Web App Autopsy

Ryan Cambell in his article Web App Autopsy analyzes 4 different web applications:
Wufoo is an online HTML form builder.


Blinksale helps companies to create and send to customers invoices for services or products.


FeedBurner creates RSS feeds for blogs and podcasts and was recently acquired by Google.


RegOnline builds online registration systems.


Campbell uses nice tables and charts to present information. This article provides the basic information about these companies:

• Programming languages -- PHP, Ruby on Rails, Java, and .NET;
• Time to launch -- between 3 months and 6 years;
• Code lines counts -- RegOline has the highest number of code lines;
• Conversion rates -- RegOnline has 1.52% free and 1.14% paid services while Blinksale has 11 free and only 1% paid services;
• Average revenue per customer -- RegOnline has the higest revenue--$131/month;
• Seasonal trends -- sales drop in December.
  

We are spoiled with plethora of free web applications and even insulted when these struggling small companies try to charge us for their hard work and great applications. This article shows how much time and effort programmers are putting into these applications, how they try to gain recognition and attract potential paid customers by giving out their applications for free, and how little they are paid for their effort unless some lucky ones get popular or purchased by the larger companies as in case with FeedBurner.

This article was suggested by Dean Collins -- http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/.