Micro-SaaS Is Dead: Service with a Software Replaces It

> I built a SaaS in a few hours. It does its job better than tools people pay real money for.

It's easy to build something for yourself that solves your own use case. You know how you work and what's important to you. Most of the effort in software goes into understand people other than you and building guardrails for them.

> Whatever niche tool you’re sketching this week, a thousand people can prompt a working version by Sunday night

A lot of people on HN are naturally builders. For them it's fun to play around with AI and see what can be built. Not everyone is like that.

For individuals, how many people actually want to spend their weekends building a niche tool for themselves vs just paying a few dollars a month to access something that does the job even though it may not be perfect?

For businesses, the buy vs. build tradeoff does now have some new compelling evidence in favour of "buy" but there's still maintenance needed for the service internally, there will be people with feature requests for it. Before you know it, the company is diverting resources away from their core business for a support tool that doesn't really drive impact.

I think we'll see more options in the marketplace as individuals will be able to get started more easily but SaaS is far from dead.

Before the industrial revolution or so somebody coming up in a craft would build a chunk of their toolset as part of that process. Even today many good (not necessarily software) engineers build some of their own tools. AI has made it much easier to build tooling to make your life better. Maybe some could be sold. But that isn't the intent and, as others have noted, can take significant additional effort.

I have my own "bandsintown" for example because I want to avoid the advertisement shitshow. I have a number of very specific tools for building software. I doubt I ever package up any of this for use by others much less try to monetize it.

That is the vibe I got from this article. This is a good concept to have in your (meta) toolbelt.

Idk if I disagree completely but it feels like I do. To elaborate, I don’t think we will see less applications, I think we will see more with better features.

My reasoning is people aren’t happy with many of the titans we have for certain apps, uber is my favorite example. Everyone hates the price it charges thinks it’s unfair, but to go back to a time before uber is unfathomable.

That to me is a ripe market to be overtaken. What it really needs is a taxi driver or operator so fed up with the current system they spend their energy organizing and making their own uber with less greed.

For sure not every tool will become huge, but most of the tools we use nowadays started with someone having a problem, being frustrated with the status quo, and having the will and means to execute.

The means necessary to execute get lower and lower everyday.

> Senior interface designer

> The website fails accessibility color contrast