Micro-SaaS Alternatives to BigTech/VC

by raunometsa • 4 years ago

151 30 4 years ago

Hi HN

I started this crowdsourced list to find small internet products made by solo developers (or tiny teams) that can be used as alternatives to BigTech/VC-funded startups.

E.g. you can use Tally (by two devs, $14K MRR) instead of Typeform ($190M funding, 600+ employees)

or Plausible (by two devs, $83K MRR) instead of Google Analytics.

I added a link to a form where you can send me suggestions to alternatives, happy to add to the site!

Thanks, Rauno

intelVISA• 4 years ago

"Get MicroFounder OS to see the full list

A developer's operating system to becoming a microfounder"

Vexing parse

spaceman_2020• 4 years ago

Appreciate the site, but I don’t see the point of including their revenue. On the contrary, lower revenue would make me want to choose the higher revenue option - being able to make money is a sign of competence after all.

Team size and age of the startup are better metrics imo.

shreyshnaccount2• 4 years ago

no, it's a sign on product market fit at best and being good at marketing at worst.

leaflets2• 4 years ago

"No"?

Having found product market fit is a sign of competence. Being good at marketing is, too. Signs of.

PaywallBuster2• 4 years ago

The alternatives may be too small

Who's gonna pick (gamble on) a SaaS that's doing < 500$??

djbusby• 4 years ago

That's exactly the kind of thing an early adopter would choose - provided the benefit-set of the product made sense.

IMO this list should focus on the differentiator rather than team-size or MRR.

PaywallBuster2• 4 years ago

I'd be happy to push a "micro" SaaS doing 100k a month built by a small team as an alternative to BigTech/VC for projects I may be involved with, not so much a 500$ month PoC

iamandras• 4 years ago

Good site and this is a good page to see alternatives. How many new startups do you add to your site monthly?

Pandabob• 4 years ago

Thank's for this! I've been building a list of bootstrappers to follow on Twitter and added a bunch of these folks to said list [0].

[0] https://twitter.com/i/lists/1553077166270709760

open-source-ux• 4 years ago

Nice page! A small suggestion: use section or category names.

For example, instead of 'Buffer', the category or section could be called 'Social media tools'. Same for the other sections e.g. 'Analytics', 'Cold email tools', and so on.

Also, Zendesk and Freshdesk are both in the same category of help desk software but are listed separated on the page.

jwithington2• 4 years ago

Why are there so few competitors to Zendesk I wonder?

PainfullyNormal• 4 years ago

There are more. It's not a complete list. Heck, one Zendesk alternative was created because of a comment here on HN.

https://freshdesk.com/general/the-freshdesk-story-blog/

jwithington2• 4 years ago

Thanks for sharing!

asim2• 4 years ago

Micro Services - https://m3o.com

adamckay• 4 years ago

I don't think microservices are relevant here. This is about "micro companies" -- organisations with a very small team and (typically) bootstrapped by their founders rather than large organisations with VC funding.

asim2• 4 years ago

Raises hand. That would be me. Bootstrapped for 4 years. Eventually raised some funding. Focused on open source Dev tools and then used it to build this API platform.

endisneigh• 4 years ago

What’s the rationale to use stuff by a smaller organization?

iasay• 4 years ago

I never got this.

I only ever want stuff I can limp along standalone with until we find something to replace it with. I got seriously burned by a small SaaS help desk app about 15 years ago. Turns out they had three customers, no investors and were burning $20k a month on operational expenditure

kirubakaran• 4 years ago

People love underdogs. Plus smaller orgs are typically more responsive to your needs. They are less likely to kill your account with impunity.

notlukesky• 4 years ago

This would be a list by many buyers, especially in the enterprise, of companies to avoid. If you want to help the indie startup it is probably better to remove their revenue numbers. Most buyers are concerned if the product they invested in will be around in a couple of years.

alberth• 4 years ago

It appears these business owners speak publicly about their revenues.

So they clearly want people to know.

(But totally agree on your point)

cercatrova• 4 years ago

See also the IndieHackers list of products sorted by revenue: https://www.indiehackers.com/products?sorting=highest-revenu...

taf2• 4 years ago

Shameless plug - CallTrackingMetrics , husband wife team - zero funding

markdown• 4 years ago

Not here. OP has a form on the site where you can submit your startup.

pete_nic• 4 years ago

This is a great idea but the list seems incomplete. For example, where are the email marketing tools? Mailchimp / Intuit, Convetkit, SendFox, and so many more. There are many other markets / verticals not covered here.

conqrr• 4 years ago

Are two devs the most popular? I wonder how many Dev/PM Dev/Sales combo exist given that non overlapping skill sets can leverage each other.

AlchemistCamp• 4 years ago

A dev/sales combo is great for many products! I’d be a bit concerned that a PM in a dev/PM team wouldn’t have much to do, though.

dang• 4 years ago

Lists can't be Show HNs: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html. We've taken that out of the title now.

Apreche• 4 years ago

The one thing that keeps me from using smaller competitors is that I don't have a guarantee they won't shut down. I need to know for sure that whatever I integrate with is going to last longer than I do. Even though there's a lot to dislike about the big players, I can rest easy knowing they will outlast me.

Micro-SaaS Alternatives to BigTech/VC

Related Stories