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Full editorial research report
SaaS / Startups · Beginner to intermediate · English
You can buy Zero to SaaS today for $99 from a named merchant with a working checkout and a functioning purchase-email unlock, and the full 23-lesson syllabus is visible before you pay. The 1.8/5 reflects what surrounds that: no refund policy, no terms, no contact address, no runtime, no update dates, a private community whose every advertised home is dead, three prices for the same product live at once, and a three-year "temporary deal" whose anchor price kept moving.
Last checked · Evidence is labeled by source type and freshness.
The evidence supports a real, currently purchasable product from an identifiable operator who runs a live software business. It says nothing about teaching quality, and the buyer protections a $99 purchase normally comes with — a stated refund route, terms, a support address, a verifiable community — are absent.
Quick verdict
Zero to SaaS is Mike Strives' bootstrapped-SaaS course, sold today for $99 as lifetime access to 23 lessons plus a private community. It is genuinely purchasable, but the sales page, FAQ, testimonials and community links that used to support it have all been deleted or have gone dead, and there is no refund policy, no terms and no contact address anywhere.
Rating methodology
Price, checkout, syllabus and the absence of any published policy are directly verified and easy to re-check. The course was not purchased, so content depth, community access and refund behaviour are unobserved, and independent learner evidence is close to non-existent.
Weighted total: 1.825, rounded to one decimal as 1.8/5. Read the rating methodology.
Course record
A self-paced course covering the arc of bootstrapping a software business: choosing and validating an idea, beta and public launch, pricing, product-market and product-channel fit, churn, scaling, and finally selling the company. It is delivered on Jabbly at zerotosaascourse.com and unlocked with the email used at checkout. The retired sales page described each lesson as having both a video and a text document and claimed "Over 7+ hours of video and content"; the current page states no runtime. The listing has moved host at least three times — Circle.so in 2023, Cajobo as recently as April 2026, Jabbly now — and the Cajobo hostname the seller named no longer resolves.
Creator and seller of record
Source: zts-creator-properties, zts-checkoutCurrent official syllabus
These are the lesson titles exactly as published on the current course page. Nothing else is disclosed about them — no runtimes, no descriptions, no recording or update dates, and no preview. The lessons were not purchased or inspected.
Fit
First-time founders who want one person's end-to-end map of bootstrapping a small software business, cheaply.
People who are comfortable buying on a lesson list alone, with no preview, no runtime figure and no refund route.
Not a fit for anyone who needs accountability, feedback, a verifiable community, or documented student outcomes before paying.
$99 one-time for lifetime access is at the cheap end of the category, and the checkout adds no bump, upsell or payment plan.
The complete 23-lesson syllabus is published before purchase.
The arc is unusually complete for a beginner course, running all the way to "Sell your SaaS" rather than stopping at launch.
The seller is a named individual who still operates a working SaaS product, not an anonymous brand.
The purchase-email unlock is functional, so the delivery mechanism demonstrably exists.
No refund policy, no terms of service and no privacy policy exist for this purchase; those URLs render an empty placeholder.
No support or contact address is published on any live page.
The private community that the checkout bills for has no reachable address — every previously advertised home is dead.
Total runtime, lesson lengths, production dates and update history are all undisclosed.
Three Stripe links for the same product were simultaneously live at $149, $99 and $19, the last labelled "BLACK FRIDAY 2025" and sold as "100 SPOTS ONLY".
The entire independent review base is a single Product Hunt review; there is nothing on Reddit, Hacker News, Trustpilot or YouTube.
The seller has stated publicly that the launch testimonials were given in exchange for free access to the course.
Risk review
A real Stripe checkout under the merchant name "Mike Strives" with a plain one-time total and no hidden add-ons.
A functioning entitlement gate that matches purchases by email.
The full syllabus is public before payment.
The seller operates a live, independently reachable software product (Upvoty, rebranding to Cajobo).
A 2021 independent podcast corroborates the Upvoty and Vindy track record the course is built on.
Wayback preserves three years of the seller's own pricing pages, so the claim history is checkable by anyone.
Selling "course and community" while no community destination is verifiable anywhere.
A "temporary deal" that has run continuously since at least 2024, with the crossed-out anchor price itself changing from $299 to $149.
A "100 SPOTS ONLY" Black Friday 2025 link still taking $19 payments in August 2026.
A student count that moved from "500+" to "1,000+" and back to "500+", which a cumulative total cannot do.
The seller's April 2026 FAQ named a course host, mikestrives.cajobo.com, that now has no DNS record — a lifetime-access promise has already outlived one of its hosts.
The course is absent from the seller's own /products page and from his site's machine-readable description.
A retired sales page advertised "500+ students and founders have rated the course 4.9 out of 5"; no rating platform anywhere carries that score, or any score.
The seller now sells a playbook titled "Fake Scarcity Tactics", which describes manufacturing scarcity "using time, quantity, or access limitations" — the same devices his course pages used.
Both of the course's named testimonial-givers we could trace, at Jabbly and at Countdowntimer.ai, are commercially connected to the seller — Jabbly hosts the course, Countdowntimer.ai is a client of his agency — and neither relationship is disclosed beside the quote.
The course's Chapter 5 teaches "Build to Sell!" and "Sell your SaaS", which is the single part of the seller's own record with no independent corroboration.
Terms
Read at the live Stripe checkout linked from the course page.
Homepage testimonials
These are seller-selected user posts and screenshots, not a representative sample. We preserve the visible wording and label what was and was not independently verified.
“The course is worth 10x the price. The pricing chapter alone paid for itself in the first month.”
Verbatim from the seller's homepage. Attributed only to "Devon R., Indie hacker" — a first name and initial with no link, handle or company, so it cannot be traced to a real person. No date is shown.
View source ↗“Mike really knows what he's talking about. The call gave me the clarity and jumpstart to actually launch my SaaS and get the traction I needed.”
Verbatim from the seller's homepage, attributed to "Matthias, Founder, Countdown Timer AI". It describes a coaching call, not the course. Countdowntimer.ai is listed as a client on the seller's own development agency's site, a relationship not disclosed beside the quote.
View source ↗“This course was really all I needed to get started in SaaS.”
Verbatim from the retired September 2024 sales page, attributed by the seller to "Robin Delta, Jabbly" — Jabbly being the company that now hosts this course and builds the seller's websites, a relationship not disclosed beside the quote. The seller has separately written that early reviewers "got early access to the course itself and in exchange for feedback they left me a review which you can find as testimonials on the site." This quote no longer appears anywhere on the live site.
View source ↗Evidence
Facts, claims, reports, analysis, and unknowns are deliberately kept separate.
The live course page publishes 7 chapters and 23 lessons behind a $99 button, its Stripe checkout reads "$99.00 … Lifetime Access to Mike's Zero to SaaS course & Private Community … One-time payment", the purchase-email unlock returns "We could not find a purchase for that email yet." for an unknown address, and the seller's /refund, /terms, /legal and /privacy URLs all render "Nothing here yet".
Sources: Zero to SaaS — the current course page · Zero to SaaS — live Stripe checkout linked from the course page · Seller's refund, terms and privacy URLs — published as emptyArchived sales pages show a continuously running "temporary deal" from 2023 to April 2026, an anchor price that moved from $299 to $149, a student count that went 500+ → 1,000+ → 500+, a "7+ hours" content claim that has since been removed, and an April 2026 FAQ naming Cajobo as the course host.
Sources: Zero to SaaS — archived sales pages, 2023 to April 2026Two SaaS exits, a $1,000,000+ sale, $40–60k MRR, "100+ Founders helped", "25,000+ founders subscribed", "500+ students and founders have rated the course 4.9 out of 5", lifetime access and every testimonial are the seller's own representations. No buyer, company name or date is attached to the exit claims, SureSwift Capital's public portfolio does not list Upvoty, no rating platform carries the 4.9 figure, and the seller has written that early testimonials were given in exchange for free access to the course.
Sources: Zero to SaaS — archived sales pages, 2023 to April 2026 · 2 further sources recorded in the research fileIndependent evidence is close to non-existent: one Product Hunt review (16 upvotes, 1 review, 5.0) from a self-declared follower of the seller's channel, and nothing on Reddit, Hacker News, Trustpilot or YouTube. The only substantial public discussion is a 2023 Indie Hackers thread on the seller's own promotional post, where named commenters challenged the pre-sale framing and the seller conceded how the launch testimonials were obtained. A now-deleted independent article recorded the $149 price, the absence of a refund policy, a January 2023 start and "very few online reviews". A 2021 podcast independently corroborates the Upvoty and Vindy record behind the course.
Sources: Indie Bites episode 33 — "Growing Upvoty to $17k MRR" · 3 further sources recorded in the research fileThe offer is real and cheap but almost entirely undocumented: no policy, no contact, no runtime, no reachable community, three simultaneous live prices and a scarcity claim contradicted by its own still-open payment link. That combination, plus an independent review base of exactly one review, is what holds the rating at 1.8/5 rather than the higher score its low price alone might suggest. The legacy 7.4/10 was not carried over: it was set against a sales page that no longer exists and against claims — Teachable hosting, a no-code Softr/Glide curriculum, a $697 anchor price, an Upvoty sale to SureSwift Capital — that did not survive verification.
Sources: Zero to SaaS — the current course page · Zero to SaaS — live Stripe checkout linked from the course page · Seller's refund, terms and privacy URLs — published as empty · Zero to SaaS — archived sales pages, 2023 to April 2026 · 4 further sources recorded in the research fileRuntime, lesson recency, the location and health of the private community, whether pre-migration buyers kept access, and whether refunds are granted on request all remain unknown after searching the live pages, the platform, the archive and third-party sources; the course was not purchased.
Sources: Zero to SaaS — the current course page · Seller's refund, terms and privacy URLs — published as empty · 1 further source recorded in the research fileUnresolved
Total runtime and the length or recency of any individual lesson.
Where the private community lives, whether it is active, and how a buyer is admitted to it.
Whether buyers from the Circle.so and Cajobo eras kept the "lifetime access" they were promised through two platform migrations.
Whether the seller refunds on request, since no policy exists to test and no refund report was found.
When the lessons were recorded and when they were last updated.
Whether the still-open $19 and $149 payment links are deliberate or simply forgotten.
How many people have actually bought the course, given the seller's own count contradicts itself.
Whether the "4.9 out of 5" the seller advertised was ever collected anywhere a buyer could see it.
Whether the seller still actively supports the course, given his X bio, current offer and last year of output all point elsewhere.
Next options
These alternatives are descriptive only. We have not researched or rated them here.
The syllabus headings map closely onto widely available free writing from indie founders; compare before paying, since no preview is offered.
At this price the differentiator is buyer protection, not price. This report does not rate a specific substitute.
13 · Buyer checklist
Questions
It is a real, currently purchasable course from an identifiable seller with a working checkout and a functioning purchase-email unlock. That supports legitimacy, not quality or outcomes — and it comes with no refund policy, no terms and no published contact address.
$99 USD as a one-time payment, read at the live Stripe checkout on 2026-08-10. Two superseded links for the same product were also still accepting payment that day, at $149 and at $19.
There isn't one. The seller's /refund, /terms, /legal and /privacy URLs all load and render "Nothing here yet". An independent review recorded the same absence back in 2024.
Lifetime access to 23 lessons across 7 chapters, from validating an idea through to selling the business, plus "private community access" per the checkout description. No runtime is stated and no community destination is published.
At zerotosaascourse.com, on the Jabbly platform. The seller's own FAQ said as recently as April 2026 that it was hosted on Cajobo; that hostname, mikestrives.cajobo.com, no longer resolves.
Source registry
zts-checkoutSupports: The checkout is live and reads "Pay Mike Strives", "$99.00", "DEAL: Mike's Course & Private Community Access" and "LIMITED DEAL: Lifetime Access to Mike's Zero to SaaS course & Private Community - all current & future updates included - One-time payment." with "Total due $99.00". It is card-only plus a wallet option, has a discount-code field, and shows no payment plan, no order bump, no upsell and no tax line. The only legal links are Stripe's own generic end-user Terms and Privacy.
Limitations: No payment was made, so delivery, community access and support were not observed. A working checkout proves the offer can be bought, not that what it bills for is delivered. Two superseded Stripe links for the same product were also still accepting payment on the same day at $149 and $19.
zts-course-pageSupports: The whole of what a buyer sees today: "Zero to SaaS / Zero to SaaS course and community. / 7 chapters · 23 lessons / This is a paid course / Get instant access after checkout. / Get access - 99", the complete lesson list, and an "Already bought it?" name-and-email unlock form. Submitting an unknown address returns "We could not find a purchase for that email yet.", so the entitlement gate is wired to purchase records. The footer credits the host platform, "Built by Jabbly".
Limitations: The page publishes no runtime, no lesson descriptions, no update dates, no testimonials, no FAQ, no refund or terms link, no contact address and no community link. It carries no JSON-LD and no price metadata; its own llms.txt and sitemap.xml describe a different product ("Playbooks 101", a free growth-hack library). The price button shows "99" with no currency symbol; USD is only confirmed at Stripe.
zts-refund-absenceSupports: https://www.mikestrives.com/refund, /terms, /legal and /privacy, and https://zerotosaascourse.com/refund and /terms, all return HTTP 200 and render the platform placeholder "Nothing here yet — No platform is published on /refund yet." There is therefore no refund policy, guarantee, terms of service or privacy policy governing this purchase. Jabbly's own Terms of Service, last updated 6 August 2026, place that duty on the seller: "You are the seller of record for your products towards your buyers and are responsible for your own product descriptions, delivery, support, refund policy, consumer rights information and taxes."
Limitations: This documents the absence of published terms, not the seller's private behaviour. Consumers may still hold statutory rights depending on their jurisdiction, and the seller could refund on request; nothing observable says whether he does.
zts-archive-salespageSupports: The retired sales page and its predecessors document the price and claim history: "Get Course - $99 (limited discount!)" with a Circle.so checkout in May 2023; "Temporary deal: $299 $149", "Instant Lifetime Access (updated: Last Month)", "Over 7+ hours of video and content" and "Join 500+ founders who took the course before you" in September 2024; "$299 > $149" with "1,000+ people joined" in November 2025 and January 2026; "BLACK FRIDAY DEAL - 100 SPOTS ONLY! … Temporary deal: $149 > $19" in March 2026; and "$299 > $149" with "500+ people joined" again in April 2026, whose FAQ states "The course is hosted on Cajobo" and "Do I get lifetime access? Absolutely! You'll be able to access both the course and community for life." A May 2026 expired-deal page carries the only support address found anywhere: "Feel free to reach out to me via email at hi@mikestrives.com".
Limitations: These snapshots describe prior versions and must not be read as current terms. The sales page, its FAQ, its testimonials, its founder story and its deal funnel have all been removed from the live site; the funnel URLs now return 404.
zts-indiebitesSupports: Independent corroboration that the underlying track record is real. The guest is the founder of Upvoty; his prior company Vindy is described as "an online marketplace for home development" that reached $1M ARR and then "scaled back to $500k ARR", and the host notes he runs the SaaS Pirates community. Upvoty's MRR at the time is given as $15–17k.
Limitations: Independent coverage of Upvoty consistently names its founder Mike Slaats rather than Mike Strives; the biographies match on Upvoty, Vindy and SaaS Pirates, so this is treated as the same person under a personal brand and nothing further is asserted. The episode predates the course by more than a year, corroborates no exit, and does not mention the course at all.