Hi HN,<p>Do you know any one man SaaS app that are profitable?<p>I'm asking this because I'm considering starting a SaaS app as a side project, and I'm looking for some inspiration.<p>Thanks!<p>Note: this is was previously on HN here[1], but it's been few years, and I'm sure a lot of one person startups are thriving than before.<p>[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11924009
Key Values (<a href="https://www.keyvalues.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.keyvalues.com</a>) 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: <a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/086-lynne-tye-of-key-values" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/086-lynne-tye-of-key-va...</a><p>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.
I started <a href="https://ipinfo.io" rel="nofollow">https://ipinfo.io</a> 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.<p>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 <a href="https://host.io" rel="nofollow">https://host.io</a> for an early preview).<p>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
Go for it!<p>I'm working on NanaGram (<a href="https://nanagram.co" rel="nofollow">https://nanagram.co</a>) solo and bootstrapped. Although I'm not making a full-time income yet, it's generating a profit. It's mostly automated.<p>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! (<a href="https://nanagram.co/blog/feedback-by-vm" rel="nofollow">https://nanagram.co/blog/feedback-by-vm</a>)<p>Good luck :)
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.<p>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.<p>Okay Lynne is a recent friend and been huge in helping me the last couple weeks.<p>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).
Yes, PartsBox is (Electronic parts inventory & production: <a href="https://partsbox.io/" rel="nofollow">https://partsbox.io/</a>). Some key points I would have told my former self:<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* Paid ads are a waste of money, though I heard that with 4-5 digit budgets you can make them work. I never could.<p>* 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.<p>* 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.<p>* It's hard. Everything is hard. And there is always too much to do.<p>* 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.<p>* If you pick a good niche, you can live in a world with nice and smart customers. It's a good world!<p>* 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.<p>* I would not trade this for a "normal" job, ever :-)
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.)<p>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 <i>side</i> project is much harder.
I have been running <a href="https://webhookrelay.com/" rel="nofollow">https://webhookrelay.com/</a> 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.<p>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.
Hey! I just did/am doing an AMA on dev.to (located here: <a href="https://dev.to/joelgriffith/i-m-the-creator-of-browserless-io-let-s-talk-about-starting-your-own-company-2ej3" rel="nofollow">https://dev.to/joelgriffith/i-m-the-creator-of-browserless-i...</a>).<p>I run a one-person (me!), bootstrapped business called browserless (<a href="https://browserless.io" rel="nofollow">https://browserless.io</a>). 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.<p>I'd be super happy to answer questions. You can also email me at joel at browserless dot io. Anything and everything is game!<p>EDIT: Forgot to post how it's doing, which you can see on IH here: <a href="https://indiehackers.com/product/browserless" rel="nofollow">https://indiehackers.com/product/browserless</a>
I run Keygen (<a href="https://keygen.sh" rel="nofollow">https://keygen.sh</a>), an API for software licensing and distribution. I'm currently making ~$3,500/mo. You can read more about my journey here: <a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/2fa6c5e1eb" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/2fa6c5e1eb</a>.
I run one, a minimalist personal finance app. It's about 11 years old at this point.<p>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]).<p>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.<p>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.<p>I haven't ever taken funding, and am so, so glad I haven't.
Indie Hackers lists lots of examples you can read about. Just filter on employee count and revenue:
<a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1?employeeCount=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1?employeeCount...</a>
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<p>Cheers to all the amazing engineers here who run ethical, douche-free, sustainable businesses<p>[1] <a href="https://parachute.live/app" rel="nofollow">https://parachute.live/app</a> (app), <a href="https://parachute.live/platform" rel="nofollow">https://parachute.live/platform</a> (B2B)<p>[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885950" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885950</a>
I co-founded Pigeon SMS (<a href="https://pigeonsms.com" rel="nofollow">https://pigeonsms.com</a>) with my dad just a couple of years ago and we reached profitability just a few months after founding.<p>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.<p>My advice: Pick something that will keep you interested and motivated to come back to when life gets busy.
I founded Are You Watching This?! (<a href="https://ruwt.tv" rel="nofollow">https://ruwt.tv</a>) 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.<p>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: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/markphillip/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/markphillip/</a>
I'm the solo founder of Loadster (<a href="https://loadster.app" rel="nofollow">https://loadster.app</a>) which has been profitable for a while and is now making me pretty close to a comfortable living.<p>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!<p>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.
I first built Mimiran (<a href="https://www.mimiran.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.mimiran.com</a>) 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.<p>If I could be so bold as to pass along advice, I would say:<p>- 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.<p>- don’t try to reinvent the wheel on marketing. See what has worked for similar products (indie hackers is awesome).<p>- 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.<p>- 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.<p>So I’m told. :)
I'm close with ToDesktop (<a href="https://www.todesktop.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.todesktop.com/</a>), I've launched quite recently so expect to be there in the next month or two.
I built out Pipefile (<a href="https://pipefile.com" rel="nofollow">https://pipefile.com</a>) 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.<p>You can try sending me something at <a href="https://pipefile.com/steve" rel="nofollow">https://pipefile.com/steve</a>
I'm the solo founder of Holiday API - <a href="https://holidayapi.com" rel="nofollow">https://holidayapi.com</a> - a DaaS platform for holiday information.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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...<p>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.
My friend launched EnvKey (<a href="https://www.envkey.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.envkey.com/</a>) 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.
I run a few projects for ~$400 MRR. Here's my numbers from last year: <a href="https://www.simonmweber.com/2019/01/07/side-project-income-2018.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.simonmweber.com/2019/01/07/side-project-income-2...</a><p>Since there are questions about company formation in the comments, here's my notes on US taxes/legal from when I got started: <a href="https://www.simonmweber.com/2016/07/11/launching-a-chrome-extension-part-1-taxes-and-legal.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.simonmweber.com/2016/07/11/launching-a-chrome-ex...</a>
I run two SaaS products. Both are entirely my work and both are modestly profitable.<p>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.<p><a href="https://takehome.io" rel="nofollow">https://takehome.io</a><p>And<p><a href="https://clubman.app" rel="nofollow">https://clubman.app</a>
I continue to run the writing software Draft (<a href="https://draftin.com" rel="nofollow">https://draftin.com</a>) all by myself. It can largely run on its own without a ton of interruption to me so I can work on other things.
I'm running <a href="https://mybrandnewlogo.com" rel="nofollow">https://mybrandnewlogo.com</a> — an automatic, online logo generator.<p>I'm also running <a href="https://monokai.pro" rel="nofollow">https://monokai.pro</a> — a professional color scheme for coders.<p>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.<p>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.
<a href="https://letterfromyou.com/" rel="nofollow">https://letterfromyou.com/</a> 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.
I'm building a SaaS app (getting close to ramen profitable): Trunk @ <a href="https://www.trunkinventory.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.trunkinventory.com</a> which helps online sellers sync their inventory in real-time across their different sales channels (i.e. Etsy, Faire, Shopify, Amazon, eBay, etc)
I started <a href="https://cronhub.io" rel="nofollow">https://cronhub.io</a> a year ago and it's profitable now. I have written blog posts about my learnings and challenges so far. <a href="https://blog.cronhub.io/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.cronhub.io/</a>
StatusGator is the status page monitoring service I built. It’s been profitable since about 2016.<p>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.
Packetriot (<a href="https://packetriot.com" rel="nofollow">https://packetriot.com</a>) - around 4 months old and I haven't begun seriously marketing, but it generates $60/month and makes a tiny profit.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
I built <a href="https://flowcrypt.com" rel="nofollow">https://flowcrypt.com</a> solo for the first two years. I would have preferred a partner, but nobody committed.<p>Today 3+ years later it's a three person team. Maybe in another year I can have reasonable work life balance again. Maybe.
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.<p>The Saas i'm running is Gridoc (<a href="https://gridoc.com" rel="nofollow">https://gridoc.com</a>) - 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).
Solo founder of <a href="https://docevent.io" rel="nofollow">https://docevent.io</a> SFTP and FTP/S directly to your Azure Blobs, Google Cloud Storage and S3 buckets.<p>I bootstrapped it myself, but there are now others that help remotely (consultants, contractors) on some features, fixes testing and marketing.
I run two side projects on my own.<p>The first with is on auto pilot and does $800MRR. My second is called TeamCal (<a href="https://www.teamcalapp.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.teamcalapp.com</a>) and I’m actively working on it. Usually 2-3 hours/week. Its doing $1700MRR and growing.<p>TeamCal provides a scheduling view for Google Calendar and is used by cleaning/call center/staffing companies.<p>If your interested about some of the work involved, I documented part of the journey on Indie Hackers: <a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/product/teamcal" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiehackers.com/product/teamcal</a>
Solo started <a href="http://Fairpixels.co/pro" rel="nofollow">http://Fairpixels.co/pro</a> - 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.
I know the solo guy who are running Proxyman <a href="https://proxyman.app" rel="nofollow">https://proxyman.app</a> as a side project for a year.<p>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
I run a leave intent fortune wheel popup SaaS called Listagram (<a href="https://www.listagram.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.listagram.com</a>) as a solo founder and doing about $6K MRR with about $1K costs (Heroku, AWS CloudFront).<p>Have about 100 paying customers.<p>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.
Two-person but close enough - We're building Leave Me Alone (<a href="https://leavemealone.xyz" rel="nofollow">https://leavemealone.xyz</a>), an app that helps you unsubscribe from spammy mailing lists. Currently at ~$500/month (full stats are public here <a href="https://leavemealone.xyz/open" rel="nofollow">https://leavemealone.xyz/open</a>)
I launched <a href="https://travelmap.net" rel="nofollow">https://travelmap.net</a> as a side project 5 years ago but now I'm working full-time on it. I preferred that than freelancing ;)
BigPicture (<a href="https://bigpicture.io" rel="nofollow">https://bigpicture.io</a>) is a solo founder operation. I was the only person for the first couple years before I grew it enough to start hiring.<p>I don't recommend anyone follow this path now having been through it myself. Being a solo founder is absolutely brutal.
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://simpleanalytics.io/" rel="nofollow">https://simpleanalytics.io/</a>
I am working on SaaS DocsApp (<a href="https://www.docsapp.io/" rel="nofollow">https://www.docsapp.io/</a>) 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.<p>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.
Preppr (<a href="https://preppr.com" rel="nofollow">https://preppr.com</a>). I built this Instagram scheduling site and iOS app. Currently doing $10,000 MRR over the last month.
I am running <a href="https://abot.app" rel="nofollow">https://abot.app</a> currently at $1500 MRR and growing. Still at full-time job apart from that.
<a href="https://algodaily.com" rel="nofollow">https://algodaily.com</a> is profitable :-)<p>And we're just getting started! Still very much a side project too.
Lobiloo (<a href="https://www.lobiloo.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.lobiloo.com</a>) is an invoicing tool exclusively for florists.<p>i acquired it from a florist about 1.5 years ago and have been going deep on the industry ever since.<p>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.
Full-Stack Job Board (<a href="https://fullstackjob.com" rel="nofollow">https://fullstackjob.com</a>) 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
I've seen a lot of friends publish apps to different ecosystems (e.g. marketplace.atlassian.com, <a href="https://apps.shopify.com" rel="nofollow">https://apps.shopify.com</a>, 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).
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 <a href="https://www.tayl.app" rel="nofollow">https://www.tayl.app</a>
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.
There's my <a href="https://teams.cardsync.xyz/" rel="nofollow">https://teams.cardsync.xyz/</a>, 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).<p>I recommend first trying out plugins and extensions for established products instead of trying to launch the new Facebook.<p>Stuff like <a href="https://www.ragic.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ragic.com/</a>, for example, are niches no one seem to be exploring.
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: <a href="https://char.gd/recharged" rel="nofollow">https://char.gd/recharged</a>. 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.<p>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.
Your Audio Tour (<a href="https://www.youraudiotour.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.youraudiotour.com</a>) 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.
<a href="https://trolley.link" rel="nofollow">https://trolley.link</a> - my payments project.<p>It lets you put a payment button on any website and pop up a cart; single products, donations, deposits, subscription / recurring payments.<p>Customers are using it to power charity donations, self published book sales, physical product sales & shipping, membership fees for clubs and so on.<p>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.<p>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.)
Tangentially related. If someone wants to sell his side project, please list here.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19693520" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19693520</a>
I created Vora (<a href="https://getvora.com/" rel="nofollow">https://getvora.com/</a>) as a solo developer. I sold it a couple months ago, at time of sale it was making $300-500 in monthly profit
I've run a music education site for 10 years (<a href="https://www.tonictutor.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.tonictutor.com</a>). 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!).
I started <a href="https://www.seektable.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.seektable.com</a> 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.<p>Depending on your SaaS app niche and your marketing capabilities it might take some time to get stable and good-enough cash flow.
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.
<a href="https://usebx.com" rel="nofollow">https://usebx.com</a> 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!
I created excellent product for test automation
<a href="https://github.com/alaserm/VisualTAF/blob/master/README.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alaserm/VisualTAF/blob/master/README.md</a>
maybe someone wants to join for marketing and sales, profit sharing.
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.
I just stumbled across this: <a href="https://forum.bubble.is/t/shoutout-to-bubble-45k-mrr-benchmark/41279" rel="nofollow">https://forum.bubble.is/t/shoutout-to-bubble-45k-mrr-benchma...</a> while looking at bubble.is (tool for code-free development of web applications).
Made a no frills transcription services that uses AWS transcribe on the backend: (<a href="http://scribe.thence.io" rel="nofollow">http://scribe.thence.io</a>). I run a podcast and use it to generate multi-speaker transcripts. It's fully automated and generates a nice little revenue
I started <a href="https://apility.io" rel="nofollow">https://apility.io</a> 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...
I'm running <a href="https://www.gosourcingwise.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.gosourcingwise.com</a> - its not super profitable but growing. Companies using it find it very simple and useful so that motivating to keep building it better.
I'm doing screencasts as opposed to a SaaS, so I started another thread for indies doing content businesses over here:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704735" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704735</a>
Send To My Cloud (<a href="https://sendtomycloud.com" rel="nofollow">https://sendtomycloud.com</a>) is a one-person SaaS that I made 4 years ago. Its definitely in maintenance/passive mode but still profitable.
CryptoTrader.Tax (<a href="https://www.cryptotrader.tax" rel="nofollow">https://www.cryptotrader.tax</a>) We started this about 15 months ago during the crypto craze and have been able to grow to over 13,000 users!
I've been working on PDFShift (<a href="https://pdfshift.io" rel="nofollow">https://pdfshift.io</a>) for a almost a year now - alone. I'm nearing 100 customers and will soon be able to make salary :)
I run VoIP Spear (voipspear.com) by myself. We're doing about $5k/month.<p>VoIP Spear is a service for people who use VoIP. It monitors your Internet connection and alerts when you have a call quality issue.
I've been running <a href="https://honeymoney.io" rel="nofollow">https://honeymoney.io</a> since 2011 (Russian version of it only initially). It's profitable.
The Overcast podcasting app seems to be built by a single person: <a href="https://overcast.fm/skeptics_faq" rel="nofollow">https://overcast.fm/skeptics_faq</a>
sshreach.me (<a href="https://sshreach.me" rel="nofollow">https://sshreach.me</a>) - it's currently only ramen profitable but I'm getting new users every day.
<a href="https://carrd.co" rel="nofollow">https://carrd.co</a> by aj - a Zapas That enables people build simple websites/landing pages.
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>P.S. Ideas are not mine I'm just doing development and can't disclose more details here.
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.