How much does it cost to build and run a profitable side project?

1

Vercel

The second cost that I started to incur was due to Vercel. I am using Next.js to build Heuristica, so Vercel was the obvious choice for hosting. They are very generous with their free plan, and I didn't expect to pay anything for a long time. However, I noticed they had a very strict timeout policy on server endpoints, which dropped long-running requests after a few seconds. I started to get user complaints where they wouldn't get any responses for longer queries. It was obvious that I had to switch to a Pro plan. The good thing is that you can have multiple projects in your Vercel Pro Plan, which could be like a shared cost between multiple projects.

#Developer Tools #Web Development Tools #App Deployment 574 social mentions

2

Supabase

I am using Supabase as my cloud database provider. I am very happy with them, and just like Clerk, they also have an incredibly generous free tier. I could have kept using them for free, but I wanted to have the option of having daily database backups so as not to lose any customer data, so I recently switched to a paid account.

#Developer Tools #Realtime Backend / API #Backend As A Service 481 social mentions

3

Resend

It took me a while to realize I needed to email my users about specific actions (like subscriptions) for a much better user experience. Initially, my customers didn't even know if they had successfully subscribed since I didn't send any confirmation emails. I ended up using Resend to send programmatic emails on completion of certain actions. It doesn't cost anything at my scale and offers an excellent developer experience.

#Productivity #Developer Tools #Software Marketplace 17 social mentions

4

Plausible.io

After some time, I needed to start paying for my analytics provider, Plausible, due to the increased traffic I was getting. Plausible is a privacy-friendly analytics app that doesn't leverage cookies for tracking. The information it provides can be limited, but it is sufficient for my needs. I use it to see the amount and duration of traffic I am getting from different referrers and countries. Just like Vercel, it can also be a shared cost between multiple projects.

#Analytics #Web Analytics #Privacy 195 social mentions

5

Next.js

The second cost that I started to incur was due to Vercel. I am using Next.js to build Heuristica, so Vercel was the obvious choice for hosting. They are very generous with their free plan, and I didn't expect to pay anything for a long time. However, I noticed they had a very strict timeout policy on server endpoints, which dropped long-running requests after a few seconds. I started to get user complaints where they wouldn't get any responses for longer queries. It was obvious that I had to switch to a Pro plan. The good thing is that you can have multiple projects in your Vercel Pro Plan, which could be like a shared cost between multiple projects.

#Developer Tools #Web Frameworks #JavaScript Framework 1020 social mentions

6

Clerk Authentication

I have been a developer for a while, but I still feel uncomfortable rolling out my authentication solution. When building Heuristica, I was delighted to have discovered Clerk. It made implementing authentication on my website a breeze. Heuristica is now a profitable project with around 3000 monthly active users, and I still don't pay anything for Clerk. Their free tier is incredibly generous.

#Identity Provider #SSO #Authentication 25 social mentions

7

Bunny.net

Heuristica is a tool for visual learners, so I wanted to display a lot of images and videos on my landing page. However, I quickly realized that hosting images on my website is not the brightest idea. With the traffic I was getting, I was rapidly depleting the bandwidth allocated to me on my Vercel account. So, I looked for an image hosting platform (CDN) and decided on Bunny. I am really happy with them; they only cost a few dollars a month.

#CDN #Cloud Computing #Content Distribution 66 social mentions

8

Amplitude

Plausible provides analytics related to page views, view durations, visitor origin, etc. However, it doesn't offer fine-grained metrics around how the users interact with the product. I initially implemented custom database calls whenever an action takes place to collect usage metrics. However, I found out that it is not the collection of the metrics that is the problem; it is the visualization of those metrics. Amplitude is perfect for emitting events on user actions and creating dashboards around those events. Currently, I am still using the free tier of the tool, which only allows for visualizing a limited amount of metrics. However, I can see myself switching to a paid tier if I ever get more data-oriented with my production development.

#Analytics #Web Analytics #Mobile Analytics 40 social mentions

9

Ahrefs

I eventually made my peace with email marketing, but I still dread marketing in general. That's why I like the idea of SEO, which performs like passive marketing in some sense. I used to have a Keysearch membership, but I wasn't sure about the accuracy of some of the results I was getting on my keyword research. I ended up getting an Ahrefs membership, which costs a lot more but is supposed to offer much more accurate results.

#SEO Tools #Keyword Research #Content Marketing 113 social mentions