How Christopher built a solid gaming SaaS business

Meet Christopher Gjelten.

Christopher is a 23-year-old software engineer based in Oslo, Norway.

He has been writing software professionally for five years - though his entrepreneurial journey began even earlier. While still in high school, Christopher started his first sole proprietorship, building websites for clients.

After high school, he worked at a marketing firm doing more of the same, but eventually grew tired of it. That’s when he moved to Komplett, the largest electronics e-commerce company in Scandinavia, where he worked for two years as a software engineer.

From there, he joined Wilhelmsen Shipping Service, where he works today in a full-time 9-to-5 role.

But of course, the reason you’re reading this is probably Fivemanage - Christopher’s first startup.

The story told by Christopher Gjelten

What is Fivemanage?

Fivemanage is a SaaS platform for managing and monitoring gaming communities and servers. I offer services for object storage, media storage, and logging - helping game server owners operate more smoothly.

The first commit was made on May 8, 2023. At the time, I had only envisioned a media storage feature. I’d previously built an early version of this concept, which didn’t go so well - but I learned a lot, and something in me wanted to try again.

Today, Fivemanage is built by me with support from two contractors: one who’s been involved off and on since the beginning, and another who’s been working closely with me for the past six months.

Launching

Fivemanage went live in July 2023, starting with a basic API and dashboard.

I initially targeted the FiveM market (FiveM is a popular mod framework for Grand Theft Auto V). I’d been involved in that community for years and knew its pain points well.

At the time, traditional methods for storing media in FiveM relied on Imgur and Discord. But Imgur soon blocked media uploads from FiveM, and Discord began rotating their links every 24 hours - effectively breaking the existing workflows.

That’s when I launched Fivemanage - and the timing couldn’t have been better.

The first users and customers

I got my first user on July 13, 2023, after announcing Fivemanage in a Discord community. By July 15, I had reached 100 users. I’ll come back to why growth was so fast in a moment.

The first 100 paying customers took a bit longer. Initially, Fivemanage was completely free. I didn’t introduce paid tiers (two, actually) until later.

The first paying customer arrived on February 17, 2024, and the 100th came on June 1, 2024. A pretty quick ramp-up overall.

Current status

As of May 2025, growth in paying customers has plateaued a bit. I currently have around 590 paying customers.

Fivemanage.com receives about 10,000 page visits per month, with 2,500 unique visitors.

Platform stats

• 50M+ images, videos, and audio files uploaded (~60 TB of storage)

• 300M+ logs ingested per month

• 2PB of data served monthly

• 30M API requests weekly

• YTD gross revenue: approx. $38,700 USD

Marketing wins

Since I had already built a solid reputation in the FiveM community through prior projects and contributions, I was able to tap into existing networks and Discord communities to promote Fivemanage.

One particularly effective strategy was partnering with creators who build in-game phones with camera functionality. In those use cases, Fivemanage has become the go-to solution for storing and managing photos taken in-game.

In fact, much of Fivemanage’s growth has been organic and word of mouth - not through paid marketing. Though I am now exploring paid marketing channels as well.

Marketing struggles

The toughest challenge so far has been expanding into other games like Minecraft, Roblox, Garry’s Mod, and others.

Currently, I support Roblox (via an SDK), and there’s some traction - but I’ll need to push harder to drive awareness and adoption in those communities.

The business model

As mentioned Fivemanage provides purpose-built services for gaming servers and online gaming communities. The core value lies in seamless integration with popular game mods and platforms:

• FiveM

• Garry’s Mod

• Minecraft

• Roblox

In the future, I hope Fivemanage can also become a go-to tool for game developers themselves.

Previously, I offered media storage and logging as part of one subscription plan. Moving forward, I’m separating them into two distinct products:

Media storage
Dedicated media storage with direct in-game integration - making it easy for gaming communities to manage their media files.

Logs
A specialized logging service with direct game integration - helping server owners monitor and analyze server logs and traces, with OpenTelemetry support included.

Where to find Christopher Gjelten

If you have any questions or inquiries, you can contact Christopher here:

• Email

• fivemanage.com

• X