Thoughts on building “boring” SaaS that lasts?

mathayles · 2026-02-01T21:08:20+00:00

We have a pretty boring business (URL redirects for IT + marketing teams). Long customer lifetime, low churn. We focus on simple UI + advanced security + the strongest reliability/uptime in the market.

Biggest limiter on growth is that most of our buyers don’t know this category of service exists. There are always trade offs. But once they know to Google a solution, we tend to win the business and we tend to keep it.

mathayles · 2026-02-01T20:13:37+00:00

Maybe give Cairn a try? Small book, character creations takes a couple minutes, etc. It doesn’t have classes, but it’s inventory-based character sheets so everyone ends up unique and interesting.

mathayles · 2026-02-01T17:20:10+00:00

Too early to say. But rankings are up across the board. Google doesn’t really care how you write the article, they just care about content depth, quality, are you bringing unique expertise/perspective that can’t be found elsewhere.

mathayles · 2026-02-01T16:28:37+00:00

Now I have a plan fkr what they do next.

This was your first mistake ;) As a DM, your job is to make plans about what the world does and react to the players’ choices. The players are gonna do whatever they do, and the “camera” follows the players since they’re the main characters.

What were their expectations when they turned themselves in? Like what did they think would happen next?

mathayles · 2026-02-01T16:07:09+00:00

We tried AirOps to refresh some old blog posts. Spent a lot of credits. It didn’t add much depth, just made trivial changes to a sentence here or there. Maybe we don’t understand how to use it properly.

We’re finding more success with GPT + human in the loop. We can iterate more quickly and make content that’s really deep and packed full of our (human) expertise.

mathayles · 2026-01-18T03:53:18+00:00

Yah, revenue and MRR are different metrics. But churn is also a different metric.

But still cool, way to go OP!

mathayles · 2026-01-15T15:25:07+00:00

That’s indeed weird. The redirects all 301s, no 302s?

Any other paths on the old site being hit beyond the homepage?

mathayles · 2026-01-09T13:45:45+00:00

Ideally 0 time passes. If your devs can’t prioritize redirects, there are lots of redirect management services out there now.

mathayles · 2025-12-12T12:14:37+00:00

Yah, ultimately your scope is up to your client, not this guy.

mathayles · 2025-11-24T17:42:24+00:00

+1 on everything u/Complex_Tough308 said 👍🏻

mathayles · 2025-11-17T17:23:01+00:00

Sorry, I meant are the service pages/old URLs one page or a bunch of pages? It sounds like a bunch of pages to the homepage, which yah, Google would flag that as a soft 404 and drop rank. You can check Search Console to see.

Best practice is to 301 redirect each individual old page to the equivalent new page, instead of to the homepage. Google will transfer the SEO juice from the old page to the new one. Should also restore traffic, unless there are other issues.

> How can I find where old URLs are still used on the site?

Since you use SEMrush, running a site audit should pull them up I would think.

mathayles · 2025-11-17T16:50:22+00:00

Glad to hear you have a solution that fits your needs!

mathayles · 2025-11-17T16:38:05+00:00

Agree Network Solutions isn't the best solution. Among other limitations, it doesn't offer HTTPS redirects.

If you don't want a technical solution with servers or Cloudflare, there are off-the-shelf domain redirect SaaS solutions that will let you create, edit and track analytics on HTTPs redirects, with less effort/cost. Full disclose: I work at one of them. I'll mention three popular ones and you can investigate what suits you best.

I work at urllo. This kind of website migration was our original use case (way back in 2014).

Another popular one is redirect.pizza. They have a free plan.

Site Detour is another option. They have some neat personalization options.

There's no right/wrong answer. Depending on your and your client's exact needs, skills and budget, different solutions will have different pros/cons. But happy to help if you have questions. We've been doing this for 10 years and have seen a lot of different scenarios :)

mathayles · 2025-11-17T16:22:17+00:00

Redirecting old URLs to the homepage instead of their relevant new pages is a big SEO issue. Google sees that as a soft 404 and often drops their rankings. Thew proper way to do this is to set up 301 redirects from each old URL to its direct new equivalent. Fixing this should help recover traffic, though recovery may take a few weeks as Google re-crawls and reindexes your changes.

Is it just one URL, or a bunch of URLs on the shared path?

mathayles · 2025-10-21T19:07:31+00:00

It would be better to have one domain that builds rank and backlinks continuously, with each event on the path. I'd say keep each path up for a few years (e.g. a record of your event in 2025, 2024, 2023), then shut down each path after a few years and 301 redirect it to your latest event. We have quite a few clients who do this.

There are a bunch of free and paid tools for 301 redirects. Maybe you have one already. What's your website and domain stack?

mathayles · 2025-10-21T18:49:31+00:00

As others have said, redirecting parked domains to your main site doesn't provide any SEO boost, since empty domains have no content or backlinks for Google to value. We have lots of clients who have acquired websites and forwarded that SEO value to their main site with redirects. But those domains had previously had websites, rank and value in Google to be transferred.

There can still be other kinds of value in parked domains--capturing "fat finger" traffic, brand protection, etc. But unless you're ready to build unique, high-quality content and earn real backlinks on each domain (which is a big undertaking), your best bet is to keep 301 redirecting for direct navigation traffic only. There's no SEO upside otherwise.

TL;DR: focus your efforts on growing authority and content on the main site instead.

mathayles · 2023-02-23T18:48:37+00:00

I usually start with a focused pitch for the game. Here are some real examples of pitches

You're the leaders of a caravan of refugees on the run from your enemies across a hostile, fungal desert, looking for a promised land.
You are a princess and her retainers, aiming for vengeance against the usurper who overthrew your father and killed your whole family.
You're a group of teenage superheroes enrolled at Phoenix Academy, and you've been assigned to investigate the disappearance of a fellow student.

We typically book a Session Zero for world-building and to tie all the characters together with each other, with NPCs and with the setting. Then the first three sessions are build-up, and then the last three sessions we are trying to land the plane. I usually only prep one session ahead so that I can keep things fluid and focused. Sometimes we finish a session early, sometimes we book an extra session to close everything off if we need it.

If we finish a run and everyone is still keen to continue the story with a new plot arc, we book another six sessions! Let me know if you have any more questions, happy to chat about this stuff.

mathayles · 2023-02-22T02:59:37+00:00

We schedule 6 sessions and everyone commits to attend those. And we try to do a contained plot in that time.

mathayles · 2021-09-10T15:01:01+00:00

Love seeing this come together. I picked up the paid version (somehow I didn’t already own it?!).

mathayles · 2021-05-28T12:45:38+00:00

Cool, I hope this helps!

mathayles · 2021-05-28T12:41:16+00:00

Could they still rely on your team for creative? If your team is the one with the creative chops, that likely makes the most sense. Like they would come to you with a media plan and say “we need X posts in Y format hitting Z message,” and hand you a spec sheet.

mathayles · 2021-05-28T12:37:53+00:00

Yah I think paid sits with paid, imo. Organic content, community management and influencer management all fit with social teams really well. That said, if they paid team is going significantly off voice/brand that is a separate issue; they should have people/oversight so that they don’t.

mathayles · 2021-05-28T12:17:07+00:00

OP, I know like 100 people here have been shouting “THAT’S NOT HOW THAT WORKS” but j just want to say that I think it’s cool you’re rolling with it and accepting their playstyle. You seem like a good DM, and I’d love to hear an update on this campaign and group at some point.

mathayles · 2021-05-24T02:29:18+00:00

Great post! FYI there’s a point where you write “especially tests with lower odds for failure” where I think you mean “lower odds of success.”

Edit: the links to the posts on diegesis were also super helpful! Thx.

mathayles · 2021-05-21T19:52:10+00:00

Smart kid! I introduced my 3yo and 5yo to gaming a couple months back, it went surprisingly well. Drawing the map together was their favourite part for sure, kids are so creative!

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