I opened up the Perks page after [graduating from On Deck](https://www.beondeck.com/) and was flabbergasted to see that we had gotten FREE money. Well, maybe not *free* money but basically free. It was $10K worth of AWS credits to build our startup. We're now 6 months in and honestly, redeeming them was a mistake.

![AWS perks page on On Deck](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/launchman/3nl4rs_image.png)The infrastructure for [engyne.ai](http://engyne.ai) is not that complicated: there's frontend & backend hosting with Vercel (Next.js), a DB and an S3 for images.

Earlier in the year, we were paying $20/month total - Vercel, S3 free tier and $20/month Digital Ocean Postgres.

We honestly just should have stayed there but we *pigged* out.

## Where we spent our AWS credits

On Day 1, I provisioned a db.m5.large, 20GiB, multi-AZ, all the bells & whistles Postgres instance and migrated all of our data to it. I even got a second instance for staging (cuz why not right?). The cost for all of this is \~200 USD/month. Here's the kicker: we only use 2% of this storage currently.

![AWS Cloudwatch dashboard showing 18GiB free storage](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/launchman/qlsu8_image.png)That's why using the credits was a mistake. We have 10 customers. The infrastructure usage is barely anything. Our bottleneck is not on the infrastructure level but on the customer acquisition - How do we get the next 100 customers. This is the classic technical founder trap.

As technical founders, we think that launching a startup means having a robust scaling policy in place on Day 1. That's just not true. You'll go through a hundred different iterations of your idea, design, sales offer, landing page copy before you get to any sort of Product Market fit where people are using the platform so much that it hits any sort of limits.

> Don't think about scaling your infrastructure before you have a business that is scaling.

Since the credits expire after 12 months, we have a massive $200USD/month bill waiting for us if we don't off-board soon.

## We are migrating off of AWS soon

[Digital Ocean's $15/month Postgres plan](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/managed-databases#postgresql) is more than enough storage for us at the moment. I would use [pg_dump to export all the data from the AWS Postgres to the Digital Ocean one](https://www.prisma.io/dataguide/postgresql/inserting-and-modifying-data/importing-and-exporting-data-in-postgresql). They also now have the [pg_vector extension](https://github.com/pgvector/pgvector) support so we can save our vector embeddings. Hopefully, this goes smoothly.

## Lesson Learned

We should have waited at least a year before redeeming the credits to really take advantage of the amazing services that AWS provides. Since the credits expire after a year, we will end up with about 80% of the credits unused.

If I was to start again, I would continue using Digital Ocean and Vercel until regular customer usage hits \~80% of the capacity. Only then I would redeem the credits and move the infrastructure over on a weekend. This way you know you are in a good position to actually utilize the free gift and that you have enough revenue to justify continuing to stay on even after the credits expire.

Every new startup wants to scale their infra as fast as possible but that's not always the right call. We learned this the hard way.

We redeemed our $10K AWS credits. It was a mistake.

In fact, you should hate it.

[It took James Dyson 5127 tries in 15 years before he finished developing the bagless vacuum we all love today.](https://www.inc.com/john-brandon/james-dyson-on-how-entrepreneurs-need-to-innovate-not-just-invent.html)

Iteration is the speed at which you can build, put out, and collect feedback on a particular idea for your product. The faster the speed, the faster your product evolves.

If you deeply love what you create, you will never be able to see it change. Nobody wants to trade in their baby for a new one, no matter how much they cry at night.

Your product is not your baby. You should not fall in love with what you're building. Fall in love with the end result instead - when you finally help someone make their first sale, send that first email, or 2x their productivity like they always wanted to be able to do.

In the early days, big picture experiments have an outsized impact compared to smaller ones. Changing the color of a button is not a big enough change. Switching from being a standalone app to a marketplace instead is. In fact, it very much *could* yield outstanding results.

Here's the honest truth though: Not all iterations will yield favorable results. Most will fail terribly.

<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">"I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work." - Thomas Edison famously said when he was working on creating the light bulb.</span>

<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">Your job is to understand that the first attempt is often not the best attempt. Exhausting them all is the best way to arrive at the most optimal one.</span>

As a technical founder of a software product, you should be open to:

1. Brainstorming multiple solutions to the same problem in your product
2. Ripping out large parts of your codebase and re-implementing a feature
3. Writing new code knowing knowing it will need to change in the short term

Here's an example of what a potential experiment might look like for a writing SaaS app that wants users to be able to publish their first piece fast. You could:

1. Give them a blank space to write in themselves
2. You write it for them
3. Have an AI write it for them
4. Hire a human writer in the backend to service the work

The end result of all of these is the user has something ready to publish on Day 1 which is exactly what they want to do. They are happy, they can't wait to tell their friends and family. They want to send you a thank you for helping them achieve this.

That feeling right there is what you *should* fall in love with instead.

How fast you iterate through potential solutions of a problem largely determines how fast your product evolves. Most founders find it uncomfortable. Here's how to do this in a balanced way.

Don't love your product: How to increase your speed of experimentation as a B2B startup

- Languages: Node, HTML
- Tools Used: Stripe
- Time Saved: 3 weeks -&gt; 40 mins
- [Source Code](https://github.com/bdcorps/stripe-subscriptions-nodejs)
- [Live Demo](https://saasbase-pricing-advanced.herokuapp.com/)

This is Part 5 in the series of guides on adding, managing, and keeping track of subscription payments using Stripe and Mongo for your SaaS app.

## Introduction

Subscription Payments are the bread and butter of a SaaS application; it's how you start generating revenue. In a well-implemented system, users need to first be able to change or cancel their plans, and second, undergo a trial phase to see if they would even like to pay for premium features. Typically, it's a hassle to set these up. In this set of guides, we will go through all the steps required to build a complete Subscription Payments system for your SaaS app.

In Part 5, we will prepare to host our application in Production by:

1. Moving all environment secrets to a .env file
2. Deploying the application to Heroku
3. Setting up a Cloud Mongo instance
4. Setting up the Production Stripe Webhook events

Let's start!

## Step 1: Store secrets securely

We currently have all the secret keys hardcoded in the source code. This is a big no-no when we go into production. The best way to secure store secrets is in a .env file.

Let's create a `.env`

```
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=sk_xxx
PRODUCT_BASIC=price_xxx
PRODUCT_PRO=price_xxx
MONGODB=mongodb://localhost:27017/users
STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET=whsec_xxx
TRIAL_DAYS=14
```

We can then use these values in our source code by installing dotenv.

```
npm install dotenv
```

In the first line of `app.js`

```
require("dotenv").config();
```

This will load up the secrets in `.env` and we can access them using `process.env`

In our `src/connect/stripe.js`

```
const Stripe = stripe(process.env.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, {
  apiVersion: "2020-08-27",
});
```

## Step 2: Deploy on Heroku

The easiest way to deploy our application is using Heroku. We can use their CI/CD pipeline to deploy from a Github repository.

![](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/launchman/e0r32l_image.png)App deployment on Heroku Don't forget to add our environmental variables to the deployment.

Go to `Settings` &gt; `Config Vars` and all the .env variables in

![](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/launchman/oy1zb_image.png)## Step 3: Set up a cloud Mongo instance on MongoDB Atlas

We will need a hosted MongoDB instance to work with our application. MongoDB Atlas is a great choice. Plus it's free.

Create a new account at [MongoDB Atlas](https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas).

Create a new Cluster.

1. **Cloud Provider:** AWS
2. **Region:** Choose one with a free tier

We also need to add a user to be able to read the data. On the Atlas dashboard, add a new Database User with default privileges of **Read and write to any database**. You can however set up specific privileges for better security.

![](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/launchman/1iw3nb_image.png)Creating a new DB user on Mongo Our database is now ready to be used. To get the connection string, click on Cluster button on the dashboard &gt; Connect your application.

![](https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/launchman/4cc32_image.png)The connection string looks like:

```
mongodb+srv://<username>:<password>@saasbase-guides.bibzo.mongodb.net/users?retryWrites=true&w=majority
```

Add in your database username, password to the string. We can now add this to the `MONGODB` Config Var on Heroku.

## Step 4: Configure Webhook for Production

We have been using a local webhook for the events from Stripe. This will not work in Production. We need to create a Production webhook key in Stripe Dashboard so that our deployed application can receive events. It's pretty simple to set up.

On the Stripe dashboard, head on over to `Developers` &gt; `Webhooks`. Add a new endpoint.

**Endpoint URL**: Heroku deployment endpoint + `/webhook`

**Events to send**: customer.subscription.created and customer.subscription.updated 

!<https://launchman-space.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/saasbase/images/2021/05/5-2.png>

Adding a new Stripe webhook endpoint Copy over the newly generated Webhook Signing Secret and add it to the Config Vars as `STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET` in Heroku. Redeploy the application so that the changes can take effect.

## Final Thoughts

And there you have it! Your own **Subscription Billing** solution for your fancy SaaS app - built start to finish in a few hours without any headache. 

Building a Subscription System using Stripe, Node.js, and MongoDB - Part 5: Deploy to Production

Sukhpal Saini

programmatic seo for saas

- It uses first person language (we)
- It uses simple analogies to better explain complex ideas
- It uses a skimmable format with bullet points, subheadings
- Overall it’s a conversational, playful, rebel tone that talks to an innovative audience
- The readers should be guided through the Lens of Curiosity: Leading them to "Aha" moments, ignite their interest by posing thought-provoking questions, and guiding them towards self-discovery.

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Building a Subscription System using Stripe, Node.js, and MongoDB - Part 4: Paywall Content

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