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Ask HN: What is an example of a simple SaaS that is profitable in 2022?

27 points by em1sar ↗ HN
Looking to get back into the (Micro-)SaaS game again, after taking a break for a couple of years. Back then not everything was oversaturated just yet, very basic services like:

  - weather forecast based alerting
  - distraction removers
  - uptime checkers
  - scheduling tools
  - slack bots
  - file converters
  - social media filters
... and similar ideas still could be pulled off but I feel like this doesn't work anymore in 2022 because there are seventeen copies of every single thing nowadays.

What are some existing examples or potential ideas that come to your mind that could be pulled off the same way now, as they were back then, if started today?

7 comments

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mod
Maybe some of the old styles of tools, but applied to niches, particularly new niches.

Gaming comes to mind. Many of these games can benefit from custom 3rd-party tooling. The Destiny 2 app ecosystem is pretty robust, for example.

Blockchain? Addons for new ecosystems, like Shopify?

Anyway I'm also interested in this topic, thanks for posting.

rozenmd
Depends on your definition of profitable. Some of us are doing just fine competing in a market of 200 alternative services, you just have to find your own way of differentiating your service.
em1sar
Do you mind sharing the differentiating / finding a niche approach that has worked for you? I feel like finding niches for regular consumers is much easier than finding a niche where one can attract business customers.
rozenmd
Be a user of a product, realise you can do better, implement core functionality common to all solutions in the space, figure out where the incumbents aren't paying attention, out-execute them in that space.
mathverse
Is that just a complementary income? You are working as an FTE so I dont know what to make of it.
bjacobt
Not sure if this is simple, but I think a food recall tracker/notification service is good! Good if we can filter by brand/product.
jarno3000
Building on this, product recall in general. Auto? White goods? Toys?