Nathan Holmquist’s software career began with a pile of used books and an eye for value hiding in plain sight.
Around 2007, he was picking up books at library sales and thrift stores and reselling them online through Amazon. As the side hustle became something more serious, he wrote an ebook about what he was learning, then built a blog and YouTube channel that attracted an audience of other booksellers.
With that audience in place, Nathan began thinking about what else he could build for them.
He didn’t have to look far for a problem to solve.
Amazon’s FBA program made fulfillment easier, but getting a box of books into its catalogue was still painfully manual, with every title listed individually before the batch could move on.
Nathan’s solution was ScanLister: a desktop app that helps high-volume booksellers list inventory on Amazon faster. More than a decade later, it has grown into an established subscription software business using Freemius, with billing, licensing, invoicing, and tax handled in the background.
Finding margin in the bargain bin
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) changed the economics of selling books online for people like Nathan. Instead of packing and posting every order himself, he could send inventory to Amazon in bulk and let its warehouses handle fulfillment.
But listing was still a slog. Amazon’s workflow handles each book individually — manageable in small batches, tedious when there are boxes gathering dust.
Around 2010, Nathan started wondering if that part of the process could be sped up. He kept returning to the idea and finally pulled the trigger in 2014, hiring a developer to build an MVP.
That became ScanLister. Sellers could now work through a stack of books in one continuous flow: scan a barcode, create the Amazon listing, print the FBA label, move to the next book.
Turning a useful tool into a business
Nathan shared the first version of ScanLister with his email list to see if the idea resonated.
The response was encouraging, so he launched ScanLister to the same audience for a one-time payment of $99.
“I knew if no one bought it on the first day that it would be a dud.”
Around five people bought it that day.
That was enough to keep going. Early users started sending in ideas, and Nathan kept improving the software.
Over time, ScanLister’s pricing changed too. The one-time price moved from $99 to $179. Later, once Nathan and his developer had recurring billing in place, he switched to a subscription at $15 per month, eventually increasing it to $19.
The move to subscriptions changed the kind of business Nathan was running. He now had recurring customers whose payments and software access had to stay in sync month after month.
For a desktop app, that made licensing increasingly important. Every customer needed a valid license to keep using ScanLister, and managing those licenses became a bigger operational job as the business matured.
The setup behind ScanLister started to strain
Nathan had been using SendOwl to handle payments and license delivery since the beginning. In the early days, it worked well: it was inexpensive, straightforward, and gave each customer a license key upon purchase.
As ScanLister moved from one-time sales into subscriptions, Nathan needed more from the systems behind it.
“Over the years, ScanLister grew into a more established software company, while SendOwl seemed to be focusing more on digital products like eBooks, courses, and downloads.
Things like software licensing, subscription management, analytics, and better customer management became much more important to me. SendOwl just wasn’t really built around those things.”
Running a software business from a spreadsheet
SendOwl could issue license keys, but Nathan still had to manage the lifecycle himself: deactivation after cancellations, reactivation upon renewals, and tracking how many days of access a customer had left.
He brought in freelancers to build a Google Sheets system that kept subscriptions and licenses aligned, while he continued creating invoices by hand.
Customers changing computers created another steady stream of support tickets to handle. One or two people a day would email after replacing a machine or losing access and need Nathan to sort out a new license key.
None of those jobs was especially difficult on its own. The problem was that they kept piling up around the product and Nathan was still the person holding the whole system together.
When the bill outgrew the tool
Nathan lived with the setup for years. What finally pushed him to look elsewhere was cost.
As ScanLister’s subscriber base grew, SendOwl’s bill climbed from $24 to $600 a month. By then, Nathan was paying considerably more while still relying on spreadsheets, freelancers, and manual work to manage subscriptions and licenses.
But by that point, the higher bill was just part of the problem.
Nathan wanted customers to be able to see their own license keys, cancel their subscriptions, and update their payment details without emailing him. License activations and reactivations needed to happen automatically too.
He wasn’t just looking for a cheaper option. He needed a platform that could take over the software-specific work he was stitching together himself.
Finding a platform built for software
With SendOwl no longer fitting the business, Nathan shortlisted alternatives. Paddle was one of them; Freemius was another. He booked introductory calls to see which platform best matched ScanLister’s needs.
Freemius stood out because it covered the software-specific areas he had been trying to piece together himself.
“When I talked to Freemius, it just seemed to click. I’m like, ‘Okay, this is the company that’s going to work for me, and they have everything I need and more.’”
Migrating ScanLister to Freemius
ScanLister had years of customers, subscriptions, licenses, and payment history tied to the old setup. Nathan’s biggest concern was moving all of it without disrupting the people already using the product. He was also wary of giving up some control over the payment process and learning a new system after years with the old one.
“Once the migration got underway, the Freemius team stayed responsive throughout the process, answering questions and helping work through the complications as they came up.”
The migration took a few months (for good reason).
ScanLister had subscribers paying through both Stripe and PayPal, with years of SendOwl records sitting alongside the Google Sheets system Nathan had built around them.
That legacy setup had to be untangled before everything could move.
Nathan went back through the records, reorganized them, and matched customers to their license keys. A very small percentage of Stripe cards couldn’t be transferred, so those customers had to renew manually.
By the end, all of ScanLister’s PayPal and Stripe subscribers had made it across.
One visible change did cause some confusion: with Freemius handling the transaction, a different billing name appeared on card and PayPal statements.
Nathan estimates around 1–3% of customers didn’t recognize it. Some emailed to ask about the charge, while others opened a dispute.
Nathan had written a blog post about the change and sent several announcements, but not everyone saw them. It’s a useful reminder that even well-communicated billing changes can still catch people off guard.
Putting more control in customers’ hands
With the migration done and the new setup in place, there was still a learning curve.
Nathan had to get familiar with the customer portal and automated emails, while integrating the Freemius login into ScanLister’s website took some maneuvering. Freemius’s help documentation proved useful as he got to grips with the new system.
The payoff was that customers could handle more themselves. They could log into their account, manage their own license keys, deactivate old installations, and activate ScanLister on another machine without emailing Nathan.
“That part was one of the most frustrating parts with SendOwl and my system — manually giving people new keys and deactivating and reactivating. Freemius does that automatically.”
Invoices moved out of Nathan’s hands too. Freemius generates downloadable PDFs automatically, replacing another process he had previously managed manually.
Nathan says most customer feedback since the switch has been positive, particularly around self-service license management and downloadable invoices.
Taking the tax headache out of selling software
Software tax was another area Nathan found difficult to navigate. In the US alone, rules and rates can vary across states and, in some cases, counties.
With Freemius acting as the merchant of record, Nathan no longer has to manage that complexity himself. Freemius calculates and collects the applicable tax on ScanLister’s sales, then handles the reporting, filing, and remittance behind the scenes.
Building the next version of ScanLister
With billing, licensing, invoicing, and tax no longer demanding the same attention, Nathan can put more of his time back into the product.
He’s now working with a new developer to redesign and recode ScanLister. The new version is already in beta, with a more modern interface, new features, and faster listing.
One focus is Amazon processing time. Some SKUs can still take up to an hour to process, and Nathan expects the new version to cut that wait considerably.
Nathan is also preparing ScanLister for life beyond Amazon. An eBay integration is in the works, opening up another marketplace for sellers who already use the app to manage inventory.
Early feedback on the beta has been very positive, and Nathan expects sales to increase significantly over the next six months.
A stronger foundation for ScanLister’s next chapter
ScanLister is a very different business from the one five people bought on launch day.
As the product grew, so did everything around it: subscriptions, license management, invoices, customer accounts, and tax. The setup Nathan started with worked well for years, but eventually the work of holding it together became a job in itself.
That’s one of the clearest lessons in his story.
The tools that get a software business started aren’t always the ones that will carry it through its next stage of growth.
Nathan’s advice to other software makers in the same position is simple:
“Personally, I’d much rather spend my time focusing on the product itself, customer support, and marketing. Those are the areas where I feel I can add the most value.”
Moving an established business is not frictionless, and Nathan doesn’t pretend otherwise.
“Migration takes work, especially if you have a lot of existing customers, but for me it was worth the effort to have a platform that’s specifically built around running a software business.”
With Freemius, Nathan has a partner built for the next stage of ScanLister’s growth. As subscriptions, customers, and marketplaces increase, the billing and licensing layer can scale with the product, while giving him more of the platform to draw on as the business expands.
That leaves Nathan where he wants to be: focused on the product, the customers, and what comes next.
