Startup

Enough is Enough, Time for SaaS

After a couple tragic website outages I finally decided to investigate alternatives. SaaS is the way to focus more on delivering content and less about maintaining.

I have been installing, developing, and maintaining my websites for the past 18 years. I am a hands-on person who wants to know how everything ticks. The amount of time required continues to grow, but the amount of time I can allocate decreases.

My dilemma for the past couple of years has been when to hand over the reins to someone else like a SaaS provider. The main website is brianchristner.io. I have several more which also consume a considerable amount of time. The time maintaining these sites is distancing me further away from the projects on which I want to focus.

It is a hard proposition to consider no longer having full control over my websites. I'm not sure if it related to my advancing years or trying to be more resourceful with my time (I hope the latter). As more of my projects and new technology investigations were continually put on the back burner, it became increasingly apparent that something needed to change.

Final Straw

Last week, my decision-making process kicked into high gear. I had the unfortunate experience of this website going offline for approximately 48 hours. It was a painful experience unwinding the SSL issues that knocked me offline.

Once everything was stable, I reviewed all my options for preventing such an episode. I considered trying to solve this technically. What's interesting is that I made myself take a step back and analyze my situation without emotions or interest and with pure pros and cons.

The Review

This review led me to weigh in on several factors, such as the time spent with maintenance, the price per month for hosting, and the focus of each site.

It turns out that the time I spent reviewing and deploying new patches and upgrades for each website was almost the same as the time I spent writing articles. It also became clear that I was moving away from my focus with each passing day.

This site, along with several others of my sites, runs Ghost for the CMS. When I started using Ghost, the new versions were made available at a regular cadence but manageable.

However, this year, I have noticed the velocity with which Ghost releases new updates and features. This pace became almost unmanageable for me and my websites. It is great for Ghost users, but maintaining, testing, and deploying at this same pace is challenging.

Finally, I cut my losses with a few sites and did some spring cleaning(In October). I decided to cut websites that I just didn't have time to manage or update and were not bringing any value. They are gone, but I still keep their databases if I ever get back around to them.

I had a couple of sites utilizing WordPress, which is a security nightmare as I was getting bombarded every day with notifications of security issues or hacking attempts. Gone!

The SaaS Solution

Software as a Service (SaaS) is becoming more commonplace than most people realize. SaaS solutions now make up the largest percentage of consumer applications. SaaS consumption is surprising for some, and most people don't even know they are using SaaS.

Ghost and WordPress both offer SaaS solutions. They will take care of the infrastructure, security, hosting, and updates. The Ghost SaaS solution is almost the same price as hosting myself, so switching to SaaS seems like a no-brainer.

The pros of going SaaS outweigh the pros of self-hosting, in my case, by a landslide. I can now focus on delivering more content and worry less about maintenance, configuration, or the platform as a whole. Now, I can sit back and relax. Oh,, wait. Now I have more time to write —no more relaxing!