Here's the dirty secret of modern SaaS: every tool you use creates a separate database for your business.
Your link shortener has one. Your uptime monitor has one. Your email tool has one. Your analytics platform has one. Your "customer" — the actual person who clicked your link, opened your email, and paid you money — is a different record in every single one.
The Glue Industry
This is how we ended up with a billion-dollar industry dedicated entirely to glue.
Segment connects your tools. Zapier automates between them. Fivetran moves data to a warehouse. Census reverse-ETLs it back. And you — the business owner — pay for all of it, manage all of it, and still don't have a complete picture of your customer.
The average small business uses 7–12 SaaS tools. At $20–50/month each, that's $200–600/month just on the tools — before you add the connectors and the integration maintenance tax.
It doesn't have to be this way.
What we're building toward
We asked a simple question: what if all these tools shared one database from the start?
Not "integrated after the fact." Not "connected via API." Not "synced nightly to a warehouse." One database, from day one.
That's the architecture we're designing into every First Party product. Today, each product works great on its own — LinkSmith for links, YourSiteIsDown for uptime, Outpost for email, Groupthink for meetings. They're independent products that compete on their own merits.
But under the hood, we're building them on a shared foundation:
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One account. Sign up once. One login, one organization, one bill.
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One contact model. Every person your business interacts with — across any product — resolves to one record. Internally, we call this
Contact::upsertByEmail(): any product that encounters an email address creates or enriches the same contact. -
One event stream. A link click, an email open, a monitor alert — they're all events on the same timeline, attributed to the same person.
We're not there yet. Right now, the products are standalone. But the architecture is designed so that as we connect them, your data gets richer without you doing anything. No Zapier. No Segment. No glue.
Why "First Party"
The name has always been the thesis.
In analytics, "first-party data" means data you collect directly from your own users — as opposed to third-party data bought from brokers. First-party data is more valuable, more accurate, and more trustworthy.
We took this literally. When you use First Party products, your business data stays yours. It's not scattered across six vendors who each hold a piece of your customer relationships hostage. And as the products connect, you'll have a unified view of your customers without buying a data warehouse.
The bundle economics
Because our products share architecture, we can offer bundle pricing that actually makes sense. Not artificial bundling (slapping acquisitions under one brand), but architectural bundling — shared infrastructure means real cost savings that we pass through.
Each product stands alone. Together, they'll be worth more than the sum of their parts.
Where we are today
Today: great individual products at fair prices. Each one competes with incumbents that charge 2–5x more for the same features.
Tomorrow: those products start sharing data under one account, and the customer who clicked your LinkSmith link is the same record as the subscriber in your Outpost email list.
That's the roadmap. We'll ship it in public, like everything else.
First Party builds tools that compete with products made by teams of hundreds — at a fraction of the price. See what we're shipping →