From freelancers, side hustler & solopreneurs to small businesses, startups & enterprises - today, everyone uses SaaS solutions. According to Research & Markets, the global SaaS market is expected to reach $374.48 billion at a CAGR of 11.7%. In the last few years, Vertical SaaS is attracting a lot of interest from and gaining a considerable traction across user groups.
Of late, solopreneurs, indie hackers, makers, no-coders, and small startups are increasingly opting to create super simple SaaS solutions that solve single (or a couple of) use case(s) for a very very specific group of customers; these super simple SaaS solutions are known as Vertical SaaS.
Curious to find out what SaaS companies are being built by other solopreneurs, indie hackers and bootstrapped businesses?
Read on if your answer is yes and if want to learn about:
- What's vertical SaaS?
- Should you consider building a vertical SaaS company?
- What other entrepreneurs are building?
- How much revenue these bootstrapped vertical SaaS companies are making?
Sounds exciting already?
Let's go!
So, What Are These Vertical SaaS Companies Anyway?
Vertical SaaS comprises cloud-based solutions tailored to meet a specific need. They can be either specific to a particular niche or a particular industry. Vertical SaaS does not aim to cover a large range of products or industries but rather offer specific services. For example, an appointment app that is built to cater to hospitals.
Here's a quick video about Vertical SaaS:
How is Vertical SaaS different from Horizontal SaaS?
A horizontal SaaS company offers cloud-based, subscription solutions that are crafted to suit the needs of many, despite the industry. Their solutions are oriented towards a wide range of users and markets.
Unlike Vertical SaaS, Horizontal SaaS solutions target a wide range of products or users, regardless of the industry they belong to. This has been the popular SaaS option in the past few years, before Vertical SaaS disrupted the industry. Slack is a primary example of a Horizontal SaaS offering, as it caters to multiple markets across industries.
Now that the basics are out of the way, let's dive into the list.
12 Profitable Vertical SaaS Companies
1. Canny
What do they do:
With Canny, users can collect, locate and analyze product feedback at a single place. The insights gained from analysis helps to make informed product decisions with the help of its analysis. Users can also respond to your customers about their feedback. Overall, through the analysis and insights, this platform helps users to improve their products.
- Founded by: Sarah Hum, Andrew Rasmussen
- Year founded: 2017
- Location: San Francisco, California
- Revenue: $120,000+ per month
- Official website: https://canny.io
2. DropEvent
What do they do:
This platform is all about photos. It lets you gather, maintain and share photos smoothly with others. You can utilize this platform without having to download the app. All you need to do is create your event, invite guests to share their photos and share the link! Users can create photo galleries without the hassle of signing up. All photos are available at a single place letting users share and download photos of their choice.
- Founded by: Jeremy Noonan
- Year founded: 2016
- Location: Vacaville, California
- Revenue: $12,000+ per month
- Official website: https://dropevent.com/
3. Upvoty
What do they do:
This platform brings together all feedback into a single place, with the help of feedback boards and portals. Customers can ask for new features and vote on different feedback. This helps in building an enhanced product, as per the taste of the customer. Users can share their product roadmap to showcase the new features and launch new updates and features using changelog. Users can choose to keep their showcase private to their team or show it to the public.
- Founded by: Mike Slaats
- Year founded: 2018
- Location: Eindhoven, North Brabant
- Revenue: $50,000+ per month
- Official website: https://www.upvoty.com/
4. Karmabot
What do they do:
This is a team-building SaaS tool. It provides integration with MS Teams, Slack and Telegram. Through Karmabot, you can set goals together with your team. It can be used to track excellence and provide rewards. Karma points can be given through any platform and can be converted into real-life perks. Some major features include dashboards, reports, onboarding tour, karma history of each member and unlimited CSV exporting.
- Founded by: Stas Kulesh
- Year founded: 2016
- Location: Auckland
- Revenue: $30,000+ per month
- Official website: https://karmabot.chat/ms
5. FeedbackPanda
What do they do:
FeedbackPanda is a digital assistant to all teachers which helps them save time by simplifying the process of giving feedbacks to students. It helps to curate feedback and comments for students through multiple templates. Teachers can create, store and share feedbacks with ease. It provides integration with Google Classroom. It can be used as an extension your browser and can be synced across devices. It also helps you to keep a dashboard of all the comments and feedbacks that has already been used.
- Founded by: Arvid Kahl, Danielle Simpson
- Year founded: 2018
- Location: Berlin
- Revenue: $55,000+ per month
- Official website: https://www.feedbackpanda.com/
6. Sheet2Site
What do they do:
Using Sheet2site, users can build fully functional websites using Google Sheets. All you need to do is embed Google Sheets to your website. There are multiple templates available to choose from. A website with text, filters and images can be built without having to code.
- Founded by: Andrey Azimov
- Year founded: 2018
- Location: Bali
- Revenue: $10,000+ per month
- Official website: https://www.sheet2site.com/
7. Ruttl
What do they do:
Ruttl provides a quick method to gather visual feedback, communicate, and manage ideas. Users can comment on web apps, live websites, pictures and PDFs. Time required for bug tracking and web review is reduced to half. All the editing and checking can be done on CSS. No coding is required. It provides many features, great speed, simple to use and is a one-stop for gathering visual feedback.
- Founded by: Harsh Vijay, Siddhita Upare
- Year founded: 2020
- Location: Mumbai
- Revenue: $3,000 per month
- Official website: https://ruttl.com/
8. Kasu.io
What do they do:
With Kasu, you can connect with your favoirtie content creators and get exclusive access by suporting them. For creators, this app allows to earn from social media. Content can include workout videos, tips, tutorials, photos etc. This platform essentially lets creators earn extra income using sponsorship and tips, while letting them connect with thier audience.
- Founded by: Agnes Joyosa
- Year founded: 2019
- Location: London, England
- Revenue: $2,500+ per month
- Official website: https://kasu.io/
9. LogoAI
What do they do:
An AI-powered platform that will help you design your next logo in seconds. Its built in a way to understand best design practices to come up with new designs to suit users’ needs. It also helps you create matching stationeries and branding designs, as per your logo. Logos are available in all sizes and formats. It allows you to automate design requirements of your brand.
- Founded by: Ping
- Year founded: N/A
- Location: Shanghai, People's Republic of China
- Revenue: $10,000+ per month
- Official website: https://www.logoai.com/
10. Elsie
What do they do:
This platform helps genetic counsellors manage all their paperwork easily. It aims to improve the access to genetic counselling by assisting counsellors to get state licensure, in various states of the US. AutoGen feature manages all the spreadsheets and paperwork related to new applications, renewals etc. The Certification and License Renewal Tracker feature helps to handle and track d State Licensure renewal requirements and ABGC Certification.
- Founded by: Jo Becerra, David Becerra
- Year founded: 2019
- Location: N/A
- Revenue: $5,000 per month
- Official website: https://www.meetelsie.com/
11. Aplano
What do they do:
Technology platforms providing cloud solutions that are modern and reliable. Offers scheduling using drag and drop. Allows time tracking in real-time and employees can find out the exact amount of time that they worked for. It also provides features to track absences using absence manager tool. Other features include chat, mobile check-in, open shifts, swap requests, change requests etc. These solutions are tailored to meet different needs of different companies.
- Founded by: David Gregorian
- Year founded: 2017
- Location: Hamburh
- Revenue: $30,000 per month
- Official website:https://www.getaplano.com/
12. Leave Me Alone
What do they do:
Leave Me Alone app lets you unscribure from all unwanted emails with a single click. It also helps you to bring all your newspapers at a single place, allowing you to maximize declutter your email. Another major feature is an inbox shield which screens your emails for spams and unwanted digests. Other features include do-not-disturb mode, blocking cold emails, priortizie the senders you like, multiple rollups, completely unsubscribe from unwanted mails and connect unlimited accounts.
- Founded by: James Ivings, Danielle Johnson
- Year founded: 2018
- Location: Tallinn
- Revenue: $7,000+ per month
- Official website: https://leavemealone.app/
Why Should You Consider Building a Vertical SaaS?
- With vertical SaaS, you choose "profitable at all costs" instead of "growth at all costs".
- You'll build a strong community that will help you keep going and ultimately succeed.
- You'll most likely stick to what is truly essential and avoid all the noise.
- You'll grow sustainably and attain profitability because of word-of-mouth publicity.
- You’ll be free to build the kind of companies you want to work for, and with the kind of people you want to work with.
Is It Possible to Build Vertical SaaS without coding?
You might have a great idea for a Vertical SaaS app but you do not have much technical founding. You don’t need to worry. You can build SaaS platforms without writing a single code.
Allow me to introduce no-code for Vertical SaaS. Read the following 7 articles to get a solid foundation in no-code:
- What is No-Code: An in-depth guide to everything you need to know about no-code
- No-Code Movement: The complete guide to successfully navigating the no-code movement
- No-Code Platforms: The definitive guide to no-code platforms
- No-Code Vs Low-Code: An in-depth comparison
- No-Code App Development: The most complete guide to no-code app development
- What Can You Build with No-Code
- The Future of No-Code: 8 predictions & a note on how no-code will impact our lives
Wrapping Up
As the several niches are shifting towards Vertical SaaS, many entrepreneurs are seizing the opportunity and making huge profits. More and more micro SaaS startups are popping up. If you have any micro SaaS idea in your mind, this is the time to get to work. If you don't have an idea yet then it's a good idea to start here: 15 Micro SaaS Ideas That You Can Build Within 4-10 Weeks & Start Making a Few Extra $1000s Per Month
Hope this article has given you enough information about Vertical SaaS and inspirational examples for you to start building your MVP. These 12 example companies also started with a simple idea, and with lots of passion of course.
We really hope that the next successful vertical SaaS company in the market is yours.
