This is going to be very personal opinion but I’ve bought many digital products when I’m either not thinking too much about the price or find that it has a much cheaper Indian version. Many times, have I done it just so I could help out another founder.
The most recent one I remember was some tool (Show HN) that searches the Mac with a local AI. I’m yet to start using it. I like the idea, and I might use it someday. It was beta-discounted
SaaS software is not generally zero marginal cost since you run the infra, have support, etc, but maybe in your situation is close to zero since its very simple.
If you have no sales, but your costs are very low, you should try it.
The main reason not to would be costs or cannibalizing your higher value customers (which you don't have).
Most SaaS products have close to zero marginal cost, since marginal cost is the additional cost of taking on one more customer. If you already have a thousand customers, what does customer number 1001 actually cost? In most cases, you do not need more infrastructure and you do not need more developers. Maybe you need a bit more support time to answer a few extra emails or take a few more calls, but that is usually it.
There are exceptions. Some SaaS products have infrastructure costs that scale linearly per customer, for example if you spin up a separate database for each tenant. Others are very hands-on, where a large part of the cost is human support or service work, so each new customer does add real cost.
But for the vast majority of self-serve SaaS products, the cost of adding one more customer is effectively near zero in the context of the overall business.
You are right! My costs are negligible and I just shipped the parity pricing feature hoping to do more sales as currently the count is less from these regions.
Thanks for the heads up on the code reselling risk. That was my biggest worry with generic coupon codes too.
To solve this, I decided against just using a 'coupon' on the main checkout. Instead, I set up a completely separate payment flow (Topmate) specifically for India that requires local UPI payment methods.
My theory is that the requirement to use a local Indian payment method acts as a 'natural geoblock' against arbitrage. Interesting to hear that India didn't convert well for you even with PPP—I'll keep my expectations in check.
pingananth|1 month ago
I get decent traffic from India/Southeast Asia, but 0 sales.
I’ve read conflicting advice:
The "SaaS" View: Don't lower prices; filter for high-value customers.
The "Game/Ebook" View: Lower prices significantly (60%+) to match local purchasing power, because zero marginal cost = free money.
Since my product has no server upkeep (it's just a Next.js app), I just enabled aggressive PPP.
Has anyone here successfully monetized a one-time purchase dev tool in India? Or is the "Free or Nothing" culture too strong?
Brajeshwar|1 month ago
The most recent one I remember was some tool (Show HN) that searches the Mac with a local AI. I’m yet to start using it. I like the idea, and I might use it someday. It was beta-discounted
I’m from India.
cjbgkagh|1 month ago
Eridrus|1 month ago
If you have no sales, but your costs are very low, you should try it.
The main reason not to would be costs or cannibalizing your higher value customers (which you don't have).
victorbjorklund|1 month ago
There are exceptions. Some SaaS products have infrastructure costs that scale linearly per customer, for example if you spin up a separate database for each tenant. Others are very hands-on, where a large part of the cost is human support or service work, so each new customer does add real cost.
But for the vast majority of self-serve SaaS products, the cost of adding one more customer is effectively near zero in the context of the overall business.
pingananth|1 month ago
Sytten|1 month ago
For our voucher system we decided to not do PPP otherwise you need some kind of geoblock ala Steam to avoid code reselling.
pingananth|1 month ago
To solve this, I decided against just using a 'coupon' on the main checkout. Instead, I set up a completely separate payment flow (Topmate) specifically for India that requires local UPI payment methods.
My theory is that the requirement to use a local Indian payment method acts as a 'natural geoblock' against arbitrage. Interesting to hear that India didn't convert well for you even with PPP—I'll keep my expectations in check.