19 ms·

Ask HN: What is an example of a super simple SaaS that is profitable?

• bdcravens 8y ago
  I think a great place to start is places where there's a marketplace, like Shopify, BigCommerce, Github, etc.
• pragmaticlurker 8y ago
  Check IndieHackers website!
  • saluki 8y ago
    https://www.indiehackers.com/products?businessModel=subscriptions&maxRevenue=999&minRevenue=500 https://www.indiehackers.com/products?businessModel=subscrip...
• danieltillett 8y ago
  Plenty of them out there that fit this criteria provided you work full time on it and don't count your hours.
• vivan 8y ago
  My biggest inspiration is https://www.placecard.me/ https://www.placecard.me/ by Cory Zue (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=czue https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=czue). He has been documenting the whole process very well both on Twitter (https://twitter.com/czue/status/958993008543830017 https://twitter.com/czue/status/958993008543830017) and his blog (http://www.coryzue.com/writing/ http://www.coryzue.com/writing/).
  • czue 8y ago
    Thanks for the shout out Vivan! I even got my very first grumpy hacker news blog comment out of this!
• jypepin 8y ago
  Depends of your definition of simple, but I really like https://cronhub.io/ https://cronhub.io/. Does 1 thing and does it well.
  • rane 8y ago
    I've found https://healthchecks.io/ https://healthchecks.io/ great for my use, and it has quite friendly pricing for non-profit hobby projects.
    • mherrmann 8y ago
      Just to chime in and also say that I'm a very happy healthchecks user.
• chvid 8y ago
  I always thought Patrick McKenzie's Appointment Reminder was a perfect example of something really simple executed very well: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-grew-my-appointment-reminder-business-to-12k-mo-2b8720ca25 https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-grew-my-appoint... And he is an excellent communicator; in particular look up his older podcasts. But I think today it is getting harder and harder; so simple projects won't cut it anymore and more effort needs to be put into both product development and marketing to get any sort of traction.
  • onion2k 8y ago
    But I think today it is getting harder and harder; so simple projects won't cut it anymore and more effort needs to be put into both product development and marketing to get any sort of traction. I'd be willing to bet people have been saying that for at least 5000 years.
    • chvid 8y ago
      You are right. And you can say that the tools and resources available to small time online entrepreneurs are better than ever.
    • projectramo 8y ago
      Perhaps it has been true for the last 5000 years. Presumably they haven't been talking about the same thing. You could sell software in catalogs for home computers, but that dried up. Then you could make web apps, and that dried up. Then you could make mobile apps and that has dried up. (*Note: note completely, and I am sure many people know someone who still makes some surprising amount of money with this one weird trick/app) When the next platform comes out (VR? Cars?) there will be a software shortage and you will have a few years to code up some stuff. Then the market will demand more elaborate and sophisticated software that will require a team, some investment and a lot of time.
      • onion2k 8y ago
        Presumably they haven't been talking about the same thing. You could sell software in catalogs for home computers, but that dried up. Then you could make web apps, and that dried up. Then you could make mobile apps and that has dried up. Exactly this. There's no industry that's always been easy to get in to, but there's always been something. It changes as society changes. You just have to work out what it is at the moment.
• BilalBudhani 8y ago
  For me, https://ipdata.co/ https://ipdata.co/ is a perfect example of a super simple SaaS application. Jonathan, the founder, also wrote a great piece on how he built it https://hackernoon.com/how-to-build-a-saas-with-0-fed2341078c8?source=search_post---------0 https://hackernoon.com/how-to-build-a-saas-with-0-fed2341078... If you're interested in learning more about micro saas checkout Tyler Tringas Micro SaaS series https://tylertringas.com/micro-saas-ebook/ https://tylertringas.com/micro-saas-ebook/
  • systematical 8y ago
    I really like the smooth scroll on this site.
• baccredited 8y ago
  A simple SaaS that gushes profits is so improbable that you might as well call it impossible. If you want passive income, write code for pay and invest some of the surplus. If you want to do a startup, find a cofounder and apply to YCombinator. Or find another path to working at a startup.
  • bdcravens 8y ago
    Aside from the fact that there's a ton of evidence that proves you wrong (but there is truth that a lot of SaaS founders never make a penny), OP was asking about starting at $500/month, which is far from "gushing profits".
  • AVTizzle 8y ago
    This is (extremely) untrue in my experience and those of countless other boostrapped SaaS founder friends in my circle. I've started 2 simple SaaS products that are solidly profitable (simplecrew.com and crewfire.com), and a 3rd just shipped this week (chainfuel.com). The internet is full of other counterpoints.
    • baccredited 8y ago
      Here's an exercise that would be interesting. Look at all the 'Show HN' posts announcing new startups from a couple of years ago. Find how many are still operating. Then contact the creators to see if the revenues produced have paid for the hours invested. Then we would have some real data instead of my anecdote. And yours.
      • engineeringwoke 8y ago
        Who cares if 90% of startups fail? Your point was wrong
        • icedchai 8y ago
          No, he's right. Most people are better off investing in the stock market than trying to build a successful small business, SaaS, startup, or otherwise.
• dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Not highly complex to set up, profitable without massive scale, not labor intensive. Pick two.
• grwthckrmstr 8y ago
  One source of ideas is the Indiehackers products listing. They also include revenue figures. Here's a list of all products with >= $500 in MRR (some are Stripe-verified, rest are self-reported so take it with a pinch of salt). LINK => https://www.indiehackers.com/products?minRevenue=500&sorting=lowest-revenue https://www.indiehackers.com/products?minRevenue=500&sorting...
• AVTizzle 8y ago
  I guess not the simplist once you get under the hood, but I've started two nice profitable SaaS products and just launched a third: https://www.simplecrew.com https://www.simplecrew.com - street team reporting/tracking tool (2012 - present) https://www.crewfire.com https://www.crewfire.com - social media brand ambassador platform (2014 - present) https://www.chainfuel.com https://www.chainfuel.com - telegram analytics/anti-spam/management dashboard (beta release last week)
  • swah 8y ago
    Great design and copy on ChainFuel.com - congrats.
    • AVTizzle 8y ago
      Thanks! We're proud of that one. Also shout out to Webflow for being an awesome tool.
  • desireco42 8y ago
    SimpleCrew is ingenious. Congrats! Same for ChainFuel. I really like your creativity and how you connected offline and online.
    • AVTizzle 8y ago
      Thanks for the kind words! They've all been great learning experiences (and all are constant works in progress!)
  • b1gnasty 8y ago
    Just a heads up, clicking the logo in top left corner brings you to a similarly designed page thats about crypto. And is the copy on the book supposed to mention crypto community management?
    • AVTizzle 8y ago
      Doh! Thanks so much. We just switched over to the new design and the header logo must have switched URLs to the classic home page. And yeah - the book's been effectively repurposed. We'll get around to changing that up and updating the copy. Appreciate you pointing these out!
• simon_weber 8y ago
  I run a number of tiny services in this category, such as an autoresponder for Google Hangouts: https://gchat.simon.codes/ https://gchat.simon.codes/. I originally built it for myself - I forward many gmail addresses to one and was missing chat messages - but these days most of my customers are small business owners or employees of larger companies. I recently summarized all my projects and my numbers here, if it's of interest: https://www.simonmweber.com/2019/01/07/side-project-income-2018.html https://www.simonmweber.com/2019/01/07/side-project-income-2...
  • motyar 8y ago
    Twitter link on your website is broken.
    • simon_weber 8y ago
      Whoops; thanks for the heads up! It's fixed now.
  • RobLach 8y ago
    Now that Google is killing Hangouts, do you have something new planned?
    • simon_weber 8y ago
      I don't have anything planned yet, but I also haven't looked into their replacement service.
  • zweicoder 8y ago
    I maintain a very similar service to your autoplaylist at http://getsongbird.io http://getsongbird.io However I was not really able to monetize in any form (needs permission from Spotify, and Stripe shut down the account before it got to even do anything). Did you encounter similar issues and if so how did you circumvent them? I'm at a loss now and on the verge of shutting it down, but I have a few hundred users that periodically email me to ask for fixes / new features, and it pains my heart to just give it up like that, but it's just not making any sense economically for me now.
• wibble10 8y ago
  I can’t speak for the simplicity, but by all accounts the backend of this system is (it was at some point) a single ec2 instance and is a single person project. Granted that person is cpercival but whatever :) https://www.tarsnap.com https://www.tarsnap.com
  • ignoramous 8y ago
    A little bit of trivia for people who might not know: cpercival was an integral part of one of the favourite HN threads of all time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
    • giarc 8y ago
      That thread was a nice little rabbit hole in the morning, thanks. There's also an appearance by Drew Houston with early mention of dropbox in there.
  • bpizzi 8y ago
    It's definitely not a simple CRUD vanilla app, thought.
  • aerovistae 8y ago
    Is cpercival supposed to be a name people recognize? I just googled it and didn't find any substantial identifying information. Who is that?
    • thieving_magpie 8y ago
      Regular HN poster and Tarsnap proprietor: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cperciva
• seanwilson 8y ago
  I'm doing well with Checkbot, a Chrome extension that tests websites for SEO, speed and security problems that has a subscription model: https://www.checkbot.io/ https://www.checkbot.io/ It's simple in terms of day to day running now that it works well but getting to that stage and the implementation behind it was a ton of work. I don't think you're going to easily find a project that's easy to implement, requires little maintenance, has low running costs, markets itself, scales etc. You'll have to put in effort somewhere. I think if you look into the projects being posted in the thread, you'll realise few are simple if you want to make something people will pay for.
  • highace 8y ago
    I came across this a few months ago - this is a perfect example of how to execute, great job. How's your revenue growth?
    • seanwilson 8y ago
      Thanks! Growing but slowly. I need to make more progress on the marketing side now as I don't think much on the coding side will change this. I think the story is similar with simpler products too. Getting the word out and optimising your sales funnel takes much longer than you'd think.
• nailer 8y ago
  https://certsimple.com https://certsimple.com - faster, easier verification for websites, so they can prove they're run by a specific company (with an EV SSL cert). It's essentially a UI and a bunch of APIs that connect to different data sources to pre-check info, then pass that on to a CA.
  • sahaskatta 8y ago
    Curious how this is so much cheaper than all the other EV cert companies that charge thousands!
    • nailer 8y ago
      Ha, thankyou, but we’re definitely in the middle of the market. If your main thing is price you can find cheaper companies, our main thing is reducing verication time and hassle.
• davidscolgan 8y ago
  I've been pretty impressed with pullreminders.com - it is a Slack bot that alerts you for unreviewed pull requests. Seems to actually solve a real need and since the author, Abi Noda, has been pretty open about talking about it, seems it's been pretty profitable. More info: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/pull-reminders https://www.indiehackers.com/product/pull-reminders Friendly reminder that the important components of a successful SaaS is marketing, marketing, marketing, and code, so how to market the app should be considered just as important as how easy it is to code. I'd probably recommend you take whatever your idea is and offer it as a consulting service that you do yourself manually. If people won't buy that, they won't buy your app, and you can prove the idea without doing any coding at all. Once you have an audience for the service, you can just sell the automated version.
  • davidscolgan 8y ago
    I believe complice.co is also a profitable one/two person team productivity app that makes a few grand a month. https://www.indiehackers.com/product/complice https://www.indiehackers.com/product/complice
    • malcolmocean 8y ago
      I'm the creator of Complice and it was indeed made largely by me (I have another collaborator but he joined after it was already making over $3k/mo) but I wouldn't call it simple! Both the software itself and in relation to your comment above that describes how it's not just "how easy is it to build?" but "how easy is it to market?" In a world where most people are just looking for a better to-do list, Complice is offering an entirely different philosophy of productivity, so it can be hard to explain it, as opposed to something that just straightforwardly scratches somebody's itch. I will say that the software plays to my strengths: I'm not a data structures & algorithms guy, or a machine learning guy, or a fanatic about the perfect REST API, and Complice is much more about the workflow and the interface, which is what I'm good at. So "super simple" also depends on what you're good at!
      • davidscolgan 8y ago
• raleigh_user 8y ago
  Fomo.com is doing a few million and is owned/operated by 1 individual (although he has a small team). Believe he acquired it and grew it like crazy. I’d reckon (if he chose) the company could do a 100k a month in profit.
  • ashelmire 8y ago
    This is an example of a product that probably does something cool, but really doesn't do a good job of explaining what it does or why I would use it on the front page. But it looks pretty.
    • justaguyhere 8y ago
      Look at the bottom left corner of the screen, then it becomes clear immediately. And yeah, it looks pretty.
    • sosodev 8y ago
      You know those annoying notifications that usually say something like "Dawn in Idaho bought a 3 pack or gorilla stickers just now" on e-commerce sites? That's what fomo does.
    • ryanckulp 8y ago
      thanks for the feedback. this homepage is actually our 3rd and probably most abstract implementation. 1st, 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20161108025452/https://www.usefomo.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161108025452/https://www.usefo... 2nd, 2017/2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20190107040431/https://fomo.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190107040431/https://fomo.com/ indeed, the numbers speak for themselves. over the last few weeks since deploying we saw lower signup conversion rates. but, we also have a few product launches forthcoming. balancing between "be short and to the point" and sharing a vision is perhaps more art than science, and that's why we have so much art on our website.
      • ashelmire 8y ago
        Second one seems to come closest for me. I prefer something clear like "see that notification at the bottom left corner of the page? We do that". But I get it; you're selling why someone should use the product (a bit abstractly, perhaps). As a tech product though, don't forget to highlight the actual product(s) and to be specific. The "Install Fomo in 29 Seconds" section from the first iteration makes me feel confident, as a developer, that there's a clear path to get your product working for me and it won't be a pita. A documentation link at the top, rather than hidden at the bottom, would be nice - see how Facebook presents their tech offerings (granted, open source) at https://reactjs.org/ https://reactjs.org/ etc. I'm just one guy who makes decisions about what techs to use for myself and others though, so yada yada grain of salt. Maybe I'm not who you're targeting as much as salespeople themselves.
• bpizzi 8y ago
  I've built a petition system that allow users to publish their own petitions and download signatures lists. Got a handful of loyal customers acquired threw relations. MRR is ~500€ since +10 years. Won't give the url here because it's running on a ultra cheap dedicated server at 5€/m, HN would blow it down in one minute :)
  • Beltiras 8y ago
    Don't fear the reaper.
  • justaguyhere 8y ago
    Ha, this is a good one. "Publish their own petitions" - can you give an example? Share more details, without giving your URL or any other secret sauce away?
    • bpizzi 8y ago
      Sure, the typical customer is this semi-professional non-profit organization that need something more "result driven" than change.org when it comes to build its audience (nothing black hat, really).
      • akudha 8y ago
        I guess I am missing something. Why should I use your service than change.org? I'm sure you know your audience very well - it is just that I am missing something.
        • bpizzi 8y ago
          Two things: build the form and collect the data. Now that I think about it, it's a "surveymonkey" disguised in "change.org", actually.
          • midnightmonster 8y ago
            Wife runs a not-for-profit. This is brilliant. My perception is that petitions don't often accomplish their stated goals, but what if the side benefits of gauging interest, drawing light first-step commitments, and collecting contact information accrued to your org instead of an activism-feelings-aggregator like change.org? That may come off as cynical to people, but as a petition-signer, I'd rather get followed up a couple times by an organization actually working on something I care about (and given a path to act a little more on my caring, even if it's 'come to this event' or 'give us money') than followed up indefinitely by change.org, who cannot seem to guess well at all what sort of petitions I'd like to support.
• faitswulff 8y ago
  There's BuiltWith: http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps-one-of-australias-most-profitable-online-companies-and-has-zero-staff/ http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps-one...
  • justaguyhere 8y ago
    This is not simple at all! There are hundreds of corner cases to code for, you need a swarm of machines to crawl etc. When he started more than a decade ago, there was zero competition and it was a novel idea. Now there is stiff competition. This is far from simple - this is actually a very serious project, not an example of 500$ stuff!
    • faitswulff 8y ago
      The idea is quite simple - crawl websites and figure out what makes them tick. Of course you're not going to enter the exact same market. No one is obligated to find a competition-free, low-hanging niche for you to occupy.
      • AznHisoka 8y ago
        A lot of billion dollar company ideas are simple too like Facebook, Salesforce and Yelp. But I doubt 1 person can build those. Those BuiltWith folks probably have hundreds of regression tests running daily. Maybe a bunch of freelancers who check for newer versions of software too every month.
        • faitswulff 8y ago
          You are aware that BuiltWith itself was built by one person, right?
• lazyjones 8y ago
  www.doodle.com ...
• TrickyRick 8y ago
  I run https://awardfares.com https://awardfares.com with a friend, it's not making much money but it's certainly profitable.
  • lavezzi 8y ago
    Is there a consolidated list of alliances/carriers that you support? I couldn't see anything on the site
    • TrickyRick 8y ago
      Only Star Alliance so far, however the availability might not necessarily match for your specific carrier, as they have different rules between each other. Both me and my friend use SAS Eurobonus and the availability lines up quite well. We're working on adding other alliances too though! EDIT: Actually I see now that my partner added the list if you scroll down on the first page (Only visible if you're not logged in though).
• nrjames 8y ago
  pinboard.in
• novaleaf 8y ago
  I run a saas that is profitable: https://PhantomJsCloud.com https://PhantomJsCloud.com It's a pretty simple concept: providing PhantomJs or Chrome Headless as a REST API. The thing is, the SaaS itself is only about 1/3 the work. You need a website, account management, and billing too. Today, there are perhaps other services you could leverage that can help reduce this initial burden (Kong?) but a few years ago when I started my SaaS, nothing really met my needs. Hope it's easier for everyone now!
  • tequila_shot 8y ago
    How much are you earning on this?
    • novaleaf 8y ago
      sub 10k MRR. I need to expand the offering, and there's actually a lot of competitors in this space. My USP is low cost and high scaleability.
  • paultopia 8y ago
    Woah, that's really cool. I've been meaning to run my own headless browser in the cloud for personal scraping tasks and such, and may now sign up for your free tier. :-)
  • uelga22 8y ago
    I am using browserless for a niche project.. Seems this space is taking off slightly
  • klohto 8y ago
    Isn't PhantomJS basically unsupported at this point?
    • novaleaf 8y ago
      yeah, bad name choice. right now the default browser I use is Chrome, but people can still use PhantomJs if they want. I'll make a more generic domain name sometime in the future (lots of stuff to do....)
• johnmaguire2013 8y ago
  I don't have anything to do with Toggl besides using it briefly years ago, but apparently it is (or was) profitable: http://purde.net/2012/09/keep-it-simple-talk-to-users-how-toggl-has-gotten-to-20-000-paid-users-and-counting/ http://purde.net/2012/09/keep-it-simple-talk-to-users-how-to...
• t0mk 8y ago
  https://ngrok.com/product https://ngrok.com/product It's SSH forwarding as a service. Not super-simple, but not too hard either I think.
• ortuna 8y ago
  https://commits.io https://commits.io Pretty simple code poster creator.
• conroy 8y ago
  I run https://equinox.io https://equinox.io, a service for distributing and updating Go applications. I’m not sure if it falls into the “simple” category, but the product targets a small market.
  • potatowriter 8y ago
    How did you learn to make all this? I haven't been taught anything like this in my CS program. What resources did you use? Books, videos etc. are very helpful. Thanks!
• tracker1 8y ago
  Fill a niche that is difficult to solve for, but easy to scale once you do. Fix a problem that you've had. In the end, there are a lot of opportunities for SaaS, imho the DBaaS are the main reason to consider a cloud provider. Getting setup, failover, backups, hot recovery etc are middling to difficult even with dedicated resources, but tend to have solutions that scale well once you do. Not suggesting that as something to do, the bigger cloud providers are likely to edge you out eventually. It could be as simple as a better whois lookup service that is fast and deployed to multiple regions on the major cloud services. Whois in particular is difficult because the resolvers for some of the less big TLDs aren't as responsive, there's inconsistencies in standards and normalization takes work. Again, it's a matter of figuring out a niche and filling it.
  • flowardnut 8y ago
    quite a few SaaS products I've used -- they set out to make application A, ran into a problem building application A (like "wow looking at these logs is difficult, let's build a quick tool that solves this problem") and the solution they built became their real SaaS product.
    • tracker1 8y ago
      Absolutely... which is usually my point when I say build something that solves a problem you have/had. It's often the best opportunities for either an open-source contribution or a SaaS product.
  • Mvandenbergh 8y ago
    At the really low MMR end, you're not even looking for something that is difficult to solve for but something that has an attractive ratio of easy for technical person to solve / annoying but important for others. It's easy to read about a lot of the things in this thread and think, "I could easily hack that together in a weekend learning a new technology, why would I pay for it?". There's plenty of people for whom automating a simple repetitive task is both valuable and basically magic and there are so many niches to be had.
• mlx 8y ago
  http://www.mlreader.com http://www.mlreader.com - MLReader - it extracts invoice information. It is as simple as there's only one API.
• symisc_devel 8y ago
  park.io is making $120K per month using an automated set of scripts that catch up pendingDelete domains from various registries.
  • aerovistae 8y ago
    Honestly this kind of pisses me off. automated domain parking. this should be illegal.
    • jamestanderson 8y ago
      I've used them more than once and am very happy with their service. Squatters do this kind of thing already, but they demand an exorbitant price or have some kind of opaque bidding process. Park.io at least introduces some consistency and trust in this process. I'd much rather pay a small premium ($99 for the domain vs however much a particular registrar charges) to avoid that hassle and still get a great name I would never have gotten otherwise by scanning for pendingDelete domains.
• geekjock 8y ago
  I run http://pullreminders.com http://pullreminders.com
• deftnerd 8y ago
  There is no single "To Do" application that meets the needs of all of the users since everyone thinks differently. Find a niche that the others haven't really addressed yet and build your application in that space. The same applies for email clients or calendar applications. Basically anything that orients around organizing information and priorities.
  • marcperel 8y ago
    It's funny this thread exists. I actually created a to-do/note app that works for loads of users, I called it Thought Train because I kept losing my train of thought as I tabbed through Slack/Skype/Email all day. It's not "The answer" but it's helped me daily since I built it. The trick to creating something like this in a crowded space is not to compete against the others, but compliment them.
• jwr 8y ago
  I realize that might not be what you want to hear, but my advice would be to target a different (larger) MRR. $500/month is not a sustainable or even reasonable business. It's fine to start something "on the side", but I believe you should immediately set your goals to something that in the long term will be sustainable, unless it's really supposed to be only a hobby/toy. If you've never ran a business before, one important bit of advice is that you should assume revenue targets of 2-3x of what you'd like to actually earn in post-tax personal income. Most people underestimate the costs of running a business and forget that they will need to pay for a computer, software, accounting services, and lots of other things. Depending on where you live, I'd say target $3k-$10k in MRR.
  • gwbas1c 8y ago
    Downvoted for what should be a very obvious observation. Start with one $500 / month business. Next month do another $500 / month business. Rinse, lather, repeat. After 10 months, it's $5000 / month. After 36 months it's over $15,000 / month.
    • takinola 8y ago
      While I agree with the spirit of this comment, I would suggest that it does not really work like that. There are some aspects of running a business (eg support, maintenance, etc) that do not scale linearly like you propose. Running 3 $500/month businesses is much harder than running a single $1,500/month business. In all likelihood, your $500/month business will open a door to a $1,000/month business which will lead you to a $2,000/month business. You have to think of each part as a step on a path. You will never get to the last step if you never take the first small steps. To be clear, I am totally in agreement that the important thing is to start wherever you can.
    • spraak 8y ago
      That seems oversimplified
    • inscionent 8y ago
      Step 1: Start Business Step 2: ??? Step 3: GoTo 1
• simkus9 8y ago
  segment.com
• takinola 8y ago
  I have a Shopify app that generates a little under $1K a month. I feel like if I put some dedicated effort into it, I could probably double that. Right now, I probably spend about 4 hours a week max on support. I would discount all the people who say it cannot be done. There is a ton of opportunity out there if you are willing to do your research, take sensible risks and do the hard work to build and launch stuff. The trick (at least for me) is transitioning from the side-project to the fully self sustaining stage. There is a messy middle where the investment required (in terms of time and money) imposes a much higher risk.
  • sharps_xp 8y ago
    how did you conduct your research phase?
    • takinola 8y ago
      I went through the Shopify app store to find app categories with lots of negative reviews. This suggested to me that there was unmet demand. I then reached out to some shop owners to ask what they needed and used the insights from those conversations to design a better solution than the competition. It is a pretty simple straightforward approach but just takes time and discipline to grind through the process.
• annapurna 8y ago
  Great suggestions here so far and a common thread I noticed is leveraging platforms such as Slack/Gmail/Trello/Shopify etc. - essentially an B2B platforms. My friend and I currently run cardsync.xyz on Trello which allows Trello users to sync their cards and it generates under $1000/month. We spend about 2-10 hours a week on it. You will be at the mercy of these platforms when (not if) they decide to change their rules but until then, it can be a good source of side income.
  • jharger 8y ago
    Did you mean to say "just under $1000/month"? It seems kind of strange to claim that you make under an amount, because technically $0/month is under $1000, and "actively losing money" also counts. Just curious.
    • jpt1 8y ago
      Probably means "close to $1000/month" rather than any value under $1000
      • annapurna 8y ago
        Correct, close to $1000/month.
        • Axsuul 8y ago
          Congrats! How long did it take you guys to reach that MRR?
          • annapurna 8y ago
            Thanks. We had a free trial version for about three months and then started paid plans based on customer demographics around last summer. So it's been less than a year. Note that I'm based out of Toronto and my friend in South America.
• todipa 8y ago
  Are there other websites like https://indiehackers.com https://indiehackers.com that you would recommend?
• mrskitch 8y ago
  I'm not sure if I'd call it simple, but the product itself is fairly straightforward (at least to me :). I run a SaaS product called browserless (https://browserless.io https://browserless.io). Goal here was to make it really simple to run headless browser work in a production environment, without worrying about all the provisioning and maintenance. However, like anything simple on the exterior, there's still layers of complexity behind it. How do you charge users? Where do you host? How do you acquire users? How do you interact with customers? Don't mean to be cynical, but even $500/mo is going to have some cost and time complexity. Best of luck!
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• danielrhodes 8y ago
  Create a Shopify app.
• everdev 8y ago
  Keep in mind that "super simple" usually also means "easily reproduced". The dream of cranking out a profitable SaaS offering in a weekend is possible, it's just not sustainable past a year or two unless you also incorporate some differentiation. It's usually the differentiation that makes the SaaS more complex than an MVP.
• everdev 8y ago
  For a list of projects + revenues, check out IndieHackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1 https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1 It might provide some inspiration of related projects that are in your wheelhouse.
• stevekemp 8y ago
  I essentially resell DNS hosting. I allow users to store their DNS records in a git repository, then when they make commits & pushes I initiate an update to the live-zones on Amazon Route53. It'll never make me rich. Low-end users use their domain-registrars. High-end users probably have lots of AWS-based infrastructure, so they can handle DNS themselves. But there is a middle-ground, and I've been lucky enough to sell services to a couple of (European) universities. So different departments can handle different sub-domains. Fun anyway, and although I do need to handle user-support the churn-rate is minimal: https://dns-api.com/ https://dns-api.com/
  • potatowriter 8y ago
    How did you learn how to create this app? I work best with tutorials or books or videos that go through how to build an entire app. Learning individual components is fine but learning how to integrate them is the tough part.
    • stevekemp 8y ago
      It isn't an app, but a website. As for how I learned I guess years of practice ..
      • potatowriter 8y ago
        Did you consult books, or courses online, or videos? I'm just asking because there is so much info out there, what specific paths would be best? Thanks.
    • kypro 8y ago
      In my experience you need to have at least a foundational understanding across the entire stack. I'm guessing OP had some experience in the past with AWS, DNS, web development, etc. From there he might of needed to do a bit of research here and there, but he probably had some idea what was needed and where to go for that information.
  • dplgk 8y ago
    How do you find users? Seems like the kind of thing people don't know they want until they see it i.e. they wouldn't be searching for it.
• tyingq 8y ago
  Aftership looks like a fairly straightforward SAAS offering that could use a competitor. It does deliver value, and I'm sure there's more to it than you might see at first. But, it does seem a simpler space than many.
  • npmn2 8y ago
    ahh.. supporting 400 different providers is a full-time and fairly painful job. Anyways their space is pretty crowded as well.
    • tyingq 8y ago
      Supporting 3 would handle a pretty large market.
• zbruhnke 8y ago
  droplr & Cloudapp both come to mind ... essentially branded filesharing/url shorteners but I'd love to see either of them support adding custom favicons or otherwise completely removing their branding
• moosecopy 8y ago
  Not a simple SaaS but my brother (personal finance blogger), best friend (journalist) and I (engineer - P.Eng Ontario, Canada) just started a copywriting subscription for fintechs in Canada. Please note that we had worked with a few fintechs for about a year on a service basis and made a pivot to a subscription service just last week. This resulted in most of our existing fintech clients coming on board right away after we emailed them even though the website (https://moosecopy.com https://moosecopy.com) is still under construction i.e. no writing samples on it yet. Our mixed background provides an excellent value for our clients and we have been fortunate to work with some great clients as well. Lastly, as a few people have suggested wisely, it's a good idea to offer a service initially and then look towards building a product out of it (similar to Paul Graham's idea of doing things that don't scale during early development stage).
• PhilWright 8y ago
  You could try buying an existing very small SAAS which you know you can grow and build into something bigger. Then either keep it running or sell it on again at a higher value.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• notriv 8y ago
  Probably far from being "super simple", but I made a bot to automate different tasks in a online game. Customers can either self-host the software them-self (min $5/month) or pay a higher price (min $10/month) and use my "cloud" service where I host and install the software for them. I use Golang to build everything, caddy for https, Hetzner for hosting, and docker to deploy cloud instances. https://www.ogame.ninja/ https://www.ogame.ninja/
  • devilsbabe 8y ago
    Wait, hold up. Ogame is still popular enough that you have a good userbase for this?
    • notriv 8y ago
      Short answer: yes. It even surprised me :P
• jndsn402 8y ago
  Look into writing apps for Shopify, many are quite simple and charge a fee.
• achillesheels 8y ago
  What about a simple wordpress plugin? I instantly thought of a grammar checker and ran into this: https://wordpress.org/plugins/perfect-tense/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/perfect-tense/ Marketing wise, I would try initiating an affiliate program. If you tap into a power blogger network, you might be able to get hundreds of customers over an 18 month stretch.
• systematical 8y ago
  What gets me is the amount of people making money on low budget basic bootstrap themes here. I like it. I'm just surprised.
• calypso 8y ago
  I co-run a SaaS company targeted towards funeral homes. We offer a CMS and white labeled obituaries that don't look like they were built in 1998. The subject matter might be a bit mundane but it's very profitable.
• beadifier 8y ago
  I made https://www.beadifier.com https://www.beadifier.com and the paid version https://www.beadifier.pro https://www.beadifier.pro It provides an optimized solution for a very niche type problem (making fuse bead patterns from images).
  • Toadsoup 8y ago
    That's neat. Do you get a lot of people using it and signing up?
• justin_evans 8y ago
  In a fiercely contested cloud-based cab startups industry, each of the significant players carries shortcomings in its service management framework.Many startups fail to inspire after generating significant revenues despite an attractive because of the model. Here I read an article if it's of interest: https://cabstartup.com/the-reasons-of-success-of-cloud-based-cab-startups/ https://cabstartup.com/the-reasons-of-success-of-cloud-based...