ChartDB · B2B · database diagram tool for developers
Give the tool away free, then charge for the team features users ask for
~$9K MRR from the paid cloud version after 16 months
Workedpricingupsell-expansion
What they did
The self-hosted open-source version is free, and developers find it through GitHub. At first they didn't monetize at all. When users started asking to work on diagrams with their team, which required complex real-time collaboration, that became the paid hosted cloud version. They watched usage patterns over time to decide what to charge for rather than guessing.
What happened
Paid cloud version brings about $9,000-9,400 MRR
- Stage
- Launch (After launch)
“On top of that, we have the paid cloud version, the the hosted version that we provide in ChartDB. And the cloud version is where we basically monetize.”
“Then like people started to ask to work with their team, and then we needed to provide a more complex real-time collaboration.”
“So, monetization should not be a guess and should be response to your behavior.”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- ChartDB: Launch your free open-source developer tool as a Show HN on Hacker NewsHit the front page; thousands of engineers tried it the same day
- ChartDB: Let developers try it with no signup, no database login and nothing to installDevelopers adopted it after an earlier version needing credentials stalled
- ChartDB: Show up on GitHub, Hacker News and r/selfhosted instead of inventing new channels21K+ GitHub stars and ~250K developers a year; no per-channel numbers
- ChartDB: Focus only on making database diagrams obvious and ignore everything elseFounder says everything started working once they focused; no numbers