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Do you pool any resources with other makers?
Just wanted to put this thought out there for others.
There are some tools out there for businesses that have either extra user seats or extra resource allocations beyond the projects you'd use them for. So maybe pool the price of the tool with another maker?
E.g. OhDear (one of my favourite monitoring tools) has 5 sites for $17 a month. Not too much on its own but this can pile up fast.
And on the flip side self-hosting some tools might be more worthwhile on a sizeable VPS when shared between a few users.
What do you think?
There are some tools out there for businesses that have either extra user seats or extra resource allocations beyond the projects you'd use them for. So maybe pool the price of the tool with another maker?
E.g. OhDear (one of my favourite monitoring tools) has 5 sites for $17 a month. Not too much on its own but this can pile up fast.
And on the flip side self-hosting some tools might be more worthwhile on a sizeable VPS when shared between a few users.
What do you think?
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If you're thinking of turning this into a product, I think it's possible, but I've considered this idea in the past and decided against it for a few reasons:
ToS violation minefield: monitoring tools are pretty harmless, but depending on the product some other person you share the account with might violate ToS inadvertently and get the account closed for everyone else. Or, the company that operates the product might not like multiple people logging in from different geos (some countries are blacklisted for certain products) and close the account for that reason
Payments: how do you make sure everyone pays on time every month? I see this as generally a support-heavy endeavor where you'd get inbounds from people complaining that they paid the bill for the group, but some group members did not pay their fair share, or their credit card expired, etc
PII leaks are possible: when you share an account with other random indie hackers, they might be able to see your address, your CC details, your paypal email, etc or other sensitive data if they open the billing settings.
For me personally, I don't trust other people on the internet that I haven't known for very long to do the right thing when it comes to using these types of products, so I'm going to continue to opt to use my own accounts for my own services
Nah, not intending to productize this or do it with randoms.
It's just something I've discussed with some friends who are makers in the same circles, who I'd trust to do this with. So I wanted to put forward the idea here and see if anyone else is also doing that :)
Got it - I'd probably only do it with close friends who I've known for years to be reliable people who don't do dumb shit to get my accounts banned
@ben yeah the TOS violations are always top-of-mind for me. I've had people who wanted to go halfsies on courses, but it's an ethical thing for me. (How could I screw over someone else while saying I want to grow my business?)
For SaaS products (and sometimes even info products), there are agency seats designed to be shared with others, and I'd definitely consider that!
We've tried to use free tier services for as long as possible. Like the free tier, betterstack.com for monitoring has been enough for us.
Cloudflare takes care of a load of load and other features, like custom domain caching.
Most of the costs we have come from tools like Google Workspace and Notion, where we pay per seat and cannot really share it.
Things like VPN accounts and 1Password family is shared more easily with friends or partners.
As @robreckham and I are collaborating as
#codersfail in our projects and indie hacker journey, we are kind of already sharing all the tools.
The Hetzner VPS we also user for our personal freelancing projects and help each other out with our skills.