SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Google Analytics Alternative Adds $23k in MRR in 12 Months, Open sourced!
23 May 2021
Chapter 1: How did Plausible Analytics grow from $400 to $23,000 in MRR?
I think MRR was about $400 or something when I joined. So April last year, about $400. $400 per month? MRR, yes. In total MRR? Total, $400. And I think it was $405, say, in start of April last year. And now we are at $23,000 something.
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Hello, everyone. My guest today is Marco Saric. He's the co-founder of Plausible Analytics, a simple, open-source, lightweight, and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. It's trusted by over 3,000 subscribers to deliver their website and business insights. Marco, you ready to take us to the top? I am. All right. When did you launch this thing? What year?
About two years ago, two and a half years ago. Okay, so call it 2019 timeframe, something like that? I think it was actually 2018 December. That's when development started and about summer of 2019 was the first kind of launch of the product. And get us into your personal situation for a second. Were you working a full-time gig and this was a side project or you quit the gig?
Where were you in life? Yeah, so basically Plausible started as a project of my co-founder. He's a developer. He started developing it. He spent about a year developing everything, getting it on, like ready to go. And then he got me involved because I'm the marketer. So I came from the marketing side.
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Chapter 2: What inspired the creation of Plausible Analytics?
But I published my first blog post in April last year about why you should remove Google Analytics from your website. Like, I don't know, 10 different reasons, all there, a couple of thousand words. Published it, event on top of the Hacker News, got, you know, I don't know, 20, 30,000 visitors on the first day or two. Got, I don't know, somewhere about 60, 70 by now.
But basically, content is how we got our first, and still are getting our, you know, trials to this day. Talk to me about the Hacker News for a second. So when you did that, you got how many unique website hits that day? Actually, they're a bit funny because we are all open. So you can actually go to plausible.io and you can like hit our website.
And there's a button that says live demo, and that's where you can see our own stats. But I think it must have been about 20,000 that day. Okay. And how many new trial signups? Do you remember? I will have to go backwards. But I think, let's say, blogging is not like you get 10% of this. It's not like an ad. So it's a bit more indirect process. So let's say we got 50 to 100 out of that.
But what it does for us is kind of builds the brand, the brand awareness and kind of us getting us into this field. And people then, you know, a few weeks down the line, I may need a new analytics platform. Oh, I remember those guys that talked about why you should not use Google Analytics. And that's how it goes, really. It's not as direct as something like ads. So it's.
You know, 20,000 does not really mean you will get a huge spike in signups on that day. But a few weeks down the line, it will show. Yep. Very cool. So this is how you get your first sort of spike of customers. Now, how many customers are you serving today? We're about 3,300. Those are paying customers. Exactly. And we get about, I mean, yesterday we got something like 50 trials.
We get about 1,000 of your trials per month. And then, yeah, about one-third of those convert. So it's going quite well. Last year, March, when I joined, we were about, I don't know, like less than 100. And now we're at 3,300. And it's going quite well. I think MRR was about 400 or something when I joined. So April last year, about 400. $400 per month? MRR, yes. In total MRR? Total, 400.
And I think it was 405, say, in start of April last year. And now we are at 23,000 something. 23,300, I think. Something along those lines. I love that. Okay, so if we take 23,300 divided by the 3,300 paying subscribers, they're paying on average about seven bucks a month, something like that, which would be I'm using your pricing, your pricing slider on your site.
So that price point would be what about 10k unique website views, something like that? I think something like last time I checked about 80% of customers are on the lower two tiers. So up to 100,000 page views, which kind of makes sense. I mean, it's not easy to get a website with more than 100,000 page views. So about 80% of customers are there in those first two tiers.
And then, you know, the one at 150 million tier, it's like the only one. Yeah. This is such a cool story. Why did you guys decide to build, you know, a lot of people go, should I build an open public? Should I not build in public? You're leaning all in. You're building in public. Why did you guys decide to do that? Fully open source.
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Chapter 3: What marketing strategies helped Plausible acquire its first customers?
So that was very even. This month, expansion MRR of 300 and churn of 100. And then the previous month, which was March, expansion 800 and churn 300. So like... That's one that I care about. I mean, new MRR always covers obviously both, but I'm curious that the churn gets covered by expansion to kind of even it out.
I would personally, just this is anecdotal based off the interviews that I've done in the database that I run, you rarely see companies at this stage in this taxonomy, this category, have expansion revenue like you guys do. I would credit it because it's so crystal clear that people are paying you a price point tied to the number of unique website visits.
So you have a natural automatic upsell built in and that's a very healthy thing. And we don't actually even enforce it so strong. We send an email a couple of months in and we kindly ask you to upgrade and it works well and people respect that and people upgrade. And yeah, like you say, it's a natural thing.
You want to build your website to grow more and then you end up having more visitors, which means you end up having to pay more for your analytics. It kind of makes sense because also our costs are larger with storage and all that stuff. Yeah, very good. All right, Marco, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book? Rework, I would say. Basecamp.
Number two, is there a founder you're following or studying right now? Not right now, but I've followed Rand Fishkin for years now. I love his thinking. And he's got a great book, Lost and Founder. Highly recommend it. Another great one, yes. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building plausible? Twitter, I guess. Twitter. I don't really have a favorite one.
Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? How much what? Sleep. Ah, okay. Seven hours approximately. And what's your situation? Married? Single? Kids? No kids. Girlfriend. Live together. Not married. Not married yet. No kids. And how old are you, Marco? I'm 38, I think. 38, he says. And with a question mark on the end. Last question.
What's something you wish you knew when you were 20? I wish I started to start up faster. As in co-owner, owners. founder. Until last year, I was basically more like an employee. Plausible.io, they are an alternative to Google Analytics that does not crap all over your privacy. They're growing very quick, $400 a month in revenue a year ago, now over $23,000 per month, over 3,300 customers.
Marco got 49% of the business. His technical co-founder took 51%. They're off to the races, bootstrapped and building in public. Marco, thanks for taking us to the top. Thanks, Nathan.
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