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Comment by curiously | Hacker News Reader

Great article. Btw, I wonder why we see so many blogs from SaaS companies revolve around the business side of things. For example Groove does the same thing on it's blog, go into how to run a successful business.

On another note, I've unfortunately stopped using Olark for a completely free service called https://tawk.to. It even came with an Android app, and I just couldn't believe that it was completely free. It was enough for me to completely ditch Olark (even though it was well made), because it was free.

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Very interesting. How do they make money? The product looks very robust, but when I see nice products like this that charge no money, I wonder how they stay alive. At least disclose how they pay their employees? Are they a consultancy? Are they funded? Private or public?

They offer a service where they man your support for you.

seemed like they provided this service to large companies to support the rest of us for free.

I would definitely pay for something extra. Even the UI is top notch. I was so impressed.

most likely funded, but I find it as a serious threat to Olark's business because there's absolutely nothing Tawk can't do that Olark does from my experience so far.

I think Tawk does a pretty good job of handling the basics. Most of our customers operating at any scale end up integrating Olark with a CRM such as Salesforce or a Helpdesk solution. We also have excellent cobrowsing, and a there's also a lot you can do with our api, http://www.olark.com/api.

It's also important to remember they will need to monetize eventually.

they are already monetizing, just not for the software. Olark is great, but I am sorry to say their app kills Olark..and their new dashboard is feature packed

Just curious, what other topics would you like to see SaaS companies tackle? We're always open to exploring new trends if there's something you'd find more useful/helpful :)

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