Ask HN: Pros and cons of offering a self-hosted version of your SaaS?
10•DavyCreddy•1d ago
I'm working on a SaaS product that simplifies credential collection for businesses. I'm debating whether to offer a self-hosted version alongside our cloud offering.
For those who've gone this route: what were the biggest advantages and challenges? Did you find it expanded your market or just divided development resources? Any technical considerations that weren't immediately obvious?
I'm particularly interested in hearing from founders who started with cloud-only and later added self-hosted options (or vice versa). How did pricing structures evolve? Did maintenance become unmanageable?
Appreciate any insights that might help inform this decision.
Comments
2rsf•4h ago
Answering from a customer point of view- sensitive, regulated or simply old fashioned industries will want to avoid using SaaS for sensitive material like credentials.
I think that the main challenge I faced, again as a customer, is support and maintenance- your software will run on an endless variety of platforms using different versions of it by people with varying competence levels and you'll need to support all of them
2rsf•4h ago