Form Builder made $70K in MRR Last Month

Statistics:

• Website: Tally.so

• Launched On: 6^th 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 Takeaway:

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.