LearnThings potential buyers are asking about DropSend

0 Responses to “Things potential buyers are asking about DropSend”

1. Simon Griffiths on March 5, 2008 at 12:08 pm said:

   Okay, I’m going to be controversial here and say that I don’t think churn rate, no matter how you define it is of use in a case like this.

   The argument goes that with a service like Dropsend, many people would have a short term use for it, and after that would probably not use it again. Therefore your churn rate is high naturally, but it doesn’t mean that customers are unhappy with the service. Just that they have had their use and moved on, as it where!

   To be honest, I was surprised at the low numbers though. I had honestly thought that Dropsend would get a much better subscription rate than this. The advantage though is that there is a whole lot of room for improvement, as in my testing, Dropsend was by far the best of the bunch.

   As for the value, at the moment this would surely be based on the revenue, with a healthy factor for potential. My guess would be that the revenue is fairly low, but potential is high. I’m not sure I agree with the x25 figure, but I would say x10 to 15 would be reasonable.
2. Ryan Carson on December 3, 2006 at 6:36 pm said:

   Thanks for the suggestion folks. I’ll probably publish another entry with updated figures.

   Thanks again!
3. Scott on December 3, 2006 at 5:55 am said:

   Ryan,

   Don’t publish these numbers as your “churn rate” lest you confuse others. Churn rate is what you accurately described as “what percentage of your customers cancel the service per month.” which would be cancels/# customers, but the numbers you calculated are cancels/signups. Use the 1.2% instead.

   Then, show your growth rate number to show that you are signing up folks faster than they are leaving.
4. Matt Browne on December 2, 2006 at 6:44 pm said:

   I worked at web design firm hosting over 25,000 paying accounts and we always measured churn the way Alex G. suggested.
5. barnacle on December 1, 2006 at 3:17 am said:

   ‘# I have looked up traffic figures on Alexa for DropSend, do you use a different tool?’

   I see you are using Google Analytics. How do you find that and will you be publishing your numbers from this? I find it interesting people quoting Alexa numbers all over the web but having true numbers from a tagging solution such as GA means a lot more.

   Thanks,
   Glen
6. Bill on November 30, 2006 at 10:40 pm said:

   Hi Ryan

   I see your point about the leaky bucket but the size of the bucket is important too! A dribble out of a swimming pool doesn’t really matter. So your 1.2% figure sounds pretty good, especially when you are throwing 7 buckets in, for every one leaked (err. enough bucket metaphors)

   Bill
7. James Deer on November 30, 2006 at 8:37 pm said:

   Interesting stuff, would have never of thought to include numbers such as these!
8. Ryan Carson on November 30, 2006 at 4:08 pm said:

   So if you have 90 accounts and in a month, you add 10 and lose 10, your churn rate would be 10%.

   Well, if you want to measure it that way, our churn rate for our Basic plan is only 1.2%
9. Alex G. on November 30, 2006 at 1:55 pm said:

   Actually, I’ve been involved in several transactions for web hosts, and the standard metric for churn is number lost per month divided by the total number of accounts + any new accounts added per month. So if you have 90 accounts and in a month, you add 10 and lose 10, your churn rate would be 10%.

   Personally, I would be extremely worried buying a business where a churn rate was over 5% across most accounts per month. The deals I’ve been in, the churn rates were more on the order of 1-2%.
10. Ryan Carson on November 30, 2006 at 12:56 pm said:

    Your churn numbers are deleted accounts per month divided by new accounts per month. Is that really what you want?

    It’s the most relevant number, I believe. This helps you make sure you’re not having a “Leaky Bucket” problem.
11. Bill on November 30, 2006 at 11:58 am said:

    Your churn numbers are deleted accounts per month divided by new accounts per month. Is that really what you want? Wouldn’t deleted accounts per month divided by total accounts be a more useful number?