Layerbase: a cheaper serverless database platform with flat pricing
A serverless database platform for teams that want flat monthly pricing and SQL database tools.
Problem it solvesUsage-based database pricing can make costs harder to predict.
Layerbase is a serverless database platform started as SpinDB. The maker says it has broken 1000 active users after about a year and reports its first paying customer came after about 9 months.
How they grewpaid advertising
layerbase
u/layerbase
2000 hours in and I just broke 1000 active users I own Layerbase which is a serverless database platform like Supabase/Neon/Planetscale/Atlas/Upstash etc etc etc Where we are different is we don't charge for usage, it's a flat monthly fee and it's much cheaper than any of our competitors. We also offer authentication with Better Auth on any SQL database and branching on all databases We provide 18 different databases in the cloud, but we support 21 different databases with our desktop application and CLI. It started out as an open source project called SpinDB that just grew out of hand It's been about a year now since starting the project and I have logged 2000 hours of development time personally, I have paid for assistance with designs, additional front end labor, and cloud consulting, I have sunk $9k of my own savings into the advertising before actually learning what types of advertisements work for this type of product It took about 9 months of development before getting the first paying customer and then things picked up fairly quick I've received two separate acquisition offers, the first one was for $230k, the second was for around $110k. For obvious reasons I turned both of them down but that first one was a really hard decision that I lost a ton of sleep over I'm still several months away from breaking even but I'm still at that phase where every morning I wake up to see purchases made overnight and it never gets any less exciting The amount of research and compliance that go into a product like this is absurd and I would never start over again if this doesn't work out. This has been such a mentally taxing process. More sleepless nights than I can possibly count I've only had roughly 25 users churn and two gdpr removal requests. 80% of people who sign up spin up at least one database. The conversion rate is probably lower than it needs to be to be sustainable, but it is trending in the right direction I wanted to post here because most of the people in my life don't understand how massive a task this is for. Essentially a solo developer with a self-funded project and an occasional contractor. After crossing such a big milestone today I wanted to this with some people who could relate If anyone has any database questions or if anyone wants to know how the sausage is made, feel free to ask. Ask. I love databases and I love talking about building a database platform I wish you all the best of luck with your projects
- Active users
- 1K
- Churned users
- 25
