Ask HN: Would you pay for a SaaS even if its open source and can be selfhosted?

• backgroundremover

  86 6,220 6.9 Python

  Background Remover lets you Remove Background from images and video using AI with a simple command line interface that is free and open source.

• AnonAddy

  288 2,994 7.6 PHP

  Anonymous email forwarding

  

I use anonaddy [0] because it's open source and self-hostable [1]. I don't have to worry about the service going under or jumping the shark, since I can always just self-host it on my own hardware and import my config should that happen. Of course I'd much prefer to pay someone else to run it, especially in the case of mail servers where self-hosting is notoriously tedious.

[0] https://anonaddy.com/

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com sponsored

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• ntfy

  288 16,590 9.6 Go

  Send push notifications to your phone or desktop using PUT/POST

I maintain an open source push notification service called ntfy [1]. It's 100% open source, but I have recently started offering ntfy Pro, a paid SaaS offering.

I am telling you it's super hard to get people to pay for it. It may be because the free tier is too generous, or because I don't aggressively push or market it, but most likely it's because people can just selfhost it. I have 25k active daily users for the free tier, and probably hundreds or thousands of selfhosted installations, yet as of today, I have only 20 paying subscribers. It's quite brutal.

The worst part is that ever since I started offering paid subscriptions, donations have reduced and new donations have pretty much stopped, because people think I'm making bank with the paid stuff.

I know this doesn't answer your question, but it gives you the perspective you may be actually seeking. It's definitely hard to pull off.

[1] https://ntfy.sh/

• Joplin

  771 42,770 9.9 TypeScript

  Joplin - the secure note taking and to-do app with synchronisation capabilities for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

• Bitwarden

  1,055 14,286 9.8 C#

  The core infrastructure backend (API, database, Docker, etc). (by bitwarden)

  

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

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