What should you do in the first 72 hours?
Spend the first 72 hours on setup. Publish an export checklist, publish an honest switching page, contact the company that is closing, and send short personal notes to customers you can identify. Their customers usually have weeks to move. When Trigify announced on 23 September 2026 that its team was joining HubSpot, it gave most customers until 11:59pm BST on 22 October 2026, according to Trigify's own notice and FAQ. That is 29 days.
| When | Do this | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| Hours 0 to 6 | Read the shutdown notice line by line. Write down the end date, what can be exported, what stops working and whether anything migrates. | You can answer "what do I lose and when" in two sentences |
| Hours 6 to 24 | Publish the export checklist page. Email or message the closing company's founder. | The page is live and submitted for indexing |
| Hours 24 to 48 | Publish the switching page: what carries over, what doesn't, and who should pick another tool. | A stranger could decide from the page alone |
| Hours 48 to 72 | List the customers you can find in public and send each one a short, personal note that offers help with the move. | Every note names the end date and offers something useful without a call |
| Deadline week, and the week after | Follow up once in each window. | One follow-up per person, then stop |
For the longer game of winning customers from a live competitor, see how beehiiv courted ConvertKit users with six free months and a done-for-you migration in our breakdown of beehiiv's switching offer.
How long do a closing competitor's customers have?
In the two recent shutdowns we checked, customers had about a month. Read the closing company's notice before you plan, because it tells you the deadline and what customers will lose. Three shutdowns, from their own announcements:
| Product | Announced | Customers had until | What the notice said about moving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trigify (signals tool) | 23 Sep 2026 | 22 Oct 2026 for most customers (29 days) | Accounts not migrated to HubSpot; integrations, API and monitoring stop at the end date |
| Omnivore (read-it-later app) | The week of 31 Oct 2024 | Exports supported through 30 Nov 2024 (30 days after the 31 Oct post) | User data to be erased after that; named two alternatives |
| Stride and Hipchat (Atlassian chat) | 26 Jul 2018 | Not in the announcement, which linked to a separate page for timing | Slack acquired the IP for Stride and Hipchat Cloud; Atlassian said it would work with Slack on a migration path |
Omnivore's shutdown post said it planned to erase user data from the service after the export window. Trigify's FAQ asked customers to use the existing export options before access ended and said customer data would not be used by HubSpot. Its notice is a good model for your own checklist page: it gives the end time with its time zone, says what will stop, and names a contact for help with exports.
A month is enough time to do this properly. One commenter in a September 2026 r/SaaS thread about the Trigify shutdown argued that the panic arrives in the last week before the date and again in the week after the product goes dark. That is one person's view, but it matches the dates: a customer with 29 days has no reason to pick a replacement on day one.
Why publish an export checklist before a sales page?
Because customers are trying not to lose their data before they look for a new tool. A growth marketer at a competing startup described pulling an all-nighter after the Trigify news in a September 2026 r/SaaS post (about 60 comments when checked on 24 October 2026). By 5am the team had a migration page, a comparison post and a newsletter scheduled. The poster's view of what mattered most was the export checklist: "people need that before they need a new tool." The same post reported zero bookings so far.
Several commenters in that thread made the same point in different words: help with the data first, and don't read much into zero bookings in the first few days. One suggested a low-pressure offer: send us your export and we'll tell you what's missing. That is a better first offer than a demo.
What to put on the checklist page:
- The date and time at the top, with the time zone, copied from the closing company's notice and linked to it.
- What to export, item by item: contacts, lists, history, settings, templates, connected workflows.
- What will stop: integrations, API keys, scheduled jobs, anything that writes to a CRM.
- A field map: which exported fields your product imports, which it doesn't, and what happens to history.
- One soft call to action: "Send us your export file and we'll reply with what would carry over." No booking link required.
Get the page indexed quickly. Google's recrawl documentation says you can request indexing for a few URLs with the URL Inspection tool, but that crawling can take from a few days to a few weeks. Publish on day one so it has time.
Should you contact the company that is closing?
Yes, and do it first. The closing company already has every customer's email address and a page that customers will read, and you have neither. The top comment in an April 2025 r/marketing thread from a local business owner whose competitor was closing put it as a question: "Have you thought about contacting the owner of the shuttering business and asking them this question?"
Closing companies do point customers somewhere. Omnivore's post recommended Reader by Readwise and the open-source Wallabag, and noted that Readwise had released an Omnivore importer. At a larger scale, when Atlassian announced in July 2018 that it would discontinue Stride and Hipchat, its announcement said Slack had acquired the IP for Stride and Hipchat Cloud and that Atlassian would work with Slack on a migration path for customers.
What a small team can offer in a short email to the founder:
- A free importer or a done-for-you migration for their customers, so the founder can recommend you without guilt.
- A referral fee per customer who moves, an idea raised in both threads.
- Honest scope: "we fit customers who used X and Y; for Z, point them to another tool."
Some commenters suggested buying the client list outright, and one of them flagged the privacy implications. Customer data comes with obligations, so read our guide to GDPR, UK PECR and CAN-SPAM rules for cold email and get legal advice before you buy or email a list. This post is not legal advice.
What goes on the switching page?
A switching page should help a stranger decide in five minutes, including deciding against you. The r/SaaS poster said the honest parts of their comparison, where they said other tools fit better, seemed to help rather than hurt. That is one team's impression with no measurement behind it, and it costs nothing to copy. Our guide to writing fair alternatives and vs pages covers the format in detail.
Keep it to five blocks:
- What happened, in one factual paragraph with a link to the closing company's notice. No jokes. The same poster mentioned another competitor joking about the shutdown with a RIP coupon. One commenter said that would make them trust that vendor less, and others backed the no-jokes approach.
- Feature by feature: what the old tool did, whether you do it, and how.
- What carries over from their export, and what doesn't.
- Who should not switch to you, with the tool you would suggest instead.
- The offer: migration help, and credit for the time left on their old plan if you can afford it.
If you run search ads, Google's trademark policy says it will not restrict the use of trademarks as keywords, but after a trademark owner complains it will restrict a trademark used in an ad from a direct competitor. Bid on "[their name] alternative" and keep their name out of your ad text. Local trademark law still applies.
How do you reach their customers directly?
Find the customers who show up in public, then send each one a short note that leads with the deadline and an offer of help. Three places to look:
- Public traces of the tool: website code, DNS records, app store reviews and job ads. Our guide to finding companies that use a specific tool walks through each one.
- People talking about the shutdown: posts and comments on LinkedIn, X and Reddit that mention the product's name since the announcement.
- Partners: agencies and consultants who set the tool up for clients. They need a replacement for a whole client list.
A template you can adapt (we wrote it for this guide; it has no tested reply rate):
Send one follow-up in the deadline week and one in the week after the product goes dark, then stop. If they reply that they have already chosen another tool, thank them and drop it.
Disclosure: Siela's AI SDR tracks competitors on LinkedIn and X and turns people who post about or engage with them into leads, which overlaps with part of what Trigify did. If you work in a category like ours, the same rules apply to us.
How can you spot a shutdown before it is announced?
You usually can't be sure, but you can see changes early if you check competitors every week instead of when someone forwards you the news. Write down what each competitor's pricing page, changelog, careers page and founder posts looked like this week, and compare next week. Changes we would look at, none of which proves anything on its own:
- The changelog or product blog goes quiet for months.
- Sign-up or pricing pages switch to contact-sales only, or new sign-ups close.
- The careers page empties or open roles disappear.
- Founders post about a next chapter or move to new roles.
- A larger company hires the team or buys the product.
Our guide to tracking competitors' pricing, changelogs and hiring sets out a weekly routine that takes under 30 minutes for three or fewer rivals.
When the change comes, a written plan turns the 72 hours into a checklist. One commenter in the r/SaaS thread suggested doing the urgent work once, documenting the playbook and not treating every competitor event as an emergency.
A founder in a December 2025 r/SaaS post described the other side of the same event: subscriptions surged after their biggest competitor announced it was closing, and the advice in the replies was to get ready for the support load and focus on onboarding. Plan for the support work as well as the sales work. Siela's Competitor Watch sends a briefing every Monday morning on what each competitor launched, priced, hired or posted, and shows only what changed since the last report.
Frequently asked questions
Is it ethical to target a competitor's customers when they shut down?
Yes, if you help first and sell second. Their customers need a replacement whether or not you contact them. Lead with export help and the deadline, be honest about who should pick another tool, and avoid jokes about the shutdown. Commenters in the r/SaaS thread about Trigify suggested contacting the closing company first and offering a migration path for its customers, instead of going around it.
Can I bid on a closing competitor's brand name in Google Ads?
Google's trademark policy says it will not restrict trademarks used as keywords. After a trademark owner complains, it will restrict a trademark in an ad from a direct competitor, or one used in a confusing or misleading way. So you can bid on searches for the competitor's name, but keep their name out of the ad text. Local trademark law still applies.
Should I offer a discount to a shutting-down competitor's customers?
Offer help with the move before you offer money. Customers in a shutdown need their data exported and their workflows rebuilt first. If you add a financial offer, credit for the months left on their old plan is easy to explain. A free migration, or a check of their export file, removes more of the work than a percentage off.
What if I get zero sign-ups in the first week after a competitor closes?
That is not unusual when customers still have weeks before the end date. In the Trigify case, customers had 29 days, and the r/SaaS poster reported zero bookings soon after launch. Measure checklist page visits and export files received, follow up once in the deadline week, and judge the result after the product actually goes dark.
How do I know which of the competitor's customers to contact first?
Start with people who mention the shutdown in public, then companies with visible traces of the tool, such as website code or job ads, then agencies that set it up for clients. People already talking about the change are looking for an answer. Agencies can move several clients at once, so one conversation can cover many accounts.
Sources
- Trigify: The Trigify team is joining HubSpot (notice and FAQ) (23 Sep 2026, checked 24 Oct 2026)
- r/SaaS: a competitor shut down and I pulled an all-nighter (24 Sep 2026, checked 24 Oct 2026)
- r/marketing: Competitor is closing their business, how do I get in front of their clients? (4 Apr 2025, checked 24 Oct 2026)
- r/SaaS: My biggest competitor is shutting down so users now switch for my app! (3 Dec 2025, checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Omnivore Blog: Details on Omnivore shutting down (Wayback Machine copy) (31 Oct 2024, archived 3 May 2025, checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Atlassian: Announcing our new partnership with Slack (26 Jul 2018, checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Google Ads policy: Trademarks (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- Google Search Central: Ask Google to recrawl your URLs (last updated 10 Dec 2025, checked 24 Oct 2026)