
Ask HN: What are some of the simplest software businesses that exist? - polalavik
For example park.io was born out of a simple script that looked for available domains (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiehackers.com&#x2F;interview&#x2F;how-automating-tasks-helped-me-grow-revenue-to-over-125k-mo-73da9c0b51)
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underyx
I suspect that OP owns park.io and created this post just to covertly market
that website. Signs that point to this:

\- it's a completely unnotable example compared to more well-known companies
in the comments

\- No one else thought to include further promo material like OP's linked
interview for the service they answered

\- OP's post history contains several failed attempts to promote 5things.xyz
with HN submissions (demonstrating a tendency to self-promote)

\- After these failed attempts OP made their only meaningful-looking
contribution to the HN community by posting 'Ask HN: What are your favorite
tech sites besides HN?'

\- However, the aforementioned 5things.xyz is a competitor in this space

\- And of course, this last post had a commenter answering 5things.xyz in the
thread, with the user being registered the same day only to make that one
comment, and even being given a random fake-sounding username:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=syrup89](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=syrup89)

\- However, this shill comment was mostly ignored by everyone, and this
failure apparently prompted OP to include their promoted answer in the body of
their Ask HN post instead this time

Edit: My comment got downvoted twice within one minute of posting (:

~~~
lossolo
I lately noticed a lot of threads similar to these with a lot of meaningless
comments like for example _" What a great product!", "WoW! Finally! Waited for
this so long", "Perfect product, will be using!"_ from accounts that were made
30 days ago or 3 days ago, or same time as thread were created.

~~~
aunty_helen
That's just the Eternal September.

Whilst I appreciate the OPs diligence, I would actually tend to disagree. The
user may have seen it mentioned on indie hacker, which would be a plausible
place to encounter 'a simple script that looked for available domains'

~~~
underyx
While possible, my 3rd to 7th bullet points, a lack of any other activity from
OP, and the instant downvote brigading still make me nearly certain that this
was all a scheme to promote this one site.

------
GFischer
There are a lot of websites that I'm not sure if they count as businesses but
are reasonably simple:

    
    
      - code prettifiers,
      - converting from X to PDF, 
      - converting image formats, 
      - YouTube downloaders, 
      - TimeZone converters,
      - Online calculators,
      - SQL formatters
    

And so many more...

~~~
eterm
Converting X to PDF is far from simple ( I wish it was! ).

~~~
maxxxxx
From my experience almost nothing around PDF is simple once you scratch the
surface...

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
PDFSharp FTW!

------
kettenken
Pingdom.com?

At least it was pretty simple when it started. I think "ping my server from
several locations and alert me when stuff doesn't work" is simple and they
charge $10+/mo for that.

------
ArtWomb
Reminds me of Jeff Atwood's "Code: It's Trivial" post:

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/code-its-
trivial/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/code-its-trivial/)

The model I really dig right now is "unlimited subscription for creative
work." Such as manypixels.co, for graphic design and illustrations. Or even
the Podscriptor transcription service ($10 per episode in 24 hr).

And though you can probably edit such a service down to a minimal quantum
creative task. There's no shortcut to getting web-scale distribution.

Best of luck ;)

------
HeyLaughingBoy
Most of the really simple businesses are going to be B2B in very niche
markets, so you're not likely to hear about them.

e.g., somewhere there may be a website that converts RS274 commands to an
obsolete CNC command protocol so they can use their decades old machinery with
modern CAM software. It has real value to a small number of users and it's the
kind of thing you can write in an afternoon, but outside a small community,
you're not likely to know about it.

Yeah, I know that's a bad example, but it's the first thing that came to mind
:-)

------
et-al
Doodle.com is super simple and super useful when coordinating with more than
four people.

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axaxs
Probably craigslist, if you count that. It seems ultra low maintenance, and
makes good money.

~~~
mi_lk
How does craigslist make money? Ads?

~~~
axaxs
AFAIK they charge money for some ads, such as job postings and housing ads.

~~~
wilsonnb3
I believe they only charge to post job ads in big cities like New York and San
Fransisco.

Here's a full list of what they charge for.

[https://www.craigslist.org/about/help/posting_fees](https://www.craigslist.org/about/help/posting_fees)

------
kodablah
[https://www.statuspage.io/](https://www.statuspage.io/) (implementation may
no longer be simple, but surely it was initially)

~~~
1_800_UNICORN
I had a job offer from the StatusPage guys a few years ago that I turned down
(shortly before their acquisition by Atlassian, d'oh!). The feature set is
relatively simple, but the underlying software is very complex. They need to
be reliable enough and robust enough to work when other major sites go down,
which is no easy feat. I'm sure that like most products they started simple,
but to scale to any large meaningful customers they had to put a lot of
complex engineering in place.

------
ninjakeyboard
I think many saas solutions that exposes functionality of some command line
tool. Eg video encoding, as mentioned html->pdf, barcode generation, even just
storing and retrieving assets.

------
bakli
I made [https://monitorcertificates.com](https://monitorcertificates.com) from
this simple script - [https://hackernoon.com/monitor-your-https-certificate-
expiry...](https://hackernoon.com/monitor-your-https-certificate-expiry-with-
this-script-1338bf5acfe9)

It reminds you when your certificates are due for renewal, or if they have
been configured incorrectly.

~~~
barbarr
The way you sell it seems pretty effective. Do you have any "big boy" clients
yet?

~~~
bakli
No, mostly devs who have been burned by bad certs, and devs who's boss bought
a certificate and now doesn't remind devs when they get a "reminder" to renew.

------
hiccuphippo
Pinboard's business model is pretty simple. Monthly charge for usage of their
service. And the service itself is pretty simple, bookmark storage with tags.

~~~
kej
*annual charge

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apapli
I’d say a lot of enterprise software fits into this category.... just that
they are very evolved now so pack a lot more functionality in than what they
started with.

Ie CRMs and ERPs were really just basic CRUD applications when they started.

Not to belittle them, as there are years (Millenia perhaps?) of programming
time that has gone into them since they started so they are far more extensive
than when they started.

~~~
icedchai
It starts off simple. Then someone wants to customize things. Then someone
else wants to customize things a bit differently, on and on. That field you
give everyone by default and made mandatory? Turns on 1 huge customer doesn't
actually want it. That needs to be configurable, too. Pretty soon everything
almost is configurable and it's 1000x more complex...

~~~
BLanen
Don't forget building it in a way to allow the user(ie, expensive consultants
why you may be supplying yourself or grant certificates too) to customize it
themselves!

------
OliverLassen
What about sites which allows users to create their own blogs. That seem
pretty simple, but the content is the hard part.

~~~
OliverLassen
Actually it is hard to tell. Every application is simple from start, but then
expand.

You could say Instagram is simple - create a user, upload a picture which
people can see if they choose to add you as a friend. Simple at first, but
then the application evolves to filters and sophticated algorithms for finding
best content

------
wilsonnb3
A lot of WordPress plugins that cost money are very simple.

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cimmanom
Are you asking about simple software? Or simple business models? Or something
else?

~~~
polalavik
simple software that solved a common problem and has a pretty straightforward
business model.

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brailsafe
It depends. Usually, at some level you're going to find some crazy complexity.
I think just about every flight hacking/booking website is simple in the sense
that it just uses one API for data, but then there's complexity in the UI and
behind the API they're using. Likewise, prpviding just an API to some
otherwise unavailable data might be anywhere from simple to inifitely complex.

~~~
is_true
With your reply in mind I think that we should be talking of barriers of
entry, not easy to write. Last time I checked a flight API costed 7500K USD
monthly.

------
a_d
The first version of some astonishingly successful businesses were quite
simple. Including and certainly not limited to: AirBnB, Groupon, Facebook,
Zenefits, ZenPayroll (now Gusto), YouTube, Twitter etc were quite simple.

Ironically, their success over the last 10-15 years, has made starting a
software businesses relatively simple. My bet is that in the next 10-15 years
the value is increasingly going to come from _harder to start_ businesses.

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barbarr
jscrambler.com. Sell the fact that you can do something that can _already be
done_ , slap on some business talk, and you've got $2m in venture funding.

------
kuwze
[https://gumroad.com/](https://gumroad.com/)

~~~
taprun
I bet they do some complicated anti-fraud stuff though...

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CraneWorm
5things yeah!

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qop
Twilio, craigslist, twitter, wikipedia, are all pretty simple from the top
view.

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antisthenes
Sublime Text comes to mind.

It's probably not the simplest one, and the ecosystem around it is quite
extensive, but at its core, the principle is very simple.

~~~
germainelol
But how many people click the button to buy a license? :D

