u/Brilliant_Bat_6545

So it has been three weeks since I realized my SaaS and currently I have 40 users. The thing is I get new signups often but the retention rate is 10%. It's really bad, I dont know why.

I have a onboarding flow and simple no login system that allows them to use the app without signing up first.

To give a little info about my SaaS: Its an AI orchestrator app, that works by tokens. So without signing up you get 5 credits to use, which runs out pretty fast, once signed in you get 20 per hourly basis.

I would love any feedback or tips.

About two weeks ago I launched AskOnce. It’s still very early, but somehow around 30 people have signed up already. Not huge numbers, but honestly seeing real people use something I built feels pretty crazy.

I went into this thinking the hard part would mostly be building the product. Turns out the product is only half the battle.

A few things hit me pretty quickly:

1. Login and onboarding matter way more than I expected, like I mean it

I tried to keep everything super lightweight and simple. Fast signup, minimal friction, clean onboarding.

But at one point my login system broke and I temporarily lost access to users I already had. That was a painful moment because it made me realize login is not just some tiny feature sitting in the corner. It’s the foundation of the whole app.

If authentication feels unreliable, people lose trust immediately. Doesn’t matter how good the product is.

It also made me appreciate how much work goes into making simple experiences actually feel stable.

2. Watching users use the app taught me more than building it

This one surprised me a lot.

I started paying close attention to how people were actually using the app, and I noticed they were trying to do things I never even planned for. Some features I thought were important barely got touched, while other tiny things kept coming up naturally in how people used the product.

A few of those behaviors ended up becoming actual features later because I realized users were already trying to use the app that way anyway.

It made me understand that users will often show you what the product should become if you pay attention carefully enough.

3. Organic marketing is way hard

I underestimated this badly.

I tried Reddit, TikTok, Instagram Reels, different communities, all at the same time. Looking back, I spread myself way too thin.

Instead of building momentum on one channel, I was half-committed everywhere.

I think focusing deeply on one place where your audience already hangs out is probably much smarter than trying to be everywhere from day one. In this case X was the choice for me.

Link to the app: Link

To explain what the app does: its an AI orchestration app that lets people chain multiple LLMs together in a single prompt to get harness the capabilities of all llms models.

Right now I’m still figuring all of this out as I go. Building the app honestly felt more predictable than trying to get people to consistently discover and care about it.

One thing I still have not figured out at all is monetization. Right now everyone is still on the free tier, and I honestly do not know yet how to turn early users into paying customers without pushing too hard.

I launched a small SaaS about two weeks ago. Right now I have 19 users signed up, but nobody is paying yet.

It is a bit of a reality check, but I am learning a lot from it.

A few things I learned so far:

1. Login and onboarding matter a lot

I tried to keep things super simple and fast, which I still think is good. But I learned that login still has to feel smooth and stable. At one point my login broke and I lost access to users I already had. That was a wake up call. Login is not just a small part, it is the base of everything. If it breaks, everything else breaks too.

2. Talking to users right away helps

I started sending emails right after people sign up, just saying hi and asking for feedback the next day. Even when they do not reply, it makes the product feel more real and less like just numbers.

3. Doing organic marketing is harder than I thought

I tried a few different places at once, but it was too scattered. Nothing really worked well. I feel like focusing on one channel would have been much better than trying everything at once.

Still early days, and I am just figuring things out as I go. It is very different from the “build it and users will come” idea I had in my head.

Would love to hear what others learned in their first weeks, especially how you got your first users to pay.

I’ve been building a side project called UI Wars.

The idea is simple:
- instead of endlessly scrolling design inspiration sites, you actually practice design through fast multiplayer UI battles and challenges with other people.

You get a prompt, build your version, see how others approached the same problem, vote, improve, repeat.

I wanted something that feels more active and competitive than just collecting screenshots on Pinterest or Dribbble.

It’s still early, but I’d genuinely love feedback from designers/frontend people here if anyone wants to try it out:

Its Free. No Login Required.