and staffing unit costs per user before committing to an SLA is essential for financial viability.

the opposite happened to me, that's why I'm writing then the harder it is to reverse a decision the slower you should make it.

if you post the result here it will help others too.

Noted, thanks.

This thread is archived.

Thanks for writing this, that's the right way. When the closure decision was made is as decisive as the decision itself.

Just leaving this note, it might be useful.

i'm curious too. like pausing growth to breathe is also a strategy, nobody says that.

just leaving this note, it might be useful.

Exactly, and not many people know this. If the gap between accounts receivable and accounts payable turnover days is widening, revenue won't save you.

If I were you, I'd go this route.

I completely agree... Any unwritten clause becomes a point of disagreement later, as both sides remember it differently.

Exactly, and not many people know this. Extending terms makes customers happy but turns you into a financing institution.

Hope this helps.

There is something to watch out for. Looking profitable on paper but having no cash in the bank is very common.

That's all, sorry if I went on too long.

my question might sound amateuish sorry about that. just because everyone does it doesnt mean its right.

just leaving this note it might be useful.