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Ask HN: How many paying customers which don't use your SaaS do you have?

9 points by masa331 ↗ HN
Ok, so i have a little SaaS product with 164 customers currently. However, 28 of them(17%), don't use the app at all. The price is $9/month. What are your numbers? Is that good/bad/normal?

Also i'm thinking if i should mail them or not. I think it would be nice thing to do but on the other hand i kinda don't want to of course..

I could ask them why aren't they using it so i would get some insight out of it but i have plenty of other feedback so that isn't so necessary for me now. What would you do?

13 comments

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ternarybash
I pay for a SaaS that is an awesome finance/savings app. I pay 8 dollars a month, but I never use the app. They send out nice summary emails that are sufficient to what I need and I am comfortable with that. Don't be surprised.
masa331
No this is not the thing. My SaaS don't send anything. It works with data it synchronizes from one other source only. Now the customers can decide what part of the data to synchronize and it's possible to have everything turned off. Then without the data they really can't do anything with it. And these 28 customer have everything turned off.
ternarybash
Oh wow, yeah that's nothing like my situation.......I wouldn't email em'. They probably will cancel after, haha.
pryelluw
I would not do anything. For all you know they are using it as a tax write off.
bruce511
I see comments about tax write offs like this, and I feel like either you don't understand what a tax write off is, or perhaps I don't.

To me, spending $9 on something you are not using is always worse than paying your marginal tax rate on $9 and keeping the rest. Or am I missing something?

pryelluw
You are missing the forest for the the trees.
jolmg
I pay for a SaaS that I'm not using. It's going to take me some time to set-up how I want to use it (some script writing) and it's not really a priority right now. I think there was a promotion when I got it and probably did so with the thought that I may benefit from a grandfathering policy if the price increases or something. Didn't really think I'd put it off so much (it's been like 3 years maybe), but it just happened. It's very cheap though, so I think it's fine.

Maybe your case is something like that. They plan to use it, but are putting it off and thought that signing up earlier rather than later would be better.

jolmg
I should maybe add that in my case, it's $9/year, so a lot cheaper than the case here.
pketh
do you mail out monthly receipts? It's very common for people to forget about subscriptions they started, especially for products that have a trial and automatically/silently convert to paid afterwards
codingdave
I would email them and ask what problem they were trying to solve when they signed up, and what you could do to the product to better solve it for them... because clearly if it is unused, it is not solving anything for them, and they will cancel some day.

Better to get some good feedback from a group of people and build some loyal customers in the process. Yes, some will be reminded to cancel, and you will get some churn. But at your low price point, the value of the feedback from the group you keep will eclipse the few hundred lost dollars from those who cancel.

masa331
hmm yes i think you are right. That's what i will do
dyeje
Reach out to a few and see how it goes.
dave_sid
Are they all paying customers or does that include freemium users? That’s interesting if they are paying but not using it at all.