This form builder made $70K in MRR last month
Statistics:
- Website: Tally.so
- Launched On: 6th of August, 2020
- Revenue Last Month (August, 2023): $70,000
- Profit Last Month (August, 2023): $55,300
- Monthly Website Traffic: 4,050,000
Description:
Founded by Marie and Filip in August of 2020, Tally is a bootstrapped SaaS platform that allows users to build forms easily without having to code (similar to TypeForm). Since their launch 3 years ago, they have been able to amass over 140,000 users and generate $70,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
Business Model:
Tally runs on a combination of a freemium model and a paid pro tier subscription at $29/m. The freemium version allows for unlimited form creations and responses which is their main selling point. But they do make a 5% commission on incoming payments made from their free forms. The pro subscription in turn allows to remove the commission, the “Made with Tally” badge and allows for more higher-level customizations. According to Marie, Tally has around a 3% conversion rate of freemium to paying users - meaning that from 140,000 users in the month of August, Tally has around 2100 paid users on the pro subscription plan.
Growth Strategy:
Tally’s growth strategy revolved mainly around two key components: launching on Product Hunt and keeping Tally for free. But first, let’s dive deeper into their initial growth strategy: In the very early stages, Marie mentions that having no large network led them to doing cold outreach to Indiehakers and startup founders to find their initial first users and ambassadors.
From there, their Product Hunt launch on March of 2021 was an instrumental step to helping Marie and Filip get their initial big exposure on the marketplace. This launch helped them get 3,000 users and cross $1,000 in MRR. The next step was building in public on Twitter, Reddit and Indiehackers which expanded their reach and user base.
Their most successful growth strategy was keeping Tally for free. This is because the freemium model made it more attractive for people to try it out as opposed to main competitors like Typeform that put paywalls to unlock unlimited forms and responses. This strategy created a growth flywheel effect via positive word-of-mouth but also as freemium users have a ‘Made with Tally’ badge on their forms, which essentially turns the users into the biggest promoters. This flywheel ultimately helped Tally reach 20,000 users and $10,000 in MRR by January of 2022, and then $30,000 in MRR by the month of October.
From there, Marie mentions what helped them scale to $70,000 in MRR was still the growth flywheel from keeping Tally for free but also honing in on making the user experience as good as possible. Marie also attributes growth to their Tally Affiliate Program which pays 20% in recurring commission, as well as partnering with influencers to promote their software.
Tech Stack:
- Next.js, React, Styled Components, Umami
Key Takeaways:
If your software is displayed by your own users on their websites, emails or other platforms make sure to implement a “Made with your company” badge for freemium users as this will help you benefit from the exponential flywheel growth like Tally did.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. In my Newsletter/Database, I write twice per month a case study like this and share on a weekly basis 5 lucrative online businesses with their respective metrics:
- How much profit and revenue they make per month
- How many monthly website visitors they get
- When they launched etc.
Would love to see you in there!
With much love,
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We use tally[dot]so too, and it is a great product! Happy to see them reach the 70K milestone.
Nice! How did you get to know about them the first time?
That's great. You guys are doing fantastic. The UI is very clean and customizable. You guys are competing with the big players and still stand out that's incredible.
And 4.05M visitors is a lot. How do you guys deal with the server cost for the front end and back end?
They just re-launched on Product Hunt. To be honest I was a bit skeptic about the product at first. But when I tried it - I was impressed.
Tally is a great product, nice UI and very interesting business model regarding free users and how they can bring paid customers.
Instead of finding the next big thing, just do an evergreen problem in a new one. Tally is a perfect example of this!
Thanks for the write-up Diego!
Cheers Marie! Really inspiring what you guys have done. Keep rocking! :)
Very inspiring...Indie Hacking at its finest ✨!
Love this breakdown!! please write more.
Will do cheers! Is there any other particular aspect or business that you will like a breakdown on?
I would love to know what some of the biggest challenges you faced and how you overcame these. Also how you choose a pricing modal that worked in the early days. This is all so helpful!! Thank you
A great success story, onwards and upwards. Their marketing strategy is interesting and has given me some ideas for my own launch.
That's great to hear. Make sure to keep us updated about your launch!
The best way to market is through the viral nature of the product itself, and Tally did a great job at leveraging that growth avenue.
Though, I wonder how much of Tally’s growth came from its inherent virality as opposed to their intentional marketing efforts. Their free customers are doing a lot of the marketing for them.
I completely agree Savannah. I believe that the key to a strong initial traction is definitely the virality aspect of the business and wether it solves a big enough problem, and Tally achieved that. And from there the intentional marketing efforts should be naturally more effective.
I use tally all the time - Its amazing. The Notion like UI and the easy formatting + options to create various input types is awesome. Highly recommend using it for any forms or user-facing inputs.
Marketing my product has been the biggest challenge for me, even when my product is free. Stories like this are inspiring.
Glad to hear that this has been inspiring. What is your product? Maybe we (the community) can help you out with ideas for the marketing side of things :)
It is an art filter for your phone camera. I am not allowed to post link here, because I am new to the forum
Nice. How does it differentiate from your competitors? Have you considered it listing on Product Hunt? I also noticed that viral organic marketing can be very effective for these type of products, like UGC on tiktok.
Valuable read. Thanks for sharing!
Happy to hear that :)
Wow, this is truly inspiring! Tally's growth journey is a testament to the power of strategic product launches and a compelling freemium model. The fact that they were able to hit $70,000 in MRR by keeping the platform free for users speaks volumes about the value they provide. The "Made with Tally" badge for freemium users, creating a growth flywheel, is a brilliant move—leveraging user-generated content as a promotional tool is golden.
The utilization of a well-rounded tech stack, influencer partnerships, and an affiliate program further underscores their growth strategy. Marie and Filip's dedication, from cold outreach to maintaining a user-centric focus, is truly admirable. Excited to follow their journey and glean insights from your upcoming case studies!
I've used Tally and it's great. Compared to other competitors what we loved is the simpler design and flexibility. The UX is great for the editor, similar to Notion 'blocks'. It seems more purpose-built for other no-code integrations and like a more modern version of legacy form apps. It can get a little expensive for what it is but that seems like any SaaS these days.
I have been using it for a long time. The only reason I chose it at the first place, the UI was similar to Notion and the form creation was easy like Google forms. So, it looked super easy to get started.
On top of that, they have the most generous free plan, which is more than enough for a small business.
This is a great saas product that is basically another version of airtable. It just goes to show that you do have a saas idea even if it's been done already, you just have to put your own spin on it to be successful.
Thanks for sharing!
Great case study! Creating a badge "made with " flywheel is the ultimate growth hacking technique.
Are you working with any other traffic channels to attract a new target audience?
This is a great case study, thank you!
Tally is a nice product but if you want to add a contact us page on you own website/domain with your own CSS and styling you can use a form backend service like fabform.
Very good insights of your journey! Big congrats on the huge milestone!
Wow, those are some impressive numbers for Tally! The 3% conversion rate from freemium to paid users is a solid indicator of the value they're providing vis-a-vis their competitors. Just curious, do you know how impactful the Tally Affiliate Program has been in terms of MRR?
Marketing is the most most difficult part. Productihunt seems to play an important role.
This was an awesome breakdown. I've used tally before so was cool to see their actual journey from idea to the present day. kudos to you!
Really awesome insight into a successful go-to-market execution by indie hackers, fantastic article.
Thanks for sharing this analysis. Definitely good points to think about.
I believe it's essential not to overlook the basics: it's a fantastic tool and that sets the stage for everything else to be easier.
Congrats!
I have been using tally, which is very easy to use, but I am not a paying user yet. I think I will be in the future.
It would be great if can share how product hunt helped you grow. What strategies you used to get upvotes on product hunt, was the listing free or paid one on product hunt
is this built on Notion?
Thank you for sharing your amazing story!
Happy to hear you enjoyed it!
Thank you for sharing their tech stack! It's always interesting to see what other companies are using. This is the first time I've heard of umami and I'm really glad I found this, it looks very promising for what I need.
Glad to hear that!
Wow, this is an amazing story. Congratulations to Marie and the Tally team for achieving such impressive growth in such a short time. I'm a big fan of Tally and I use it for all my forms and surveys. It's so simple and elegant, yet powerful and versatile. I love how you can customize your forms with different themes, fonts, colors, and logic. I also appreciate how you listen to your customers and implement their feedback. You have a great product and a great vision. I can't wait to see what you do next. Keep up the good work.
Best part of this is the flexibility in Tools integrations. Very useful
That's really impressive!
As a user of Tally, I must say their product is quite impressive, featuring a neat UI and a pleasant user experience.
What I can conclude the main reason for your success is you guys have a good understanding of your customer and your market.
You guys know exactly how to funnel your customer for from cold customer to a buyer. Very impressive and that is the biggest lesson from this posts.
If you understands what your customer is thinking about, what they want and why they are not buying from you, you can easily adjust your product and approach accordingly and have a big success in product.
All other founder also need to have some level of understanding of what the customer want, where they are, what they are doing , why they are not buying from you. These question will give you a direction on what to change on your businesses.
I have this article which will be helpful for you guys Business Hack for you, Understand your Customer
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