
Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable? - Im_a_throw_away
Hi HN,<p>Do you know any one man SaaS app that are profitable?<p>I&#x27;m asking this because I&#x27;m considering starting a SaaS app as a side project, and I&#x27;m looking for some inspiration.<p>Thanks!
======
jasonkester
I run S3stat ([https://www.s3stat.com](https://www.s3stat.com)) and Twiddla
([http://www.twiddla.com](http://www.twiddla.com)) by myself and they combine
to bring in a nice living.

I built both with the stated goal of bringing in recurring income while
minimizing the amount of time I actually spent "working". As such, I had
plenty of time along the way to bootstrap via consulting work and to travel
and otherwise lead an interesting life while the product businesses ramped up
in the background.

They're both ticking away nicely now, to the point where it's Officially Silly
to continue working for anybody else, ever. As a result, "work" hours are
defined as the ones where it's raining, the kids are in school and I've been
mountain biking recently, or it's been sunny for a week and I need a rest day.
Even with those constraints, you'd be surprised how many new features get
shipped.

I mention this side of the business by way of convincing anybody sitting on
the fence that it's probably worth giving this whole SaaS thing a try. It
really doesn't impact your life in the way a "startup" would, can be done
while still doing gainful work for others, and doesn't take much in the way of
capital investment.

But if and when it starts paying dividends, it does in fact get as good as it
seems it should.

Good luck!

~~~
tsguo3
Hey Jason,

Thanks for sharing your 2 projects! To be honest, I'm surprised that a few
simple projects like that could support someone! I'm completely new to this,
and was wondering if you could break down some numbers for me? Like: how many
users, where they come from, what you think is the total market, how much of
that you currently capture, and any growth hacking or marketing you did?

Thanks a lot!

------
dangrossman
I run Improvely ([https://www.improvely.com](https://www.improvely.com)) and
W3Counter ([https://www.w3counter.com](https://www.w3counter.com)) alone. I
initially developed Improvely in 2012, and W3Counter in 2004. They, along with
some other side projects, are how I have made a living for most of the past 10
years.

~~~
marsrover
Glad to see you're still around. I remember when you used to post on SitePoint
often. I always looked up to your work. Just felt like saying that.

~~~
dangrossman
Hey, thanks. I remember the old SitePoint forums fondly, and other people
there inspired and helped me get W3Counter off the ground. I occasionally
check up on people I knew from there as well... Zach Holman (lo0ol) sold Good-
Tutorials and became one of the first engineers at GitHub, Josh Pigford
(shpigford) went on to make Baremetrics, Roger Stringer (freekrai) made
Flybase, Josh Catone (bleys) became a writer then executive for
RWW/Mashable... SPF was our HN before HN.

~~~
joshmanders
I miss the old SP days, I wasn't very active as a user, but I did a lot of
business there buying services. The redo messed that all up and since I
haven't had as good of luck finding talent. :/

------
pieterhg
I run Nomad List ([https://nomadlist.com](https://nomadlist.com)) which is not
exactly a SaaS but it is a subscription revenue based company. It just passed
$300k/y

~~~
chrishynes
Have you thought about adding vacation rental listings? I'm in the vacation
rental space on the backend at [http://ownerrez.com](http://ownerrez.com).

I hear a lot of customers clamoring for the old school pay for listing, get
inquiries via emails method, particuarly after the big guys in the space are
stumbling: [https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/homeaway-vrbo-
service-f...](https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/homeaway-vrbo-service-fees-
rile-property-owners-and-renters-060616.html)

~~~
pieterhg
Yes I have Airbnb median prices listed [https://nomadlist.com/airbnb-vs-
hotel](https://nomadlist.com/airbnb-vs-hotel)

It's not my main focus atm though!

------
wwkeyboard
I'm pretty sure [https://pinboard.in](https://pinboard.in) is only one person.
Apparently a healthy skepticism about everything is useful for running your
own SaaS.

~~~
earlyriser
And he's making 20K every 3 weeks, according to some previous comments.

I paid for the app before it went to a subscription model and it's perfect.
Nothing more and nothing less than what I want in bookmarking app.

~~~
sova
Very inspiring :D

------
max_
Gary Brewer founded [http://builtwith.com](http://builtwith.com), earns over
$1 million is sales. It's a one man band!!

[http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps-
one...](http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps-one-of-
australias-most-profitable-online-companies-and-has-zero-staff/)
[https://medium.com/@andrewjrogers/the-story-of-
builtwith-e3b...](https://medium.com/@andrewjrogers/the-story-of-
builtwith-e3bbc17c239f#.3hv5vdrpb)

------
nish1500
I run [https://formcrafts.com](https://formcrafts.com) and [http://formcraft-
wp.com](http://formcraft-wp.com), and both are profitable, netting over 150k+
a year in total. They were my side projects when I was in accounting school,
lol

~~~
iends
FYI: uBlock Origin blocks formcrafts because it's used by malware.

~~~
nish1500
We do get people using our site for phishing (perks of a freemium model), and,
being a small fish, sometimes get the whole domain blocked. Working on the
uBlock thing. They haven't replied back.

~~~
gorhill
> They haven't replied back.

I am responsible for uBlock Origin (the other uBlock is abandonware), and I
haven't received anything from you. In any case, my answer would have been
that I am not responsible of the content of 3rd-party filter lists, and in the
current case you would need to contact malwaredomains.com, they are the ones
listing you as malware.

~~~
nish1500
My apologies for the confusion. I contacted malwaredomains.com and got
formcrafts.com off the list.

------
malcolmocean
I started Complice ([https://complice.co/](https://complice.co/)) 2.5 years
ago while in university, with the goal of making enough money by graduation
that I didn't have to get a job. I succeeded at that, and have now grown it to
about twice that, and it continues to grow, mostly via word of mouth and a few
communities.

I mostly work on it one day a week, when I have a super maker schedule day and
code for like 14h straight. The other days of the week I answer support emails
and sometimes write blog posts. Total time these days is about 20h/week, and
if I want to it can easily be 4h or less.

I've written a bit about my experience getting to here: \-
[http://blog.complice.co/post/129788685472/complice-goals-
ach...](http://blog.complice.co/post/129788685472/complice-goals-
achieved-2-years-in) \- [http://blog.complice.co/post/130460454477/complice-
at-2-year...](http://blog.complice.co/post/130460454477/complice-at-2-years-
howd-we-get-here) -[http://blog.complice.co/post/139686741757/my-complice-
origin...](http://blog.complice.co/post/139686741757/my-complice-origin-story)

In some senses it worked fairly smoothly for me, but I'm not assuming it's
easy. Some basic advice: (the posts above elaborate on some of this) \- do
things that don't scale \- charge people from the beginning: ideally get 10
people to literally send you cash for their first month's subscription before
you do much work--message friends directly rather than setting up a huge sales
site \- _then_ gradually automate it with software, \- (before you get monthly
payments running on your app, you can run them with moonclerk (which uses
stripe, so it's a seamless transition))

By following these principles, you know that at each step of the way, you're
building something that people will pay for, _because you have people paying
for it_. This also forces anyone you talk to for advice to take you more
seriously.

Feel free to hit me up on twitter @Malcolm_Ocean with questions or just to
connect :)

------
corobo
I _think_ all the Laravel-related SaaS apps are one-man, and I'm vaguely sure
they're profitable going by mentions in relevant podcasts

[https://forge.laravel.com/](https://forge.laravel.com/)

[https://envoyer.io/](https://envoyer.io/)

[https://spark.laravel.com/](https://spark.laravel.com/)

I'm not associated in any way other than as a user - Just the first things
that popped into mind.

------
jedberg
Plenty of Fish is the canonical example (although I guess it isn't really SaaS
per se).

For years he ran it by himself, eventually hired a couple people to help him
out, and then sold it for $575M in cash, keeping about $500M for himself.

------
michaeloblak
I started monetizing [https://sheetsu.com](https://sheetsu.com) two months
ago. It's profitable right now. I'm the only one involved, wearer of many
hats. I'm opening my Baremetrics.com dashboard soon to be transparent.

~~~
pc86
So each document is an API and the paid plans support multiple sheets/tabs per
document?

~~~
michaeloblak
Yes. Each document is separate API. Paid plans support multiple sheets/tabs.
Also, on the paid plan you've got bigger quota of available APIs/Sheets you
can create and number of hits you can perform to each API.

------
Rafaka
[http://geniepad.com](http://geniepad.com) is quite profitable. I work when I
want to. At a minimum I need to put in about 1 hours of work a week total. I
travel, enjoy life, read a shitload of books, etc. Total lifestyle business.

~~~
Rafaka
I see that a few of you are requesting pricing info and videos from the
website. If you have any questions about the process let me know ;)

~~~
udkl
Can you write about how you started and how your sales and promotion
strategies evolved.

------
_ao789
I developed and run
[https://analytics.statvoo.com](https://analytics.statvoo.com) (realtime
analytics) and [https://statvoo.com](https://statvoo.com) (aggregated website
stats) alone. Both are profitable. I found doing things by myself to be the
most productive way of getting things done very quickly without all the
politics of a normal business environment.

------
katzgrau
I run broadstreetads.com (2x techstars finalist, 3x reject), and it's
profitable with plenty of growth potential.

Building a profitable sass business lies in the ability to understand your
market, the problem your product solves and execute on sales goals. Learning
how to do that takes a while though - you generally don't get your business
legs for a while.

I'd be happy to share tips if you want to connect: katzgrau at gmail

~~~
miles_matthias
Executing on the sales goals seems to be the part that most engineerings (at
least myself) get hung up on, because that's not our expertise. It's pretty
easy to learn once you devote a lot of time to it, but it's a new thing for
sure.

~~~
mhoad
I'd love to write about this more at some point but something I think that
engineers don't understand is some of the key advantages they have over a lot
of traditional marketing folk (like myself).

My background was always in that space and about 3 years ago I started to
teach myself to code. Albeit not great but enough to probably land a job as a
junior full stack developer if I ever wanted to.

I think the canonical example of this was someone like Patrick McKenzie, I
remember when I first came across him a while back and being blown away at
what he could do with just a little bit of marketing knowledge and some code.

I look back on many of the things he would suggest to SaaS businesses for
example now and while they were no doubt "clever" very few of them were
actually complicated ideas from either a marketing or engineering point of
view. Those kinds of things are entirely within your reach.

I don't want to trivialize the marketing side of it but honestly I feel like
you could EASILY learn enough concepts within under 2 months that you could
apply to everything you ever worked on again forever. I'd also make the
argument that if you are in the one man SaaS space that would be a very
profitable and very worthwhile endeavor to embark on.

------
davidw
Rob Walling started out doing his stuff on his own. He's a prolific writer and
podcaster - his material is well worth looking up. His book is somewhat dated,
but still pretty good: [http://amzn.to/1UdN0Ap](http://amzn.to/1UdN0Ap)

------
davidlumley
I _think_ [http://cushionapp.com](http://cushionapp.com) might be profitable.
The founder has recently started using some freelancers to help with features
but as far as I know it's still a one person company.

The founder writes about their experiences here:
[http://cushionapp.com/journal](http://cushionapp.com/journal)

------
armstrjare
MinuteDock ([https://MinuteDock.com](https://MinuteDock.com)) was just me
until last year - scaled up a couple of staff to try grow faster :-) still
bootstrapped and profitable!

Also the guys at Quotientapp.com are just 2 dudes bootstrapped - and multiple
times bigger than MinuteDock.

World's your oyster - it's a hard slog just grow slow and steady and you'll
get there.

~~~
udkl
Interesting. Can you write more about how you got started and your sales and
promotion strategies.

~~~
armstrjare
Sure

Got started scratching our own itch basically. Needed time billing software
that integrated with Xero for tracking consulting work, was nothing really
available at the time. Also hated traditional timesheet/timecard approach,
hence the slightly different take on the user interface (twitter-esque time
entry)

Built something using Xero's API which was in beta at the time, and then
slowly grew off the back of that through friends/colleagues liking the
product, word of mouth & channel referrals (Xero had a landing page for their
3rd party integrations).

We also engage closely with the accounting/bookkeeping community, so we get a
lot of referrals through accounting providers who need software for their
clients that integrates with their back office accounting packages. Repeated
the same process with other channel partners (QuickBooks, MYOB, etc.).

It's definitely been a long slog - no hockey stick growth yet.

Would say that sales & promotion is one of our WEAKNESSES to be honest - I'm
very much a developer who has fallen into trying to manage this kind of stuff.
Always open to ideas, suggestions and feedback :-)

~~~
udkl
Thank you.

So if I understand it correctly, integration & being featured by Xero was the
leverage the product needed.

------
nodesocket
Founder of Commando.io here ([https://commando.io](https://commando.io)). One
man... Wearer of many hats.

Commando.io is SaaS that helps companies and people manage their servers.
Think distributed SSH with a full audit trail, versioned scripts (call them
recipes), and automation (full API and scheduling).

~~~
reustle
Very cool, but this definitely worries me a bit

> Commando.io is SaaS that helps companies and people manage their servers

I'm not sure if I want the tools I use to manage my production servers to be
managed by one guy. What if things start breaking and you're not around?

~~~
nodesocket
Valid concern for sure. So the answer is basically I've setup lots of tests,
monitoring, and alerting (thanks Pingdom, Runscope, and Pagerduty). Quite
truthfully the code is stable and mature as this point. Shoot me an e-mail, I
can go over more details if you're interested in learning more.

------
sjs382
I run [https://SendToMyCloud.com](https://SendToMyCloud.com) and
[https://PrivateForms.com](https://PrivateForms.com), which are both
profitable. SendToMyCloud is an order of magnitude more successful, though.

Both were created in 2015.

------
stevekemp
I host [https://dns-api.com/](https://dns-api.com/) which allows you to use
Git repositories to host DNS, via Amazon's Route53 infrastructure.

I seem to pick up new users pretty organically, and it's been running for over
a year now.

------
mvicioso
I run [http://www.designertask.com](http://www.designertask.com), steady
growing every day. We offer on-demand designer with unlimited requests &
revisions.

------
sliktrik
I am running [http://provulo.com](http://provulo.com) all by my lonesome (at
the arse end of Africa to boot) and it provides a very comfortable income

------
devilish
Sorry to hijack this thread, but it's great to be able to make a SaaS app
because you're a developer. But how can I non-dev do it?

For example, I use a VoIP tool quite often (almost daily). There are a lot of
backends that can be used, like Twilio. The only thing is the front-end
(ofcourse, it's not all front-end but you know what I mean)

I've been burning up knowing that if I were to have such a SaaS app, it will
really do great.

Any suggestions on how I could start that up?

~~~
tomgorski
You can start here: [http://www.saasmgr.eu](http://www.saasmgr.eu)

Before you start your first SaaS, read this:

[http://www.saasgenius.com/blog/how-saas-will-change-
technolo...](http://www.saasgenius.com/blog/how-saas-will-change-technology-
landscape)

~~~
devilish
Thanks, but just curious on how to bring a dev in on it, or if it's even
possible.

I'm great with ideas (like everyone lol) but mine are practical and definitely
niches. Logic, and Usability are my strengths. I can really chart out a great
experience.

Currently running a successful & profitable marketing agency where the "grunt"
work is done by contractors. Wondering if developing a SaaS app can be the
same...

------
tomgorski
Hi Im_a_throw_away

If you are looking for SaaS inspiration, maybe it's better to start with sales
& marketing (Between January 2014 and January 2016 the number of SaaS
companies grow from 947 to 3874.)

Source: [http://www.saasgenius.com/blog/does-growth-hacking-work-
stor...](http://www.saasgenius.com/blog/does-growth-hacking-work-
story-12-million-profit-and-4500-growth-over-three-years)

------
funkyboy
I am working on [https://www.podrover.com](https://www.podrover.com). It's
totally self funded. I didn't quit consulting yet, but I am happy with how
it's going. My suggestion is to start your side project right away, regardless
of whether you think it will be profitable or not.

------
ramsevak
I started [https://scrap.me](https://scrap.me) as a soloprenuer though we are
still very far from reaching 1M ARR but we are doing good. I have started this
tool as a helping tool for my other venture but launched as a seperate product
after our customers started to ask about the product.

------
acoyfellow
I run OptKit ([https://OptKit.com](https://OptKit.com)) -- it's been ramen
profitable for almost 2.5 years now.. I built it from a need I had in my other
business- a small web agency. I'm phasing out of the agency work, and full-
time into OptKit soon.

------
afkehaya
Thanks for sharing this. I'm bootstrapping www.actionpages.co and
www.actionwins.co. I'm curious to learn how other entrepreneurs who have
bootstrapped their SaaS companies have managed to keep their CAC low enough to
not raise money. What strategies did you use?

------
citizens
[https://serpscan.com](https://serpscan.com)

~~~
vijayr
How does it work? As far as I can remember - Google's API was deprecated and
their ToS forbid scraping, right?

~~~
icedchai
There are several services like that. They all scrape Google: think tons of
distributes proxies all over the world, regular IP/proxy rotation, etc.

------
tomgorski
I run [http://www.saasgenius.com](http://www.saasgenius.com) and it's going to
be profitable in next year. Started it in 2015 as a side project and now
working full time on it!

------
tbrooks
I run DripEmails.com and SimpleDonation.com both are profitable.

------
imtu80
I'm looking to buy a SaaS app where the owner would to move on to next
project. Let me know if you or anybody you may know would like to sell.

~~~
thegoodhands
I have two new side projects (pagecull.com and flit.email) I am looking to
sell. PM me if interested.

------
medius
I run www.terminusapp.com and it's profitable. Started it as a side project
and now working full time on it.

------
thinkcomp
PlainSite [http://www.plainsite.org](http://www.plainsite.org)

------
voipspear
I created voipspear.com about 8 years ago and have been running it ever since.

------
kunle
PDFBUDDY.com is one.

------
thakobyan
laracasts.com by Jeffrey Way.

~~~
jafingi
That's not a SaaS.

~~~
craiggled
[https://envoyer.io/](https://envoyer.io/)

------
patrickxb
StatHat is profitable.

