Updated
For SaaS and B2B teamsCustomer research for SaaS, from the threads where customers decide to leave.
When customers start looking for alternatives, they say why in public: what broke, what they need from the replacement, and what keeps them stuck. Threadpull pulls the whole thread so you can read your churn reasons before your customers act on them.
How do you find out why customers leave a SaaS product?
Read the threads where people ask for alternatives to it, and count the reasons they give and what stops them switching. In a 437-comment Ask HN thread about alternatives to GitHub, outages started the search, about 21 comments asked whether CI and integrations would carry over, and about 23 said network effects keep teams in place. In a 46-comment r/SaaS thread on whether AI SaaS is too crowded, about 10 comments said it is and about 10 said a specific problem matters more. Threadpull pulls every comment so you can count them.
Six research jobs for a SaaS team
Find your churn reasons
Pull "alternatives to…" threads about you or a rival and count the reasons people give.
Ask HN · r/SaaSList what a switch must carry over
The integrations and workflows people refuse to rebuild are your migration checklist.
Ask HN · r/sysadminWin a competitor's unhappy users
Read the threads where they complain, and answer their exact objections on your page.
r/SaaS · product subredditsWrite comparison pages
Use the comparisons buyers make themselves, in their words, not your feature grid.
Ask HN · r/startupsTest pricing language
See how people describe value, "too expensive" and "worth it" for tools like yours.
r/SaaS · r/EntrepreneurPrepare sales objections
Turn the reasons people stay put into answers your sales team can give.
Ask HN · r/salesWhat the Hacker News thread showed
An Ask HN thread looking for alternatives to GitHub after months of outages, read comment by comment.
Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331033 ↗For your retention: outages get customers looking, but integrations and existing workflows decide whether they leave. Your risk is highest once a rival can move those across without a rebuild.
Self-hosting to regain control
about 40 comments"The key thing that drove our decision to self host gitlab was that WE were the ones in control of when things happened."cortesoft
"To all of those proposing self-hosted GitLab: we did it for 6+ years in my company, and it's not always a smooth sailing."plqbfbv
Network effects keep teams stuck
about 23 comments"I’ve personally seen a project leave it and then contributions dropped significantly."als0
"I think some cross platforms stars and search would be good."hum3hum3
CI and Actions must carry over
about 21 comments"If an org is heavily invested in GitHub Actions and GitHub App integrations, is self-hosting GitHub enterprise the only practical option?"CodeAndCuffs
Outages are the trigger to leave
about 19 comments"Also literally just this morning we’ve had to delay a release due to Github being down."sandcat_
"don’t switch reactively, but use the outages as a trigger to evaluate alternatives and make sure a GitHub outage doesn’t stop critical work."dxbhack
What the r/SaaS thread showed
An r/SaaS thread asking whether it is too late to build an AI SaaS, read comment by comment.
Is creating an AI saas too late/oversatured?
www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1xkm24c/is_creating_an_ai_saas_too_lateoversatured/ ↗For your positioning: a crowded category worries builders more than buyers. What decides it is one specific problem solved for people you can actually reach.
A specific problem beats a crowded market
about 10 comments"solves a real, specific problem and you can actually get it in front of people who need it, saturation doesn't matter."theteenyreassurance
"I think we sometimes confuse market saturation with market maturity."uberkitnet
Yes, it is saturated
about 10 comments"Consider that product hunt gets 300 to 1100 new saas per day"NPSALLEN
"it’s more saturated than it’s ever been."anabatic-bat
Distribution is the hard part now
about 8 comments"The real advantage is now shifting from the ability to build something to the ability to make people care about what you've built."Academic-Tadpole-964
"An app is easy to built but not to monetize."Remy_Builds
Too many ideas, not too many rivals
about 4 comments"A dozen prototypes and zero launches, saturation was never the thing in your way."Some-Cantaloupe7497
"Pick one idea and go."That-Measurement-650
The threads in numbers
"Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub" had 437 comments from 291 people when we pulled it on 1 Nov 2026. 313 of them (72%) were replies to other comments, nested up to 10 levels deep, and the median comment was 29 words long. The theme raised most, self-hosting to regain control, came up in about 40 comments (9% of the thread).
"Is creating an AI saas too late/oversatured?" had 46 comments from 31 people when we pulled it on 1 Nov 2026. 20 of them (43%) were replies to other comments, nested up to 4 levels deep, and the median comment was 25 words long. The theme raised most, a specific problem beats a crowded market, came up in about 10 comments (22% of the thread).
How we did this research
- Pulled with Threadpull on 1 Nov 2026: every comment still live, at every reply level, from news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331033.
- Pulled with Threadpull on 1 Nov 2026: every comment Reddit returned, at every reply level, from reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1xkm24c/is_creating_an_ai_saas_too_lateoversatured/. Reddit's own count was 52; it also counts comments that were deleted or removed, which can't be pulled.
- Read and grouped into themes. A comment can raise more than one theme, so counts are approximate.
- Every quote on this page is checked word for word against the export, under its author, each time the page is built.
| Hacker News | r/SaaS | |
|---|---|---|
| Score on the post | 649 | 37 |
| Comments | 437 | 46 |
| Top-level comments | 124 | 26 |
| Replies | 313 (72%) | 20 (43%) |
| People commenting | 291 | 31 |
| Comments by the original poster | 0 | 4 |
| Deepest reply level | 10 | 4 |
| Median comment length | 29 words | 25 words |
| Comments from the 5 most active people | 38 (9%) | 19 (41%) |
| Theme | Thread | Comments | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosting to regain control | Hacker News | about 40 | 9% |
| Network effects keep teams stuck | Hacker News | about 23 | 5% |
| CI and Actions must carry over | Hacker News | about 21 | 5% |
| Outages are the trigger to leave | Hacker News | about 19 | 4% |
| A specific problem beats a crowded market | r/SaaS | about 10 | 22% |
| Yes, it is saturated | r/SaaS | about 10 | 22% |
| Distribution is the hard part now | r/SaaS | about 8 | 17% |
| Too many ideas, not too many rivals | r/SaaS | about 4 | 9% |
The words they used
How many comments used each word or named each product. Counted from the export each time the page is built; a comment counts once however often it repeats the word. Variants count together, so "self-host" includes "self-hosted" and "self hosting".
The Hacker News thread
| Word or phrase | Comments | Share |
|---|---|---|
| self-host | 72 | 16% |
| CI | 55 | 13% |
| pull request or PR | 32 | 7% |
| migrate | 15 | 3% |
| private repo | 14 | 3% |
| GitHub Actions | 14 | 3% |
| federation | 14 | 3% |
| open source | 13 | 3% |
| Name | Comments | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Forgejo | 61 | 14% |
| Gitea | 52 | 12% |
| GitLab | 49 | 11% |
| Codeberg | 44 | 10% |
| Tangled | 21 | 5% |
| Fossil | 13 | 3% |
| SourceHut | 9 | 2% |
| Radicle | 8 | 2% |
| Bitbucket | 7 | 2% |
The r/SaaS thread
| Word or phrase | Comments | Share |
|---|---|---|
| saturated | 12 | 26% |
| idea | 12 | 26% |
| problem | 7 | 15% |
| compete or competition | 5 | 11% |
| distribution or marketing | 4 | 9% |
| local models | 4 | 9% |
| B2B or B2C | 3 | 7% |
| customer | 3 | 7% |
Where the conversation happened
Comments per reply level. The deep chains are often where people disagree, and a skim of the top-level comments misses them.
Using churn threads
Where do customers say why they're leaving?
In "alternatives to…" and "what do you use for…" threads on Ask HN, and in subreddits like r/SaaS and r/sysadmin. People explain what broke, what the replacement must have and what keeps them stuck, and others reply with their own switches. The Ask HN thread above holds hundreds of reasons.
What turns an outage into churn?
In the Ask HN thread above, outages started the search but didn't settle it. One commenter advised using outages as a trigger to evaluate alternatives rather than switching on the spot. What decided it was whether CI, integrations and contributors would come along.
How do you use a churn thread for retention?
List what people say a replacement must have, and check each item against your product. The ones you already have become retention messaging. The ones you lack, where rivals have them, are your risk list.
Can these threads help win a competitor's customers?
Yes. Pull the alternatives thread for a rival, list the reasons people want out, and answer each one on a comparison or migration page, in the words they used.
Is a crowded market a reason not to build?
The r/SaaS thread above split evenly. About 10 comments said AI SaaS is saturated, one citing 300 to 1,100 new launches a day on Product Hunt, and about 10 said that doesn't matter if you solve a specific problem for people you can reach. About 8 said distribution, not building, is now the hard part.
What should you ask before building another SaaS?
The questions one commenter put to the poster make a good checklist: how many potential customers you've spoken to, what they do today to solve the problem, what it costs them, and whether anyone has offered to pay.
Where SaaS buyers talk
Threads worth pulling, by what you're trying to learn.
- Ask HN"Alternatives to…" and "what do you use for…" threads
- r/SaaSFounders and buyers on pricing, churn and tools
- r/sysadminIT buyers: outages, migrations and vendor lock-in
- r/startupsEarly teams choosing their stack, and why
- r/EntrepreneurSmall-business owners on what they pay for
- Product subredditsYour rivals' own communities, where users complain first
How to find threads like these
Searches that turn up the threads worth pulling. Open one, then pull it with Threadpull.
| Search | Where | What it finds |
|---|---|---|
"Ask HN" alternatives to | hn.algolia.com | Churn threads: reasons to leave and what a replacement needs |
site:reddit.com "switched from" plus a rival | Switching stories about a competitor | |
site:reddit.com/r/SaaS "cancelled" | Why people cancel, in their own words | |
"Advice on migrating from" | hn.algolia.com | What people need carried over before they move |
Threads worth pulling next
Comment counts as of 2 Nov 2026.
- Ask HN: Advice on Migrating from 1Password?A churn thread: why people leave and what they need moved.
- Ask HN: What are the viable alternatives to DuckDuckGo?Alternatives named and the reasons for each.
- I switched from Mac to a Lenovo ChromebookA switching story and the replies that push back.
- Show HN: OpenKnowledge – open source AI-first alternative to Obsidian/NotionHow people judge a challenger to tools they already pay for.
- Show HN: We built an open source, zero webhooks payment processorWhat buyers ask before trusting a payments product.
The prompt for churn threads
Pull an "alternatives to…" thread, choose Send to AI, and turn it into a retention brief.
These are every comment from a thread where people discuss leaving a software product. 1. List the reasons for leaving, with a count for each. 2. List what a replacement must have, with a count for each. 3. Rank the alternatives named by how often they come up. 4. List what keeps people from switching. 5. Quote the five most specific sentences, word for word. 6. Suggest three changes that would make our customers less likely to leave.
SaaS research FAQ
Can I pull threads about my competitors?
Any public thread you can open, you can pull. Threadpull only reads; it never posts, votes or messages anyone.
Does it work on Hacker News and Reddit?
Yes. Reddit threads work without an account. Hacker News threads and Reddit profiles need a free account.
Can I keep the research for later?
A free account saves every pull in History in your browser, searchable, so you can compare threads over time.