The marketing of open source SaaS

Engineers often laugh at the simplicity of a tool like Miro, versus its success. From a technical point of view, Miro is incredibly simple (though at scale, any software becomes challenging). So are Slack and Asana.

These apps have open source alternatives that work just as well, or better. And are free.

But there is two things that these tools miss.

The first is solid marketing. The second is an easy way to install.

Most users are not technical, not even a little bit. They won’t search for ‘infinite collaborative canvas’, they look for ‘digital brainstorming whiteboard’. That’s the first hurdle.

The second is getting started. Though a lot of open source SaaS alternatives now have a free hosted tier. The thought or even mention of a Docker container, or any other tech, can easily scare people away from even trying.

Here’s the think - open source tools and projects are the comfort zone of techies. Less so for marketeers.

I think there is a killer opportunity when we make it easier for marketeers to join open source project teams, and make it easy for them to contribute.