Questions worth asking.
I tried to write the answers I'd want to read if I were considering a subscription to a one-person SaaS catalog. If yours isn't here, email me.
About Lab
- Is Lab really one person?
- Yes. Every product on Lab is designed, built, and maintained by Akif Mursalov, working out of Nuremberg. No team, no outsourcing, no AI content farm. The bar for what ships is mine; the upside is consistency, the downside is response time.
- Is this AI-generated?
- The product copy is written by hand. The code is hand-written with an AI assistant in the loop the same way a developer in 2026 uses an LSP — autocomplete, refactoring, dumb mistakes caught early. Nothing on Lab is a wrapper around an LLM; every product is real software with its own database, its own logic, its own UI.
- How long has Lab been running?
- I started shipping in early 2026. Older catalogs are usually safer than younger ones — Lab is honestly still young, which is something to factor in.
Subscribing and using
- What does the price get me?
- A real account on the product, generous limits (most products are functionally unlimited for personal use), and continued maintenance for as long as the product stays in the catalog. Your monthly payment covers hosting, Stripe's fee, my groceries, and the ongoing time to fix things and ship improvements.
- Why is most of the catalog $4/month?
- $4 is the calm-tracker baseline — a focused tool that does one thing well. The pricier products ($7-$19) are the ones whose value is materially higher: a personal CRM where forgetting a relationship costs you, a time tracker tied to billable hours, a money tracker that prevents real losses. The price gradient is meant to mirror the value gradient.
- Is there a free trial?
- Most products include a short free trial at checkout. I don't do 14-day trials that require your credit card without a clear benefit — if a product's worth $4/mo, the friction of subscribing should be small. If you try a product and it's not for you, cancel before the period ends — you won't be charged.
- Why does each product have its own login?
- Isolation. Each product has its own database; a security incident in one shouldn't leak into the others. Lab keeps a list of every product you've subscribed to on your account pagewith the URL and credentials, so the friction is small once. SSO is on the maybe- list, but only if it doesn't compromise the isolation property.
- Can I try a product without subscribing?
- Read-only demo accounts are something I'm considering for the bigger products, but not built yet. For now, the product detail pages have screenshots and feature walkthroughs. If you want a specific question answered before subscribing, email me — I'm happy to spin up a temporary preview.
Billing, cancellation, refunds
- How do I cancel?
- Go to your account page and click Manage billing. That opens the Stripe Customer Portal where you can cancel in one click — no retention chain, no “wait!” modal. Your access stays active until the current period ends.
- What about refunds?
- If you cancel during a free trial you're not charged. If you subscribe and decide within a few days it's not for you, email me — I'll refund you. Refunds beyond that are case-by-case; I'm a person, not a policy engine, and I'd rather you stop paying than feel locked in.
- What if a product gets retired?
- If a product's economics stop working, I'll email existing subscribers in advance, offer a way to export, and either grandfather you (run the product as-is for existing subs but stop taking new ones) or refund the remaining period. I'm optimizing for not losing your trust, not for short-term revenue.
Privacy and data
- Who can see my data?
- Me, for the purpose of fixing bugs or providing support. Nothing is shared between products. Nothing is sold. Nothing is used to train anything. The full legal version is in Privacy.
- Can I export my data?
- Most products have export built-in (CSV or JSON). For the few that don't yet, email me — I can dump your data on demand. If you cancel without exporting, your account stays in the product's database for 30 days in case you change your mind, then it's deleted.
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