
Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable? - phoenix24
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!<p>Note: this is was previously on HN here[1], but it&#x27;s been few years, and I&#x27;m sure a lot of one person startups are thriving than before.<p>[1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11924009
======
lynnetye
Key Values ([https://www.keyvalues.com](https://www.keyvalues.com)) is a one-
woman show (oh hi!). I started Key Values as a side project two years ago, but
it quickly turned into my full-time passion and business. I'm doing
~$30k/month and it's almost all profit since I don't have an office or any
employees. I recently talked to Courtland of Indie Hackers (already mentioned
in the comments) about how I got here:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/086-lynne-tye-of-key-
va...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/086-lynne-tye-of-key-values)

I would never have started Key Values w/o Indie Hackers, so I highly recommend
you spend some time there. It's a bottomless treasure chest of inspiration.

~~~
alphagrep12345
Really good website. However, I'm wondering as to why this is a full-time
business. Is most of your time taken by marketing and sales?

~~~
csallen
A common belief on HN is that any SaaS/tech business is constrained by the
complexity of its code and product. Famously, the top comment[0] on Dropbox's
HN launch was about how it's not a valuable business because the commenter
could build it for himself. There were similar comments here about Asana
recently, too, and I'm sure many other startups.

If I had to guess, this is due to a combination of two factors. First, some
kind of "visibility bias," where we all tend to overvalue things that are
highly visible. And second, "man with a hammer" syndrome. We're programmers,
so we tend to overvalue the importance of code.

But the reality is just as you guessed — marketing, sales, partnerships,
content, customer service, etc all play a huge role in a business' success.
They require a lot of time, too.

Not understanding this is one of the reasons many developer-founders make the
mistake of taking on overly ambitious product ideas and not allocating enough
time to the rest of their business.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

~~~
lynnetye
^^^ This.

Key Values is not valuable because of its code. In fact, it's a simple static
site that I could rebuild in a couple of days if I wanted to.

I meet a lot of technical founders who love coding and avoid doing everything
else. They run the risk of building a lot of fancy features that no one wants
or needs.

~~~
chii
> technical founders who love coding and avoid doing everything else.

the truth is that these tech co-founders are really looking for a playground
to have fun with code/tech, the same way a kid wants to play lego.

Building a business is not fun at all. There are tonnes of mundane stuff, and
these are fairly important. A technical co-founder is quite likely to have
quit their previou job because they want to create an environment where they
aren't restricted by the "business people" for doing technical exploration and
play.

This is why i think finding a business partner who isn't technical is quite
important. They can reign you back in.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
I once saw a line that went something like, "to a systems programmer, all
users and applications serve merely to provide a test load". There are plenty
of people who just want to build stuff, and oh by the way it would be handy if
we had some users to test the technology:)

------
coderholic
I started [https://ipinfo.io](https://ipinfo.io) as a side project, and then
ran it fulltime as a one-person SaaS app for over a year. We're now a team of
8, profitable, and growing quickly. We're still 100% bootstrapped, and I have
zero plans to raise any outside funding.

We started with a simple IP geolocation API, which now handles over 20 billion
API requests per month. We've added new data to that service, such as IP type
classification (hosting, isp, or business, and soon education too), IP to
company, and carrier detection. And we've also launched some other products,
like hosted domain API (all domains hosted on an IP, sometimes called reverse
IP), IP ranges belonging to an organization, and an ASN API. We've got a lot
in the pipeline too, including some domain related offerings (see
[https://host.io](https://host.io) for an early preview).

So it's definitely possible :) What sort of SaaS product are you thinking of
launching? Would be happy to chat! Shoot me an email at ben@ipinfo.io

~~~
brianwillis
You got my GPS coordinates almost exactly correct. That's incredibly worrying.

I mean, it's impressive from a technical standpoint; but still, worrying.

~~~
GordonS
It puts me hundreds of miles out, in the wrong country.

I find these IP lookup tools vary greatly - some will match certain IP blocks
better than others.

~~~
coderholic
Yeah, accuracy definitely varies by ISP, and region. If you'd be willing to
share your IP or ISP with me (ben@ipinfo.io) I'd love to look into it and see
what we might have been able to do / be able to do in the future to get a more
precise location for you.

~~~
GordonS
No offense, but I'd rather it wasn't too accurate ;)

------
aacook
Go for it!

I'm working on NanaGram ([https://nanagram.co](https://nanagram.co)) solo and
bootstrapped. Although I'm not making a full-time income yet, it's generating
a profit. It's mostly automated.

NanaGram is the 3rd greatest generator of happiness and fulfillment in my life
(after my wife and my dog). I get a constant stream of good vibes from
customers, most recently voicemails from grandmothers!
([https://nanagram.co/blog/feedback-by-vm](https://nanagram.co/blog/feedback-
by-vm))

Good luck :)

~~~
kohanz
Love your site! My story is very similar with my project VidHug
([https://vidhug.com](https://vidhug.com)). Helping people spread joy & love
is definitely a great motivator!

~~~
julia01
this is a cool idea. are you making money/profitable?

------
bentossell
This may not qualify as SaaS but I built makerpad.co to show people how to
build products/businesses without code. Currently $27k over the last month.
One person, not my full time gig.

Wtf am I talking about?! I’m basically showing people the power of not needing
to code to build something. I built an Airbnb “clone” by linking webflo,
Airtable and zapier. Basically trying to show people they can build their
first version without the classic “needing a technical cofounder” or “learning
to code”. Tools out there right now are insane and can help you get to a place
you couldn’t previously.

Okay Lynne is a recent friend and been huge in helping me the last couple
weeks.

I did the normal shit of b2c (and still do) but the power of b2b is huge. I
flipped my strategy and went from ~10k one month to now 30k (yes got 3.5k more
since my initial comment).

~~~
schappim
How did you market to businesses ?

~~~
bentossell
I’ve built up an audience around no code building and think I’m one of the
first people others think of in this space. I understand the audience as I’m a
non technical maker too.

------
jwr
Yes, PartsBox is (Electronic parts inventory & production:
[https://partsbox.io/](https://partsbox.io/)). Some key points I would have
told my former self:

* Do not expect any kind of explosive growth, especially in B2B. Expect linear growth. Search for "slow SaaS ramp of death" for a pretty good description of what to expect.

* Marketing is a huge problem. If you look around, you will see lots of marketers talking about marketing. In. Short. Sentences. With. Deep. Meaning. But then you'll notice that they mostly talk about marketing marketing apps for marketers. Unless you are building apps that help marketers market, much of this advice will be useless. And the short sentences are annoying.

* Paid ads are a waste of money, though I heard that with 4-5 digit budgets you can make them work. I never could.

* It is extremely difficult to get a working SaaS business at price points below $20/month. If you look around, businesses with these price points are VC-sponsored and are burning through investor money. I would not start a sustainable SaaS with price points below $40/month.

* When thinking about pricing, remember about support. There is no such thing as "no support", every product needs it, and it costs time and money.

* It's hard. Everything is hard. And there is always too much to do.

* Anxiety eats at you. No matter how good you are at keeping it at bay (I was pretty good), it will eventually catch up with you. I still don't have a good solution to that.

* If you pick a good niche, you can live in a world with nice and smart customers. It's a good world!

* When planning, be careful to set goals based on realistic financial assumptions. If this is to be your full-time job, it needs to support your business (including all hardware and office costs), you (your salary, insurance, retirement savings) and your family. People tend to vastly underestimate how much revenue is needed, especially if their past experience is mostly living with parents or surviving on ramen as a college student.

* I would not trade this for a "normal" job, ever :-)

~~~
laydn
We're waiting for an on-premise version of PartsBox to be released :-) Is that
wishful thinking???

~~~
jwr
I'm afraid so. On-premises is expensive (VERY expensive). I tried to estimate
the necessary pricing for on-premises deployment and the final price was never
attractive to customers. In all cases it turned out the need for on-premises
deployment was not a business need (we must deploy this locally because of X
and Y, which implies a value of Z in USD), but rather a point of view (I'd
rather have this locally because that's what I prefer).

Why is it expensive? On-premises deployment means maintaining a separate
version of the software, a complex arrangement to make upgrades, inability to
fix potential upgrade problems by modifying the database, having to maintain
deployment documentation, having to always have code that creates a database
from scratch (rather than migrating an existing one), extending legal
arrangements for third-party services, additional configurations that need to
be tested and much more. It constrains development in many ways.

~~~
therealdrag0
You are very wise. The last company I worked for started as a SaaS product but
in an industry that was on-prem. They were unable to resist customer demands
for on-prem, so now have mostly hybrid solutions that are very costly and
terrible to support.

------
cperciva
Depending on how you define SaaS: I started Tarsnap in 2006 (launched in 2008)
and it was a profitable one-person company for many years. (Now it's a
profitable two-person company.)

Mind you, it isn't a side project -- this has been my full time job for a
dozen years. Starting a successful SaaS company as a _side_ project is much
harder.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
Did you ever take patio11's advice about charging more?

------
deforciant
I have been running [https://webhookrelay.com/](https://webhookrelay.com/) as
I side project for the last two years and since last March it's quite
profitable. Environment is highly automated, running on GKE, builds and
testing on drone.io while deployments are rolled out by keel.sh, some alerting
goes through Node-RED so I don't have to interfere.

Still doing full-time consulting but hopefully in the next year or two I will
transition full-time to it (if it's ever needed). I do plan to hire someone
for marketing or sales, maybe on contracting terms and not full-time.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
Hey, this is really cool. Two things:

Your headline text is "Webhook Relay lets anyone to..." You should probably
make that "Webhook Relay allows anyone to..."

Also, I read your name as Web-hooker Lay, which is less feedback, and more
just something I thought was funny.

~~~
deforciant
:D lol! Thanks, will try to adjust :)

------
mrskitch
Hey! I just did/am doing an AMA on dev.to (located here:
[https://dev.to/joelgriffith/i-m-the-creator-of-
browserless-i...](https://dev.to/joelgriffith/i-m-the-creator-of-browserless-
io-let-s-talk-about-starting-your-own-company-2ej3)).

I run a one-person (me!), bootstrapped business called browserless
([https://browserless.io](https://browserless.io)). I started it after trying
to wrangle headless Chrome for a wishlist app, and desperately needing
something like it. Obviously it wasn't around, so I pivoted and built it from
the ground up.

I'd be super happy to answer questions. You can also email me at joel at
browserless dot io. Anything and everything is game!

EDIT: Forgot to post how it's doing, which you can see on IH here:
[https://indiehackers.com/product/browserless](https://indiehackers.com/product/browserless)

~~~
throw03172019
We use the open source version but still pay the subscription monthly. We love
your product!

~~~
mrskitch
Thanks for that! Hope it’s going well!

------
charliepark
I run one, a minimalist personal finance app. It's about 11 years old at this
point.

I built it up as my full-time gig and ran it initially for about six years. At
that point: A) I had hired someone part-time to do customer support; B) the
feature set was stable enough that it didn't need constant attention; C) I was
missing working with people. So I moved out to SF and started working with a
startup as an engineer. Enjoyed that for two years, then moved on to another
startup where I was for three years (first as an engineer, then had a chance
to move into management [which I also enjoyed, but where I missed making
things]).

This past October I left that startup to go back to working on my own thing.
Revenue coming in to the app dropped significantly while I was doing other
things, but since coming back to it I've rebuilt it (well … 90% of it) and am
soon going to be shifting focus to improving business operations (in addition
to building out some new features). My hope is that within a year or so it'll
be back up to its earlier customer levels, but I haven't spent a lot of time
forecasting that, and growth could be slow. It'll be a while before it'll
support us living in SF, but that's somewhere on the horizon.

What worked for me might not work for you (it was a long time ago!), but in
case it's helpful, I built a very basic MVP (literally a spreadsheet) to
scratch my own itch and then shared it, for free, online. (At the time I
wasn't thinking of it as a business, just as a way to help people.) It got a
good amount of traction. I was able to build on the attention the free version
got (and the feedback people shared) and to develop a web-based, subscription-
based version that required less work and gave more value to customers than
the free version.

I haven't ever taken funding, and am so, so glad I haven't.

~~~
whitehouse3
Do you have a link to your product? A cursory search turned up nothing.

~~~
charliepark
Sure thing! Thanks for asking.

We're closed to new signups now while we wrap up the last bit of feature
parity from the old app (and make sure all is working smoothly for our current
subscribers), but would love to have you check it out in a little bit:
[https://pearbudget.com](https://pearbudget.com)

~~~
cimmanom
Oh, wow, I’ve been using your spreadsheet for over a decade now! It was my
intro to personal budgeting and has served me well all this time.

Have you ever considered creating a native mobile app? That’d probably tip me
over the edge to become a paying customer.

~~~
charliepark
Oh gosh, that is so awesome to hear! I love that it's worked so well for you!

Native mobile app! Absolutely have thought about it in the past, and will
absolutely be thinking about it a little later on this year as we tune our
roadmap.

If you shoot me a note (charlie@pearbudget.com), I'll let you know when we get
a native app out the door. No pressure, though! Take care!

------
ezekg
I run Keygen ([https://keygen.sh](https://keygen.sh)), an API for software
licensing and distribution. I'm currently making ~$3,500/mo. You can read more
about my journey here:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/2fa6c5e1eb](https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/2fa6c5e1eb).

------
anthony_franco
Indie Hackers lists lots of examples you can read about. Just filter on
employee count and revenue:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1?employeeCount...](https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1?employeeCount=0)

------
marinosbern
I started Parachute [1] by accident when I won the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2015
Hackathon with its first prototype. I dropped everything else I was doing and
launched it right here on HN a few months after that [2]. Today it's a healthy
business without having taken a single cent of VC funding. I'm the only one
full time on it, and it's made possible by relying heavily on a network of
amazing friends who are each responsible for specific subprojects within their
areas of expertise. Everyone is geographically distributed and I spend 9
months a year in NYC and the remaining 3 months traveling

Cheers to all the amazing engineers here who run ethical, douche-free,
sustainable businesses

[1] [https://parachute.live/app](https://parachute.live/app) (app),
[https://parachute.live/platform](https://parachute.live/platform) (B2B)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885950)

------
albydarned
I co-founded Pigeon SMS ([https://pigeonsms.com](https://pigeonsms.com)) with
my dad just a couple of years ago and we reached profitability just a few
months after founding.

We provide business texting services to businesses of all sizes. Some of our
customers include a city, vet clinic, glass shop, screen printing firm,
boutique retailers, and on and on. Really any business can benefit from adding
texting to their communications.

My advice: Pick something that will keep you interested and motivated to come
back to when life gets busy.

~~~
bhudman
Congrats on the launch. Would you be able to recommend off-net sms providers
that you have had good luck with?

~~~
albydarned
It really depends on use case. They all have their pros and cons.

------
mark-ruwt
I founded Are You Watching This?! ([https://ruwt.tv](https://ruwt.tv)) in 2006
and have been profitable since 2013. It's a Sports Excitement Analytics firm,
licensing real-time data about the excitement of games by analyzing pitch-by-
pitch and shot-by-shot data, to sports properties and cable companies.

I'm happy with where I'm at, but there's a lot I would've done differently.
Holler if you'd like to chat about it at all:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/markphillip/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/markphillip/)

~~~
marketgod
Way cool. I remember when this site had scores for games posted and it would
show you what channel each game is on depending on your location/provider.
Great work!

------
azhawkes
I'm the solo founder of Loadster
([https://loadster.app](https://loadster.app)) which has been profitable for a
while and is now making me pretty close to a comfortable living.

I really enjoy the freedom and variety that comes with running a SaaS, and
while the grass is always greener on the other side, I think I'm pretty much
ruined for a regular job at this point. So beware!

One piece of unsolicited advice: if I were to start all over again as a solo
bootstrapper, I would probably do something less technical. As others here
have pointed out, there is a LOT more to running a SaaS than just building
software, and it's often hard to find the time or brain space to give all the
facets of your business the attention they deserve.

~~~
rlonn
Great work w Loadster. Didn't know it was a solo effort! I founded another
load testing service - loadimpact.com, which is doing very well but certainly
not a solo effort and has taken on investors along the way. I'm now trying to
build something solo again, and would echo the advice to go for something less
technical. Plus do B2B if financial success is important. I have three
projects atm, trying to figure out which has the most potential - 2 of them
are consumer apps (one unreleased, the other is a crossword game for kids -
[https://puzzlepirate.net](https://puzzlepirate.net)) and one is a technical
data storage SaaS for IoT sensor data storage
([https://pushdata.io](https://pushdata.io)). The latter product is a lot more
demanding, from most aspects. A simple and maintenance-free product is worth
gold when you're running it solo.

~~~
azhawkes
Hey thanks Ragnar it's good to hear from you! Those both look great. Pushdata
seems like an excellent idea – having done some stuff with InfluxDB I can
definitely see the appeal of fully managed timeseries data without the worry
of scaling it yourself. I guess Amazon and other big competitors will want
this space too, but they won't be able to touch the simplicity of something
like this. Best of luck!

------
reubenswartz
I first built Mimiran ([https://www.mimiran.com](https://www.mimiran.com))
because I just wanted to know if and when prospects were reading my proposals.
Since then I’ve added features by customer request to the point that it’s a
crm, but really designed for consultants and other service-focused people,
rather than traditional sales teams. It’s fun (usually) to get to do
everything from coding to customer support. The feedback loop is very tight,
especially because I’m user #1.

If I could be so bold as to pass along advice, I would say:

\- keep the app itself as simple as possible. “This is so simple, even Steve
Jobs would say it’s too simple” simple. This makes creating, testing,
describing, and supporting the app as easy as possible. And if people can use
it and provide meaningful feedback on what else they need, you can always
decide to add it later.

\- don’t try to reinvent the wheel on marketing. See what has worked for
similar products (indie hackers is awesome).

\- make sure you talk to prospects, customers, friends, and family. Don’t just
sit there writing code. Having lifestyle flexibility as a solo founder is
awesome, but it’s important to make time to be social. As much as I don’t miss
commutes, office politics, etc, we are social creatures, even us introverts,
and if you’re just coding or emailing or whatever and not actually talking to
people, it’s going to be hard.

\- try to pick a market where you enjoy talking to your customers. I really
like this part of my job. I know some other people who for whatever reason
tend to have unpleasant interactions with their customers and it's not nearly
as fun.

So I’m told. :)

------
idlewords
I run Pinboard by myself and make about $250K/year in revenue, with 97K
expenses.

~~~
frenchie4111
Where does 97k expenses come from, if you don’t mind me asking

~~~
idlewords
The two biggest expenses year over year are colocation ($25K/year) and PayPal/
Stripe fees ($11K/year). I pulled the $97K figure from the year I bought
Delicious, so it includes a lot of one-time hardware purchases.

------
davej
I'm close with ToDesktop
([https://www.todesktop.com/](https://www.todesktop.com/)), I've launched
quite recently so expect to be there in the next month or two.

~~~
throw03172019
Was really impressed with the flow but I hate being so tied to this. For
example, what happens if you go out of business? Now we have 10,000 users on
an app we can’t update, etc.

~~~
davej
That's actually one of the great things about being bootstrapped and
profitable. I can grow naturally and I don't need to scale rapidly and hit
huge customer numbers to keep VCs happy.

I'm in this for the long run. Even if 90% of my customers left me tomorrow
then I would keep this going as a side gig.

I'm also able to facilitate customers that want to move off the ToDesktop
platform to their own (i.e. built in-house) desktop app. Just send me on your
binaries and I'll push an auto-update to your customers that gets them onto
your new desktop app and your new auto-update platform. I charge $200 once-off
for this currently and this feature will never be priced to force people to
stay on the platform. The only reason for the charge right now is that it's a
manual process so I charge consultancy rates.

~~~
Meph504
Do you have a bus factor plan in place?

I. E. If. You are hit by a bus, what happens?

------
joshtronic
I'm the solo founder of Holiday API -
[https://holidayapi.com](https://holidayapi.com) \- a DaaS platform for
holiday information.

The project was originally started in 2013 as an open source side project,
while I running a network of niche social networks full-time (also quite
profitable for a while), after serving as CTO of a daily deal company, that
stemmed from my need for reliable holiday information without the overhead of
actually maintaining said data on a regular basis.

A shift to a premium model was made in 2016 and the first month into being a
premium service, it was profitable (sans my time ;) and has grown to ~$1500
MRR.

Ironically I started the project as a way to NOT have to maintain said data
and now part of my day to day involves maintaining data accuracy... and sales
outreach... and DevOps to improve... my own development efforts... and...
and...

Recently received my YC rejection email for the upcoming batch (actually
interviewed with another project with a partner a while back), but still
hustlin'. Flying solo is great, but definitely can't get caught up in the echo
chamber. Would highly recommend building a peer group of founders / other
hackers & hustlers to meet / chat with regularly.

------
srecio
I built out Pipefile ([https://pipefile.com](https://pipefile.com)) as a one
man operation. Bundle your PGP key into file upload forms to receive end-to-
end encrypted files. Embed the upload forms into any html page to receive
files without setting up any backend infrastructure.

You can try sending me something at
[https://pipefile.com/steve](https://pipefile.com/steve)

------
lprubin
My friend launched EnvKey ([https://www.envkey.com/](https://www.envkey.com/))
completely solo and grew it slowly over time. He eventually went through YC
and took on investment but the first few years were bootstrapped. But he's
still solo with a few freelancers.

------
simon_weber
I run a few projects for ~$400 MRR. Here's my numbers from last year:
[https://www.simonmweber.com/2019/01/07/side-project-
income-2...](https://www.simonmweber.com/2019/01/07/side-project-
income-2018.html)

Since there are questions about company formation in the comments, here's my
notes on US taxes/legal from when I got started:
[https://www.simonmweber.com/2016/07/11/launching-a-chrome-
ex...](https://www.simonmweber.com/2016/07/11/launching-a-chrome-extension-
part-1-taxes-and-legal.html)

------
davidbanham
I run two SaaS products. Both are entirely my work and both are modestly
profitable.

I split my time about 50/50 between the the SaaS side of my business and
consulting. The consulting revenue stream is much larger than the SaaS one but
it's growing.

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

And

[https://clubman.app](https://clubman.app)

~~~
wayoverthecloud
Which is bringing in more profit? Clubman looks super niche. Unless you know
ski clubs really well, looks hard to market.

~~~
davidbanham
Takehome brings in more revenue and takes less time to administer. Clubman has
only just gone live with its first client, though. I think Clubman will
outperform Takehome quite soon.

Takehome is in a pretty crowded market space. It has its own distinct niche
but it can be quite difficult to communicate that difference to potential
buyers.

Clubman, on the other hand, has few competitors. The clients are relatively
homogeneous and their needs well articulated. They're a smaller total
addressable market but with a higher percentage hit rate.

------
nate
I continue to run the writing software Draft
([https://draftin.com](https://draftin.com)) all by myself. It can largely run
on its own without a ton of interruption to me so I can work on other things.

~~~
wkoszek
Hi Nate. I've looked at Draft when I wanted to build something similar. Is it
profitable to the point where you could do it full-time?

------
monokai_nl
I'm running [https://mybrandnewlogo.com](https://mybrandnewlogo.com) — an
automatic, online logo generator.

I'm also running [https://monokai.pro](https://monokai.pro) — a professional
color scheme for coders.

I've done both on the side of co-running a design agency. Last year I've spent
quite some time on the logo design tool. It helps that I enjoy programming,
learning and making stuff, but something's always got to give. I've sacrificed
a lot of weekends, but luckily the foundation is there now.

Both projects are profitable and have quite different mechanics. I've done
almost no marketing for the color scheme, whereas the logo machine needs a lot
of marketing.

------
anthonylee
[https://letterfromyou.com/](https://letterfromyou.com/) Letter from You is a
service that allows business owners to connect with their clients through
beautifully handwritten letters. It's my first side project and currently
talking to some larger recurring companies.

~~~
aerovistae
That is a _really_ clever, original idea for a business, I mean it. Damn.

~~~
55555
It's actually not at all original. Maybe he independently came up with the
idea, but there are tons of these.

~~~
gaucheph
Let people be excited about things.

------
Axsuul
I'm building a SaaS app (getting close to ramen profitable): Trunk @
[https://www.trunkinventory.com](https://www.trunkinventory.com) which helps
online sellers sync their inventory in real-time across their different sales
channels (i.e. Etsy, Faire, Shopify, Amazon, eBay, etc)

------
thakobyan
I started [https://cronhub.io](https://cronhub.io) a year ago and it's
profitable now. I have written blog posts about my learnings and challenges so
far. [https://blog.cronhub.io/](https://blog.cronhub.io/)

------
colinbartlett
StatusGator is the status page monitoring service I built. It’s been
profitable since about 2016.

Though I very recently took on a partner to try and grow it because I believe
it can be more than just “profitable” but perhaps actually a sole income
source one day. It’s great to have a “one person” company but I feel it’s even
better to have a partner to help inspire and motivate you, especially when
it’s a side project and not a full time job.

------
jborak
Packetriot ([https://packetriot.com](https://packetriot.com)) - around 4
months old and I haven't begun seriously marketing, but it generates $60/month
and makes a tiny profit.

With it you can create a secure public endpoints (HTTP/TCP) from any network.
The client can host static sites, reverse-proxy to other hosts, terminate TLS.
It manages Lets-Encrypt for you. The higher-end tiers provides access logs,
metrics, firewall rules, and service-health checks.

With a public endpoint you can pretty much do anything. I initially built it
to reduce my hosting costs to something minuscule (which it did). I found
alternatives as I developed it, but I was so interested in the problem I
continued and created some features that aren't available in others. I still
have more ideas in the pipeline.

I've been putting together video tutorials to showcase what you can do with it
and how to use it. I'm focusing on people that self-host since most
developers/hackers understand the concept. A lot of my registrations and
customers have discovered Packetriot through my YouTube channel.

~~~
CloudNetworking
Interested in hearing more about your very low running costs (I understand
below $60/month).

~~~
jborak
I have 4 edge servers that are small VMs at the moment. For the number of
users I have more than enough capacity. I also have a separate server that has
more resources for the main site and APIs.

I use DO, altogether hosting costs are $40/mo for now.

~~~
CloudNetworking
I guess you are generating a lot of traffic, is DO allowing you unlimited
traffic on your droplets?

~~~
jborak
DO has bandwidth included in the price of the droplet and if you exceed then
you pay a fair price for the additional bandwidth. For the cheapest droplet
($5/mo) you are provided 1TB of bandwidth. What they also do is take the all
the bandwidth across all droplets you purchase and make that your pool. So if
you have 4 droplets, then 4 TB, if one of the droplets experience the most
traffic like 3.5 TB, and the rest are zero, you are under your total bandwidth
quota for the billing period.

------
tom-jh
I built [https://flowcrypt.com](https://flowcrypt.com) solo for the first two
years. I would have preferred a partner, but nobody committed.

Today 3+ years later it's a three person team. Maybe in another year I can
have reasonable work life balance again. Maybe.

------
_august
Yep! I made [https://fitloop.co](https://fitloop.co) as a solo maker and it’s
making about $450 MRR.

------
endriju
Running a 1-man SaaS as a side-project has been one of the best things career
wise. It helped me gain a different perspective on software (design, devops,
sales, support etc.) in general. Being able to bring some of that experience
into my day-time jobs was really rewarding.

The Saas i'm running is Gridoc ([https://gridoc.com](https://gridoc.com)) - it
pays for the car and a few bills. I'm pretty sure it could be doing better but
it has been on auto-pilot for a couple years now (started a family).

------
discobean
Solo founder of [https://docevent.io](https://docevent.io) SFTP and FTP/S
directly to your Azure Blobs, Google Cloud Storage and S3 buckets.

I bootstrapped it myself, but there are now others that help remotely
(consultants, contractors) on some features, fixes testing and marketing.

~~~
vyrotek
This is great! I really wished this existed a few years ago at my previous
company. We needed this exactly. A straightforward way to get ftp files into
blob. Is it possible to cname/whitelabel the domain of the ftp address?

~~~
discobean
Thanks! You can CNAME, but for FTPS there will be certificate verification
errors because the DNS is changed (there is nothing like http2 where we can
serve other SSL certs for different destination hosts).

But for SFTP, and FTP (insecure, not that you'd want to) CNAME works fine.

We do do seperate SSL certs but it is only for bigger customers that we host
dedicated instances on their behalf.

------
sergiomattei
I'm making [https://getmakerlog.com](https://getmakerlog.com), which is
currently doing $200 MRR.

~~~
jkeuhlen
Just curious, did you go about setting up a formal corporation for the
product? I'm thinking about setting up my own SaaS product and I'm not sure if
I need to do anything on the legal/business side.

~~~
anandkulkarni
I wouldn't set up a corporation until you have either a reasonable amount of
cash coming in or someone ready to give you a check. After that, I'd start
with an LLC in your home state, unless you think there's a chance you'll take
outside investment. If you do, conversion to a Delaware C-corp costs around
$10K in legal fees.

~~~
stevenwoo
I thought that an LLC in California required a yearly fee that was close to a
$1000 the last time I looked. Is that no longer true or not true at all?
Related - isn't it much cheaper in other states?

~~~
trazire
Yea, $850 franchise tax minimum. I personally think it's a bit excess even by
Californian standards.

Also, you'd need to get an office in Delaware to not mandate a foreign
registration in California which still involves the taxes. Getting an office
in Delaware is pretty expensive but it's about $400 cheaper than California
franchise tax. They assess their own but it still works out lower.

Edit: Nevermind, they still tax you on that. I don't condone tax evasion, but
Wyoming doesn't track the owners of a corporation.

------
Schweigi
I run two side projects on my own.

The first with is on auto pilot and does $800MRR. My second is called TeamCal
([https://www.teamcalapp.com](https://www.teamcalapp.com)) and I’m actively
working on it. Usually 2-3 hours/week. Its doing $1700MRR and growing.

TeamCal provides a scheduling view for Google Calendar and is used by
cleaning/call center/staffing companies.

If your interested about some of the work involved, I documented part of the
journey on Indie Hackers:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/product/teamcal](https://www.indiehackers.com/product/teamcal)

------
krm01
Solo started [http://Fairpixels.co/pro](http://Fairpixels.co/pro) \- UX/UI for
B2B SaaS companies. a “Service as a Service” powered by custom internal
software to work more efficiently. Growing strong and working with small saas
companies and Elon Musk cofounded ventures.

------
nghiatran_feels
I know the solo guy who are running Proxyman
[https://proxyman.app](https://proxyman.app) as a side project for a year.

He's ambitious to be a better alternative version of Charles Proxy. The best
of Proxyman is that it's native app, lightweight and super easy to use for iOS
dev newbie

------
enoj
I run a leave intent fortune wheel popup SaaS called Listagram
([https://www.listagram.com](https://www.listagram.com)) as a solo founder and
doing about $6K MRR with about $1K costs (Heroku, AWS CloudFront).

Have about 100 paying customers.

Yeah everybody hates popups. But I saw a potential for a product and wanted to
try doing the SaaS thing after a decade selling software and doing
consultancy. It has been a lot of fun, it is thrilling and scary to have my JS
loaded on some high traffic sites.

------
jivings
Two-person but close enough - We're building Leave Me Alone
([https://leavemealone.xyz](https://leavemealone.xyz)), an app that helps you
unsubscribe from spammy mailing lists. Currently at ~$500/month (full stats
are public here
[https://leavemealone.xyz/open](https://leavemealone.xyz/open))

~~~
ksahin
I used your service 2 months ago, thank you sooooo much!

~~~
jivings
You're very welcome!

------
clementmas
I launched [https://travelmap.net](https://travelmap.net) as a side project 5
years ago but now I'm working full-time on it. I preferred that than
freelancing ;)

~~~
vividcode
this is amazing idea. Happy to share how much monthly users you got, and what
tech you used?

------
mfrye0
BigPicture ([https://bigpicture.io](https://bigpicture.io)) is a solo founder
operation. I was the only person for the first couple years before I grew it
enough to start hiring.

I don't recommend anyone follow this path now having been through it myself.
Being a solo founder is absolutely brutal.

------
stevekemp
[https://dns-api.com/](https://dns-api.com/) is my toy project. It brings in
£250 a month.

------
kcdev
Surprised Simple Analytics[1] hasn't been mentioned yet. I don't know how
profitable it is but this seems like a great example re: the question.

[1] [https://simpleanalytics.io/](https://simpleanalytics.io/)

~~~
AdriaanvRossum
As the founder of Simple Analytics I know a bit about the profitably of the
company. It is making profit but it’s not enough yet to sustain my lifestyle
completely.

I do some freelance work on the side. As one hour of freelance work is more or
less equal to one customer for a year it’s still way more satisfying to work
on Simple Analytics.

I try to keep it within 40 hour work weeks but the reality is around 2-10
hours freelance and 30-50 on Simple Analytis. But it’s sooo fun!

------
vital101
I made [https://kernl.us](https://kernl.us) solo and it's making ~$1100 MRR
and growing.

------
docsapp_io
I am working on SaaS DocsApp
([https://www.docsapp.io/](https://www.docsapp.io/)) solo and bootstrapped.
DocsApp is a platform to manage your product documentation. DocsApp now is
profitable and growing. Currently I am focusing on marketing to grow more.
DocsApp was born as a result of frustration to building documentation for
Product/SaaS.

I have been working on DocsApp for 3 years and only now start profitable. The
hardest problem I faced was marketing and sales. Development is only 30% of
the work.

------
jbenders
Preppr ([https://preppr.com](https://preppr.com)). I built this Instagram
scheduling site and iOS app. Currently doing $10,000 MRR over the last month.

------
pawurb
I am running [https://abot.app](https://abot.app) currently at $1500 MRR and
growing. Still at full-time job apart from that.

~~~
pplante
I understand the context, but that logo doesn't give me a lot of warm
feelings. I would likely skip the product just on that regardless of how
awesome it might be.

~~~
pawurb
Can you elaborate on why ?

~~~
Veen
1) It's associated with hacktivist groups bordering on actually criminal. 2)
As a British person, it's associated with Guy Fawkes, who was a terrorist.

------
algodaily
[https://algodaily.com](https://algodaily.com) is profitable :-)

And we're just getting started! Still very much a side project too.

------
ryanckulp
Lobiloo ([https://www.lobiloo.com](https://www.lobiloo.com)) is an invoicing
tool exclusively for florists.

i acquired it from a florist about 1.5 years ago and have been going deep on
the industry ever since.

my challenge is (obviously) not having domain expertise, but i compensate by
listening to customers, getting feedback from the former owner (now a lifetime
user), and doing what i do: hack.

------
fullstackjob
Full-Stack Job Board ([https://fullstackjob.com](https://fullstackjob.com)) is
a one-men show on the way to profit, as costs are very low, just one paid
submission is enough for now. But of course far from goal to get something
more out of it then a lot of fun, learning's and coffee. Real money is then to
come in from the underlying boardengine.io

------
mdbm
I've seen a lot of friends publish apps to different ecosystems (e.g.
marketplace.atlassian.com,
[https://apps.shopify.com](https://apps.shopify.com), etc.) and make a steady
profit. Seems like this is a good way to tap into an existing user base
(although you share a portion of the revenue).

------
mickel
I'm a one-man team developing TAYL, a service that turns websites into
podcasts using AI. I built everything in 3 months (while working full-time
with other things) and it's been profitable since week 1 of public release
[https://www.tayl.app](https://www.tayl.app)

~~~
bbayer
It looks very promising. What text-to-speech engine are you using?

~~~
mickel
Thanks! GCP and AWS.

------
fiatjaf
There's my [https://teams.cardsync.xyz/](https://teams.cardsync.xyz/), which I
did as toy and forgot about, then months later I realized there were many many
users using it for free, then started charging a little and people indeed
started to pay! Then many people told me to raise the prices, which I did
reluctantly and now I have a nice product that is grossly overpriced, but
people pay anyway (not many people, but sufficient to be profitable and
perhaps make a very modest living).

I recommend first trying out plugins and extensions for established products
instead of trying to launch the new Facebook.

Stuff like [https://www.ragic.com/](https://www.ragic.com/), for example, are
niches no one seem to be exploring.

------
marketgod
I have an edge in the market and it can work with larger portfolios than mine
so I setup a system where my entries/exits are automatically posted for others
to follow. Also, my algo generates the plan at night and that gets posted
before the market opens so people can get in when I get in and make the same
profits. In trading, most services aren't as transparent/don't get into all
their recommendations, so this helps me take advantage of a niche. It's not
nearly as profitable as I expected, but it will be soon once I create more
awareness for it. It's not really a side project because I do trade full-time,
but it kind of is a side project as I don't spend too much time
marketing/advertising/adding features. Finding a niche is important, in my
opinion.

------
owenwil
I run a one-person ‘SaaS’ that delivers morning tech briefings each day for
industry insight, without ads, that I wanted to see, called recharged:
[https://char.gd/recharged](https://char.gd/recharged). I both write the
newsletters + develop the platform behind the scenes that enables seamless
community access involved, and our MRR is approximately $2,500/month for about
18 months.

I’ll admit it’s a struggle to properly grow at this point, but I’m trying to
figure it out... but it’s been a fun ride so far. Now I’m moving to build the
tools I already made for myself that make it easy to build paid content +
communities without the developer skills I had to learn to get here...
hopefully going into beta soon.

~~~
_justirma
I follow your work! If you need a hand on Recharged I'd love to help and keep
it live and up.

~~~
owenwil
<3 thank you! I'm working out a plan for our next iteration at the moment, but
I'll totally let you know if I need help or feedback.

------
StephenCanis
Your Audio Tour
([https://www.youraudiotour.com](https://www.youraudiotour.com)) is making
about $120 in recurring monthly revenue. I built it using Micheal Hartl's
online ruby on rails tutorial which I would HIGHLY recommend.

------
rorygibson
[https://trolley.link](https://trolley.link) \- my payments project.

It lets you put a payment button on any website and pop up a cart; single
products, donations, deposits, subscription / recurring payments.

Customers are using it to power charity donations, self published book sales,
physical product sales & shipping, membership fees for clubs and so on.

You can integrate it to Mailchimp and use it to put together a paid
subscription email newsletter... or use it to make your own Patreon at much
much lower cost to you.

It uses Stripe as the gateway in the back end. (To use Stripe Checkout you
still need a back end to handle token exchange. Trolley handles that for you.)

------
throwaway13000
Tangentially related. If someone wants to sell his side project, please list
here.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19693520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19693520)

------
markhalonen
I created Vora ([https://getvora.com/](https://getvora.com/)) as a solo
developer. I sold it a couple months ago, at time of sale it was making
$300-500 in monthly profit

------
beesmum
I've run a music education site for 10 years
([https://www.tonictutor.com](https://www.tonictutor.com)). It's been only a
very modest success, but it's provided a small amount of revenue that's been
relatively steady. I haven't really marketed it much, but I'm planning on
putting some time and resources into that once I've finish converting all of
the old Flash versions of the games (which is nearly finished!).

------
seektable
I started [https://www.seektable.com](https://www.seektable.com) as a side
project 2 years ago - originally this was demo of technology (totally free
tool). Last 9 months I'm trying to convert it into profitable SaaS app; have
first paid customers however MRR is still low.

Depending on your SaaS app niche and your marketing capabilities it might take
some time to get stable and good-enough cash flow.

------
jordiee
My saas https.appdoctor.io is barely profitable but that is mainly because of
how cheap the infrastructure cost is(something I think helps a lot in 1
man/woman projects). I would agree with what others have stated though that I
don’t recommend solo founding(looking for a co founder now). They don’t tell
you that making an functioning application that is useful is less then half
the battle to having a successful saas.

------
osrec
[https://usebx.com](https://usebx.com) was my personal side project for a
couple of years. We managed to sell contracts to a few corporates, and now
have fairly strong MRR (so much so, that we've made the core product free for
small teams). I've recently hired a few contractors in London to help expand
the Bx toolset and also finally add some documentation!

------
throw03172019
I am the only full time cofounder of a healthcare SaaS. My cofounder is the
domain expert who kept his job. No employees. ~20k MRR

~~~
pplante
What sector of healthcare? Mind being more specific? My email is in my profile
if you're interested in a conversation.

I have a side project that's targeting physicians being able to better track
their activities.

~~~
throw03172019
Mainly plastic surgeons who operate their own practices.

------
sauravt
I made [https://icohunt.co](https://icohunt.co) and it's doing $400-$900 MRR

------
foxhop
Remarkbox ([https://www.remarkbox.com](https://www.remarkbox.com)) +$50/mo

~~~
duiker101
Can't load :(

~~~
foxhop
I typo'd the uri... sorry about that. Please try again.

------
alaserm
I created excellent product for test automation
[https://github.com/alaserm/VisualTAF/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/alaserm/VisualTAF/blob/master/README.md)
maybe someone wants to join for marketing and sales, profit sharing.

~~~
alaserm
write to my email: alaserm@yahoo.com

------
wayoverthecloud
Currently building receiveco.com. It helps local businesses to get customer
feedback and based on it asks for reviews on Google, Yelp, etc. I am currently
searching for a co-founder better if someone who's got experience in
marketing. The app is 95% complete. Email me at the email on my profile if
you're interested.

------
lazyjones
I just stumbled across this: [https://forum.bubble.is/t/shoutout-to-
bubble-45k-mrr-benchma...](https://forum.bubble.is/t/shoutout-to-
bubble-45k-mrr-benchmark/41279) while looking at bubble.is (tool for code-free
development of web applications).

------
kevinslin
Made a no frills transcription services that uses AWS transcribe on the
backend: ([http://scribe.thence.io](http://scribe.thence.io)). I run a podcast
and use it to generate multi-speaker transcripts. It's fully automated and
generates a nice little revenue

------
logronoide
I started [https://apility.io](https://apility.io) about 16 months ago and
it’s profitable since month six. It’s not profitable enough to leave my job
and fully dedicate my time to this, and who knows if it ever happens. I
started the project just for fun, btw...

------
js2
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jasonkester](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jasonkester)
runs [https://www.s3stat.com/](https://www.s3stat.com/)

------
nocubicles
I'm running [https://www.gosourcingwise.com](https://www.gosourcingwise.com)
\- its not super profitable but growing. Companies using it find it very
simple and useful so that motivating to keep building it better.

------
AlchemistCamp
I'm doing screencasts as opposed to a SaaS, so I started another thread for
indies doing content businesses over here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704735)

------
cx42net
I've been working on PDFShift ([https://pdfshift.io](https://pdfshift.io)) for
a almost a year now - alone. I'm nearing 100 customers and will soon be able
to make salary :)

------
sjs382
Send To My Cloud ([https://sendtomycloud.com](https://sendtomycloud.com)) is a
one-person SaaS that I made 4 years ago. Its definitely in maintenance/passive
mode but still profitable.

------
wiidude32
CryptoTrader.Tax
([https://www.cryptotrader.tax](https://www.cryptotrader.tax)) We started this
about 15 months ago during the crypto craze and have been able to grow to over
13,000 users!

------
leozeba
We're a small team of 3 co-founders at @nazar_io currently doing $50k MRR.

------
voipspear
I run VoIP Spear (voipspear.com) by myself. We're doing about $5k/month.

VoIP Spear is a service for people who use VoIP. It monitors your Internet
connection and alerts when you have a call quality issue.

~~~
kahoon
How does this work? How can you even tell VoIP data from non-VoIP data? I
would have guessed that everything is encrypted.

~~~
voipspear
We’re not monitoring phone calls. We’re monitoring the network conditions.
This means we can provide an estimate of call quality even when there’s no
calls on the network.

~~~
GordonS
I'm struggling to understand why this would be useful, so I guess I'm not the
target market - can you say something about who this is useful for, why they
want to see this info, and what they can do with it?

~~~
voipspear
It's frustrating for people who experience voice quality issues because the
problems are usually intermittent. This means that, by the time they contact
their service providers, the problem is not occurring and they just get a lame
'have you tried rebooting your modem/router' response.

VoIP Spear monitors 24x7x365 so customers can provide historical data to their
service providers to show the issue occurred.

Also, service providers use VoIP Spear because they want help troubleshooting.
They are also frustrated that the issue is no longer occurring by the time the
customer calls for support.

~~~
GordonS
So this is targeted at SMEs that don't have an in-house sysadmin/ops
monitoring capability?

~~~
voipspear
There are three targets for VoIP Spear.

1\. Personal: Home users use VoIP Spear to monitor their VoIP service to
provide information to their service providers about the problems they are
experiencing.

2\. SME: Businesses that have VoIP use VoIP Spear in the same way as the home
users.

3\. Service providers: Service providers use VoIP Spear because it is an
inexpensive and cheap way to get data about the issues their customers are
experiencing. Most VoIP service providers are typically unable to get any data
about the quality of phone calls their customers experience.

------
iabdulin
I've been running [https://honeymoney.io](https://honeymoney.io) since 2011
(Russian version of it only initially). It's profitable.

------
BrandonM
The Overcast podcasting app seems to be built by a single person:
[https://overcast.fm/skeptics_faq](https://overcast.fm/skeptics_faq)

~~~
maxmcd
I imagine the history of that single person might not be so relatable to
people reading this thread :)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Arment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Arment)

------
perakojotgenije
sshreach.me ([https://sshreach.me](https://sshreach.me)) - it's currently only
ramen profitable but I'm getting new users every day.

------
lukaszkups
[https://carrd.co](https://carrd.co) by aj - a Zapas That enables people build
simple websites/landing pages.

------
ca98am79
I started park.io 5 years ago by myself and it has been profitable since then
(and it has been just me the whole time)

------
pk4636
[http://indiafinearts.co.in](http://indiafinearts.co.in)

------
user7878
My self developer of few of Saas applications. I worked on starting from
ideation to go live. I am developer of those applications working as single
person for client to make multiple Saas applications as side projects since
few years.

P.S. Ideas are not mine I'm just doing development and can't disclose more
details here.

------
gortok
I am not at liberty to say who it is but I know a one person SaaS (well, now a
4 person SaaS) that does several million a year in revenue. They found a niche
and wrote software for that niche. It is the tiniest of niches but is
underserved.

~~~
throwaway13000
Atleast giving an idea of the general market would be great. Otherwise, your
answer has no meaning

~~~
sveng
The last two sentences that comment are meaningful to me.

------
provlem
Education SAAS is anytime great product to make money - something like
EduClan.com

------
pk4636
Prints salutations

------
umen
so what can we learn from this?

------
osakasaul
Pocket: one man team for at least the first two years.

------
osakasaul
Pocket. One-man team for at least the first two years.

------
ratling
No one is going to tell you this idiot. They'll build it themselves and reap
the profits.

This whole ycombinator post is stupid as hell.

------
tyingq
Interesting question because answering it is somewhat risky, assuming no
secret sauce or years of work to launch.

