Issue#85: Building $1K - $10K MRR Micro SaaS products around Gmail & Shared Inbox, Shared Support
We are excited to share the latest Micro SaaS news and Micro SaaS Ideas to help you on your journey as a SaaS founder. Let's explore what's new this week!
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Micro SaaS News this week in 2 minutes
(This saves you hours of time and keeps you up to date on what's going on in Micro SaaS)
HeyGen, an AI video generation platform, reaches $1M ARR in just 7 months. Founder Joshua shares his story here
Zoltan gets 800+ users in 3 Months from Upsum.io built using No-Code tech stack. See his interview on FounderBeats.
helperAI, a tool to access ChatGPT on any Site that comes with source code and license to resell, generates $300+ in 5 Days.
Our Micro SaaS HQ Pro member Subro launches text2sheets, a chatGPT backed tool to create structured data from any text.
Adam Berecz hits $100K+ annual revenue from Vueform, a closed-source form builder tool designed for developers.
Senja, a testimonial tool by Wilson Wilson and Oliver Meakings, hits 200 paying customers. See this earlier interview on FounderBeats
Bhanu Teja crossed $9.8K MRR with SiteGPT, a tool to create AI chatbots without coding.
Formsly, a form and survey builder tool, hits reached 1000 signups in only 6 days after launch.
Andreas Reinhold reaches $2K MRR from Auto-Swiper.
ImagineMe, a bootstrapped generative AI tool reaches $2L monthly revenue.
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Let’s see today’s Newsletter around a Micro SaaS niche.
No fluffy content. If your goal is to build a $100m ARR business, this is not the right post. Here I am NOT going to talk about building the next Facebook or Twitter. If your goal is to make a $1K to $10K MRR, continue reading.
This post will cover one SaaS area and talk about multiple niches in this space. This post also explains how to do tech implementation, do market analysis, and how the current players are doing, and ends with a cost analysis to understand the overall cost for 100 users.
⛳ ⛳ Current players
Email Gurus - A Gmail plugin - Emailgurus flags emails from unknown senders and classifies them to keep the inbox clean and focused.
Mailmeteor -Mailmeteor lets user’s send email campaigns from their Gmail inbox, contrary to classic email marketing software, such as Mailchimp or Sendgrid. Mailmeteor needs only minimal permissions to run, contrary to other mail merge add-ons. Founded by Corentin and Jean in 2018 as a side project, it has now grown to a team of 10.
Boomerang for Gmail - One click calendar scheduling plus powerful email management tools like email reminders, inbox pause, read receipts, email scheduling and more. Founded in 2010 by Alex Moore and Aye Moah. Approximated annual revenue is $7.8M
Vocal - Send voice notes via email. Simply record voice and send audio messages in Gmail and Outlook. The recipients do not need to be using Vocal or to install anything to hear the voice messages.
Leave Me Alone - Easily unsubscribe from emails. Shows all of the newsletters in one place and helps unsubscribe from those emails with a single click.
Sortd - Transforms Gmail into an all-in-one workspace to manage sales, service and delivery with jaw dropping efficiency . Effortlessly manages emails, customers, tasks and team workflow, without ever leaving your Inbox. Over 80,000 professionals and teams use this product.
pdfFiller for Gmail - pdfFiller’s add-on for Gmail allows users to e-sign and modify PDF and other documents that are received right in the inbox. Edit PDF and other Gmail attachments online, without any downloads.
InboxPro - Boost your productivity in Gmail. InboxPro packs an AI-powered email assistant, calendar scheduling, link tracking, templates and email analytics into one suite of Gmail tools. Launched by Yaye Caceres in 2022
SilentInbox - Users can read unimportant emails and newsletters when they want, not when they hit the inbox and distract users from work. SilentInbox automatically holds back non-essential emails. Users have the option to set specific days and times or to trigger delivery when they are ready.
Ellie - An AI email assistant that takes context from the email thread to craft intelligent replies. Ellie is available as a Chrome or Firefox Extension. Developed by Danielle and James
Red Oxygen - With Red Oxygen’s Gmail add-on, send & receive SMS directly from Gmail. Combine the ease of email with the efficiency of SMS.
Bookipi - The easiest invoice app for small businesses. Create and send an Invoice or Estimate on the go right from Gmail. Users can just reply, then tap on the Bookipi addon app and generate an invoice instantly.
GMass - Turn Gmail into an email marketing and cold email platform. Mail merge with data from Google Sheets. Schedule mass emails to be sent later. Send follow-up emails to people that opened, clicked, or replied to a previous campaign, or to those that did not open, click, or reply. See all reports right in your Gmail account, under the "GMass Reports" Label. Reached $1.4M in revenue in 2022
Gmelius - A shared Gmail inbox with everything you need for team collaboration. Founded in 2016 by Florian Bersier, it has received $150K in funding and hit $1.2M in revenue in 2022.
Keeping - Keeping is a Shopify app. Keeping is the easiest way to share a support inbox without ever leaving Gmail. Keeping turns your team's Gmail into a fully featured help desk. Manage your customer support email from right inside your Gmail.
Hiver - A customer service solution built within Gmail. Hiver keeps things simple by bringing all the features of a traditional helpdesk solution right inside Gmail. Founded in 2011 by Niraj Ranjan Rout and Nitesh Nandy. Received $30M in funding
Meco - An inbox designed for reading newsletters. Users can just sign in with Gmail and pick which newsletters they want to read in Meco.
Streak - CRM in your Inbox. Streak helps you with business processes inside Gmail. Founded by Aleem Mawani and Omar Ismail in 2011. Received $1.9M funding. Approximated revenue is $10.9 M
DropResponder - CRM, Mail Merge, and Automations inside Gmail . Anyone using DropResponder can do more with email - get more replies with auto follow ups, personalize at scale with mail merge, and keep all your contacts organized with a CRM without leaving Gmail.
EmailStudioPro -Email Studio adds power tools to Gmail including Recurring Scheduler, Forwarder, Smart Auto-Responder and Email Archiver. Send emails later at your preferred date and time on a recurring schedule. Unsubcribe from bulk mails, auto-purge messages older than few days.
Inbox Pirates - An email preview testing tool. It's time to get rid of send button anxiety and boost email opens with Inboxpirates. With our tool, you can see where your subject line gets cut off, how your emails look on different email clients and devices, and even how they look with notification bars. (Not just for Gmail)
🔒 👉 [In Pro] See which email tool reached $3.3k in annual revenue in 2022 .
🔒 👉 [In Pro] See who reached $500 MRR in Just 1 Month with 70+ paying customers from a Gmail Plugin.
🔒 👉 [In Pro] See which tool reached $4400 MRR in 18 months with 400 paying customers.
🔒 👉 [In Pro] See who crossed $130 MRR in March 2022.
🙅♀️🙅 Pessimists
Negative Nancy says - Why should I build on the Gmail ecosystem? Why not create a Non-Marketplace product?
Me - Gmail's ecosystem is that foundation, providing a vast and engaged user base, robust API's for integration, and the trust of one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Plus, it's already in the pocket of millions of active users, so you'll save on marketing costs too. Building on the Gmail ecosystem is like having a built-in audience that's just waiting for you to show off your product's brilliance. This is the same as any marketplace ecosystem.
Negative Nancy says - “Building SaaS with marketplace apps/platform-based apps is risky.”
Me - Working on marketplace apps/platform-based apps brings a ready-made audience using the platform. While there is a platform risk, the risk can be mitigated by just adhering to the guidelines. The reward is far higher with a ready-made audience.
Negative Nancy says - “Products like Slack replace email/Gmail”.
Me: Slack is synchronous mostly. Email is asynchronous. Each has a different purpose. More than 270 billion emails are sent every day.
💡💡Deep-dive & Some niches
Let's deep dive and see some niches around Gmail, Shared Inbox & Shared Support models.
Micro SaaS for Gmail Merge Tool: Gmail Mail Merge is a feature that allows users to send personalized emails to multiple recipients using Gmail. It can be done using a Google Sheet, where recipients' information is stored and merged with a template email to generate individualized emails. The feature allows users to automate the process of sending bulk emails while still maintaining a personal touch. With Mail Merge, users can create an email template, add recipients' information, customize the template for each recipient, and send the emails without manually typing each one. This feature is useful for sending newsletters, invitations, surveys, and other bulk emails. A Micro SaaS product like this is useful for small businesses, entrepreneurs, freelancers, and anyone who needs to send out bulk emails to their contacts. Products like GMass and Mailmeteor are profitable in this space with thousands of users. Mailmeteor, founded by Corentin and Jean in 2018 as a side project, has now grown to a team of 10. GMass reached $1.4M in revenue in 2022
Micro SaaS to Snooze Emails: Email snooze is a feature that allows users to temporarily hide emails from their inboxes, so they can focus on other tasks without worrying about missing important emails. This feature can help users manage their inboxes more efficiently and reduce the stress of having to constantly monitor their inboxes. It can also help users prioritize their emails since they can snooze emails for a later time when they have more time to respond. Create a Micro SaaS that helps with snoozing emails based on preconfigured settings. The tool should be able to support adding exceptions for a few emails that have high priority. Other possible configs are allowing for a certain period in a day, or certain days in the week to snooze the emails automatically. See SilentInbox hit $3.3k in annual revenue in 2022. You can either build this as a Gmail Plugin or build this as a generic tool for other email providers too.
Micro SaaS for AI-Powered Inbox: There are many ways to power up emails/Gmail by leveraging AI. Create a Micro SaaS product that can leverage AI and power up users’ Gmails with the below features. You can also use ChatGPT, and OpenAI to improve the AI capabilities plugged into the email. Below are a few features you can think of to build inside the Micro SaaS.
Compose faster replies -AI will suggest quick responses to emails based on the content of the conversations.
Delegate more of your workload - AI will identify patterns (e.g, emails you forward to other people) and suggest teammates to whom an email should be assigned.
Spend less time reading your emails - AI will summarize the content of long email threads making it easier to identify the key points and actions to be taken.
Enjoy a better-organized inbox - AI will sort and prioritize emails, and automatically add Gmail labels dependent on the context.
Less Spam in your inbox - Detection of phishing and spam will become even more precise.
See InboxPro for inspiration that’s launched by Yaye Caceres in 2022. Tools like InboxPro help with things like - ‘AI-powered email assistant’, ‘Generates professional emails’, ‘Summarises emails’, ‘Get through emails 5x faster’.
Micro SaaS for Shared Inbox & Customer Support right inside Gmail: Create a Micro SaaS that can help users by providing them with an all-in-one customer support solution that allows them to manage customer inquiries, assign tasks to team members, and collaborate on customer conversations right from within their Gmail inbox. This allows users to respond quickly to customer inquiries and provide better customer service, reducing response times and improving customer satisfaction. Additionally, it allows teams to work together to resolve customer issues in a more efficient manner, reducing the need for manual processes and freeing up time for more important tasks. For inspiration, See Gmelius which has received $150K in funding and hit $1.2M in revenue in 2022. Also, see Hiver received $30M in funding. Another great example is Sortd that’s built for Gmail and is used by over 80,000 professionals and teams use this product. This can be also further niched down to the E-commerce space where you can build plugins for marketplaces like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, etc so that the support team can handle all e-commerce sales/support queries from Gmail. For example, see Keeping that’s built for Shopify and Gmail ecosystem. Keeping is the easiest way to share a support inbox without ever leaving Gmail. Keeping turns your team's Gmail into a fully featured help desk.
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💻 💻 Technical chops
Learn technical pointers on how to build products around this niche.
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📢 📢 Marketing chops
Learn Marketing pointers on how to start marketing the products for this niche. This should give you a marketing head start.
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💳 💳 Cost Analysis for 100 customers
Learn how much it costs to build a product in this niche and cater to 100 customers.
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Pro Version
See all profitable players in this Micro SaaS niche (Pro version)
See another 100% ideas for Micro-SaaS tools around Gmail & Shared Inbox, Shared Support (Pro version)
See Technical chops for implementing for Micro-SaaS tools around Gmail & Shared Inbox, Shared Support (Pro version)
See Marketing chops for implementing for Micro-SaaS tools around Gmail & Shared Inbox, Shared Support (Pro version)
See Cost analysis for 100 users (Pro version)
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