Bootstrapped PR and journalist-outreach SaaS founded by Dmitry Dragilev. He sold an 80% stake in a high six-figure deal to SEOJet to spend more time with family.
Spend Stack was an iOS running-total list and budgeting app built by Jordan Morgan; its company (Dreaming In Binary LLC) was acquired by Prometheus Interactive in December 2020 for an undisclosed sum.
WordPress plugin used on 100,000+ sites that serves a custom 404 page for broken links while preserving the correct 404 status code instead of redirecting. NerdPress acquired it in September 2024 for an undisclosed sum.
Online course business training virtual assistants, making about $15K/month; founder Gina Horkey sold it to her business coach Stephanie Hayes for $180,000 in August 2023 via seller financing.
Real estate agency serving property investors, scaled with overseas virtual assistants by founder Adrienne Green. With $650K annual gross revenue, it sold for six figures (a 2x EBITDA multiple) to two of its own agents in October 2023.
Time-management mobile app offering a more natural way to plan daily tasks across work and personal life.
Free Google Slides and PowerPoint templates site reaching 2M monthly visits and €20K MRR from AdSense. Acquired by Canva in March 2023 after 9 years as a solo bootstrapped project.
MyQuire was an online project-collaboration tool that let individuals and teams manage shared workspaces in a social-network-style interface. Founder David Steinberg announced the startup had been acquired in 2008 after nearly two years of building it.
No-code tool by solo maker Andrey Azimov that turns Google Sheets into websites. After three years of bootstrapping, it was acquired by UK software entrepreneur Neil Witten in June 2021 for an undisclosed amount.
WooCommerce plugin with 9,000+ free users that lets store owners add extra custom content tabs to product pages. Bootstrapped plugin shop Barn2 bought it from solo developer Manesh Timilsina in July 2023 after negotiating a price directly.
InviteShare matched people who had spare beta-program invitations, such as early invite-only web apps, with people looking to get in. The small side-project service was acquired outright by TechCrunch itself in 2007.
A Telegram channel distributing graphics packs and tools for video editors, grown to 8,600 subscribers in six months with zero ad spend and monetised with about ten sponsored posts a month. The founder listed it on a channel exchange and sold it the same evening for 30,800 rubles (~$420).
Typeframes, a tool for creating short product and marketing videos, was acquired by Tibo Louis-Lucas (later revid.ai) in September 2023 in a revenue-share deal while doing under $1k per month.
CrossFit newsletter with 75,000 subscribers, 70% open rates and ~$900K annual revenue; acquired by BarBend (Pillar4Media) in November 2023 for a high six-figure price.
Recruiting search engine that indexed millions of software engineers from public data and added social filters such as GitHub contributions and Twitter follows. Built by Alex MacCaw and acquired in 2015 by Underdog.io, a bootstrapped five-person startup; price undisclosed.
French developer Stephen Zambaux, CTO of MailTracker and co-founder of Podawaa, coded a SaaS over a single weekend and later resold it for 20,000 EUR (about $21k). He told the story on the French podcast Du code et du cash; the product name was not disclosed.
Brandstack was a design marketplace where clients could commission custom logo, web, and print design work and let designers bid on set budgets. It was acquired by rival DesignCrowd in 2011 for a reported six-figure sum.
A static-pages product blending a blog and newsletter to help indie makers with distribution. Sold by its founder (price undisclosed per agreement) as one of two SaaS products he exited.
Bootstrapped accounting and donation-tracking software for small churches and charities, built by Dan Cooperstock in Canada starting in 1999. Acquired by Evermore Ventures in 2022.
Online form builder pitched as a way to create stunning forms that people love to fill out. Solo maker Mohd Danish lists it on his portfolio as sold for $18,000.
AI-powered Chrome extension by Fayaz Ahmed that improves tweets directly inside Twitter, built with Vue and Vite. Launched on March 25, 2023 and acquired just five days after launch.
Origins Media Haus was a boutique agency that produced and marketed branded podcast shows for companies moving into podcasting. Founder Stephanie Andrews's agency was acquired by podcast platform Quill in 2021.
No-code B2B SaaS for website personalization that let marketing teams tailor landing pages per visitor segment. Acquired by a Silicon Valley company in 2023.
Colorado Web Design was a 20-plus-year-old WordPress development and support agency serving around 40 long-term local clients. Founder Bill Henderson sold the agency to Freshy in 2026.
Twitter inbox management SaaS sold to HypeFury alongside Hivoe in 2023 when the Twitter API became too expensive to sustain.
An iOS app for tracking car running costs, fuel, car washes, parking, wipers and servicing. It peaked at #17 in the Russian App Store and grossed about 115,000 rubles before the founder sold it for 25,000 rubles (~$400) to a buyer he found on the iPhones.ru forum.
An online presentation editor that had gone largely dormant. After declining a $5,000 SideProjectors offer, the founder sold it to a software development team for an undisclosed (NDA) amount.
Async video collaboration and feedback platform for distributed product teams. Sold pre-revenue by solopreneur Luca Restagno.
Developer-focused scheduling API for building complex booking and appointment apps, with strong traction in Canadian healthcare. The bootstrapped company (~$50K raised) and its lean team were acquired by micro-PE firm XO Capital in August 2024.
A curated marketplace for buying and selling email newsletters. It was acquired by The Wisdom Group, the second acquisition in the products history.
Service that deploys WordPress plugins and themes straight from GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket, sold together with its companion CI product Branch. Peter Suhm sold both to Keanan Koppenhaver in September 2021 for an undisclosed six-figure sum so he could self-fund Reform without raising money.
Site that emailed users each month about newly launched social networks and checked whether their preferred username was still free on them. The maker sold it in 2021 after agreeing on a price of $10,500.
API turning social-media chatter into quantitative stock-sentiment signals for retail investors. Built and monetized by a team of UK university students, it was acquired by micro-PE firm XO Capital (its 4th acquisition) and later resold.
Trend-spotting tool that surfaced emerging topics by cross-referencing web sources with Google Trends; acquired by Backlinko founder Brian Dean in December 2019, four months after launching as a #1 Show HN.
A fan portal hosting mods, add-ons and content for World of Tanks, later expanded to other games with an English edition. Built by its founder at age 14, it peaked near 1 million monthly unique visitors before he sold it for 5,000 rubles (~$170), paid via Webmoney.
Aidia Studio was a Honolulu digital agency helping local clients with social media strategy and website planning. Founder Brent Shiratori's agency was folded into a partner firm in an acquisition finalized in March 2012.
Small WordPress and WooCommerce plugin shop behind six plugins running on 70,000+ sites, covering product display, pricing tables and advanced filtering. WPFactory acquired it in 2025 in a deal the buyer said was finalized for a six-figure sum.
AI chatbot platform that lets businesses train a chatbot on their website content and embed live AI customer support. Sold by solopreneur Luca Restagno in March 2024.
The Tilt was a twice-weekly newsletter for content entrepreneurs with over 25,000 subscribers, paired with the Creator Economy Expo event; both, founded by Joe Pulizzi, were acquired by publishing platform Lulu in August 2023 for a six-figure cash sum plus an earn-out.
A home goods content and affiliate site reviewing modern furniture and household brands. Founder Ash Read grew it to 350k monthly pageviews before a six-figure sale in 2023.
Photo booth software for running events with instant photo sharing; original developer James sold it to Bill Hamway in May 2019 after a two-month negotiation.
Job board for fire-department careers, selling access to firefighter job postings. Bright Mountain Media bought it in May 2014 for $52,000 plus $13,000 for handover and training.
Subscription newsletter covering hotel-industry news since 1995, with 2,600 paid subscribers at $450/year and a 90% renewal rate; acquired by Skift for six figures in 2021.
Solo-run venture capital newsletter founded by Connie Loizos in 2013, reaching about 60,000 subscribers and profitable via sponsorships. Acquired by TechCrunch in August 2023.
No-code chatbot builder that lets businesses create automated conversations without writing code.
A content website bought for under $15,000 in early 2012, grown with outsourced content to $1,511 a month, and resold via Escrow.com in late 2013 for $42,000.
Chrome extension that tracks time spent on websites; its solo developer sold the extension to new owners in 2025 (buyer and price undisclosed).
Toronto-based gender-equity community and events business founded in 1994; owners Stephania Varalli and Alicia Skalin sold it to Dr. Rumeet Billan in a six-figure deal in December 2022.
A short-form video and social media agency founded by two recent graduates. The bootstrapped agency was acquired by media company Morning Brew.
One-person web design agency built by Mischa Sigtermans over five years as an accidental founder. Acquired for a six-figure sum.
AI visualization micro-SaaS by serial maker Rushab Jain, sold via an inbound acquisition request from a Canadian startup as one of four projects he exited in a year.
Podcast booking agency founded in 2019 by Brigitte Lyons, matching clients with podcasts and prepping them for guest appearances; it generated six figures annually. Six months after winding down, the business was acquired by podcast agency Earfluence in January 2024.
Tolta was a platform for analysing and sharing social and sales data, connecting to creator platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Ghost and Gumroad with counter analytics and embeddable live counters. Founder Dan Rowden sold the pre-revenue product (two customers) to product studio Ampersand in May 2021.
Sleep-focused guided hypnosis mobile app with 100K+ installs and 2,000 monthly active users; sold to Morpheus Clinic of Hypnosis in October 2024 for mid six figures at a 2.5x revenue multiple.
Removaly was a bootstrapped privacy tool that scanned the web to find and remove users' personal information from data-broker sites. It was acquired by DuckDuckGo in 2022 and became DuckDuckGo's "Personal Information Removal" feature.
One-person company behind the best-selling Spanish-language Bible app, started by Trevor McKendrick in 2012 as a side project. Acquired in 2015 for 5x revenue after McKendrick negotiated the offer up from 3.5x.
Daily AI newsletter covering artificial intelligence news. Founder Anthony sold it for $40,000 to a new owner who later turned down a $425,000 offer for it.
Education platform for learning data science and machine learning through curricula, question banks, and self-assessments; bootstrapped to 6,000+ users and acquired by Towards AI in 2022.
Substack newsletter and community about tiny internet businesses earning around $10k/month, acquired with founder Joshua Tiernan staying on after the sale.
CDC-approved tick removal tweezers sold on Amazon, doing $500K annual revenue in 2022. Founder sold in June 2023 to Bug Bite Thing (from Shark Tank) for a six-figure sum after a chance conversation about a combo product.
macOS anti-theft alarm app by Andrey Azimov that triggered when a laptop was unplugged; acquired in 2018 shortly after launch and rebranded to Beepify by the buyer.
Free marketplace for posting Product Hunt products for sale, built at a 2019 hackathon by Mubashar Iqbal and sold to MicroAcquire in May 2020 for the price of a new laptop.
Data services business doing about $30k/month revenue and $17k/month profit at the six-month mark; founder Michael Thomas sold it for 2x earnings in an 80% cash deal that closed in early 2017.
Online community platform where members mapped professional and personal milestones. Raised $1.5M but distressed asset-sale to Teal in June 2023 when runway ran out; had ~200 paid subscribers at $10/mo.
App store optimization (ASO) platform helping developers market iOS and Android apps, launched in 2017 out of Barcelona marketing firm PICKASO by Daniel Peris and Miriam Peláez. Acquired by App Radar in February 2021 for six figures.
Podcast production and consulting agency with $750k annual revenue and 200+ clients; founder Mathew Passy sold it to Karl Hughes and Manuel Weiss for high six figures in April 2023.
Boutique podcast production company founded in 2024 by Adam Hendricks and Pat Kicklighter, acquired by The Podcast Consultant on June 1, 2026 to expand its audio and video production capabilities.
A directory of no-code tools, agencies and resources doing ~$100 MRR with ~10k monthly visits; Drew Thomas sold it for a five-figure sum after a conference demo in 2021.
A productized blog-writing/content service agency that Brian Casel sold to JD Graffam in a high six-figure deal in 2021.
Email digest SaaS by indie makers Fabrizio Rinaldi and Francesco Di Lorenzo that bundles newsletters, Twitter, Reddit and RSS into one daily email, used by 70,000+ people. The founders sold it to Twitter co-founder Ev Williams in 2023 to focus on Typefully.
A marketplace and monthly event letting no-code makers sell unused builds; acquired in November 2023 by Microns founder Ilya Novohatskyi to expand his acquisition community.
Wavve is a tool that turns audio clips into shareable videos and audiograms for podcasters and creators. Bootstrapped by founder Baird Hall, it was acquired by holding company Calm Capital in May 2021 (price undisclosed).
An online food-and-beverage community and newsletter for indie makers with 5,000+ subscribers; acquired by niche-community operator Sylva in 2021.
Newsletter about interesting open-source software projects, started by Jackson Kelley during the pandemic in 2020. Sold in 2022 for five figures, with the founder confirming the cash from the sale had landed in his bank account.
A directory of the Web3 Magic ecosystem; Bram Kanstein sold it to a community group for a five-figure sum in 2022.
SEO content and link-building agency with $900K annual revenue; founder Mark Whitman sold it to Onfolio Holdings for $850,000 (2.5x EBITDA) in April 2023, accelerating his exit after ChatGPT launched.
A newsletter covering no-code business exits (75 issues over 2 years, ~$33K total revenue); sold for $42,500 at 2.5x TTM revenue to Jeremy Redman, founder of TaskMagic.
Podcast-industry newsletter founded by Nick Quah in 2014, earning six figures in revenue by 2020; acquired by Vox Media in 2021 to become The Verge's first paid subscription product.
Bootstrapped e-commerce brand selling ergonomic neck pillows, scaled through social ads. Sold to OpenStore in May 2022 for $380,000 cash plus $30,000 for remaining inventory.
A bi-weekly startup newsletter that Bram Kanstein grew and sold to another newsletter founder for a five-figure sum.
Twitter DM automation tool that helped creators kickstart conversations with new followers and grow engagement. Sold to HypeFury in 2023 after the Twitter API price hike.
A curation newsletter showcasing the best workspaces in tech, grown to ~6,000 subscribers and ~$2k/mo in sponsorship revenue. Acquired by SaaS company Loops in June 2022, with the founder joining as Head of Content.
Self-funded platform connecting brands with creators for performance-based marketing campaigns; launched February 2025, hit a six-figure run rate within weeks and was acqui-hired by Whop the same year.
Icon library side project by indie developer Fayaz Ahmed, launched on dev.to in 2022 and acquired the same year for an undisclosed amount.
Virtual body-confidence conference and 20,000-member online community; founders Emily Ward and Jess Hunichen sold it to Trafilea for six figures in March 2023.
Newsletter covering influencer marketing industry news and trends, built by Andrew Kamphey to 7,500 subscribers along with an industry database. Sold in late 2020 for an undisclosed amount that recouped the cost of a rental property investment.
Direct-to-consumer service that printed and framed viral tweets as physical art. Peaked at $110K/year in 2018 during the Trump-Twitter cycle, declined to ~$5K MRR before acquihire by Sticker Mule in 2020.
A curated resource directory with affiliate links (built on SpreadSimple) that Tejas Rane sold for a four-figure micro-exit within four days via escrow in 2022.
AI news newsletter started by 19-year-old student Moyo Sulyman; grew to 10,000 subscribers in under 7 months and sold for $13,000 in June 2023.
An SEO-optimized directory of email-newsletter examples and best practices; Katt Risen sold it for $1,500 to Francisco Opazo via a LinkedIn DM in 2024.
AI Query is a tool that converts plain-English prompts into SQL queries. Founder Gautam Ahuja exited the pre-revenue product in 2022, receiving an acquisition offer before he had even figured out monetisation.
Design plugin for creating banners in Photoshop and Sketch by Samuel Briskar, acquired in August 2020 for an undisclosed sum that covered costs plus extra.
Cycling technology blog founded in 2008 with 250K-500K monthly unique visitors; founders Tyler and Kristi Benedict sold it to AllGear Digital Media in December 2020 for low six figures plus an earn-out (~2.5x annual profit).
A long-running personal-finance blog that J. Money sold to The Motley Fool's Soapbox Financial Network for a mid six-figure sum in 2019 (he later bought it back).
Data-engineering and SaaS newsletter founded by Stan Rymkiewicz. Acquired by Ian Ito in January 2024 and rolled into his SaaS Weekly newsletter brand.
Honeymoon and destination-wedding content site on a premium 1996 domain with ~150K annual organic visits; sold to Camp Media in 2023 for six figures in cash at a 7x revenue multiple.
Service that emailed Twitter users whenever someone unfollowed them; had 180K+ users when it was acquired by TwitterCounter for $11,111 in April 2011.
Bootstrapped SaaS that scaffolded academic essay writing for students; co-founders Lindy Ledohowski and Rueban Balasubramaniam sold it to test-prep company Wize in 2021.
Bootstrapped men's beard- and grooming-care DTC e-commerce brand that generated ~$90K in its first 90 days; the Codner family sold it to Amazon aggregator Branded in 2021.
Link-in-bio micro-landing-page builder for social media with 100+ integrations and 166K+ users; solo founder Abzal Assembekov (Kazakhstan) sold it to Taplink for a six-figure sum in April 2021.
Ruby/Rails code snippet sharing site with tagging, launched around 2005 by Peter Cooper. He sold it after a couple of years for roughly $30,000.
Independent military and conflict-journalism publication run by war correspondent David Axe with a contributor network. Bright Mountain Media closed the acquisition on 4 January 2016 for $250,000: $100,000 at closing plus a $150,000 earn-out worth 30% of net site revenue, with Axe staying on at $5,000/month.
AI Excel Bot is a Chrome extension that generates Excel and Google Sheets formulas from natural language. It grew to more than 40,000 users before founder Gautam Ahuja exited it.
iOS app that helped users quit vaping by tracking their puffs; scaled to $40K+ MRR and over 1M users before solo founder Steven Cravotta sold it to app studio Quiet in late 2024.
An online ACT/SAT test-prep course business generating ~$60-75k/yr in mostly passive income; solo founder Lauren Gaggioli sold it for $180,000 (3x revenue) in 2021.
WordPress block-editor plugin for building contact and lead forms natively inside Gutenberg, with 20,000+ active installs; sold by Vikas Singhal to WPExperts in October 2025.
The Daily Thread was Ryan Sneddon's early general-interest email newsletter with about 800 subscribers, which he sold to one of its own readers for $800 in 2020 before launching Naptown Scoop.
A curated directory of 400+ startup tools and resources; serial maker Bram Kanstein sold it to a Tel Aviv media agency for a five-figure sum.
AI hairstyle generator that produces 120 HD photos across 30 styles from a single user photo; acquired by indie founder Danny Postma from its creator in a five-figure private deal in 2023.
AI-powered LinkedIn writing and growth tool with post previews and team approval workflows; doing $10,000 MRR when acquired by an indie buyer (Dylan) in an undisclosed 2023 deal.
Invite-only Slack community of roughly 500 vetted B2B sales and go-to-market professionals in Spain, grown out of a WhatsApp group with zero paid marketing. Nova Talent acquired it in 2026 in its first acquisition; terms were not disclosed.
Platform matching solo founders with solo investors for micro investments in small internet businesses. Solo maker Mohd Danish lists it on his portfolio as sold for $20,000.
One of Germany's best-known independent tech and web blogs, written solo by Robert Basic. He sold it in 2010 for almost EUR 47,000 (roughly USD 62,500) in a widely covered public sale.
Tool that exports Google Docs to WordPress, built by the Grow and Convert team (~$400/month recurring revenue); sold in November 2017 to another marketer after two months of contracts.
An open-source Chrome and Firefox extension that let users download images and videos from their own Instagram pages, funded by small PayPal donations; sold by its developer to a new maintainer.
WordPress plugin with over 300,000 active installs that served a mobile-optimised version of a site to phone visitors. Acquired by SureSwift Capital in January 2017; terms undisclosed.
iOS app for managing social media accounts that made $7,341 in App Store sales in 2013; sold for $13,000 to a buyer outside Flippa.
A curated collection of 300+ content items mapped to startup growth stages; Bram Kanstein sold it to a Silicon Valley VC firm for a five-figure sum in 2019.
Curated newsletter of articles and case studies about indie founders bootstrapping businesses without VC money; ran 21 issues before being acquired by Stefan von Imhof's Alternative Assets in 2021.
SEO keyword research tool that identifies weaknesses in search engine results and helps companies improve rankings.
Humorous LinkedIn post generator with a cringe meter built by Tom Orbach. After going viral and reaching 15 million people, it was acquired by LinkedIn growth tool Taplio in 2022 within a week of launch, for an undisclosed price.
Screen-time management iOS app that let users cap daily usage of specific apps, with 30,000+ monthly active users and no revenue. Its solo Korean developer sold it in 2025 for 8 million won, about $5,800.
Mailboat (later rebranded Userping) was a bootstrapped email-sending side project built on AWS SES. The solo founder stopped working on it after 1.5 months and sold it pre-revenue for $4,000 in a direct deal in 2023.
A twice-weekly newsletter breaking down healthcare news and digital-health policy for clinicians, started as a side project by a medical student. Acquired by media company Workweek in the autumn of 2021; price undisclosed.
Spanish bootstrapped zero-waste e-commerce store selling sustainable, plastic-free household and personal care products. Its two founders signed the sale in September 2021 to the owner of sustainable jewellery brand Las Cardone; price not disclosed.
Spanish no-code directory connecting newsletter and podcast creators with brands looking to buy sponsorships, built on Webflow, Airtable and Outseta. Sold by its solo founder in February 2023; price not disclosed.
A WordPress plugin that aggregates and republishes RSS feeds inside a site. It was bought by Ionut Neagu's Vertigo Studio, which acquires WordPress plugins in the $60k-$350k ARR range; the price was not disclosed.
Scraping API that pulled structured product data - price, title, images - from any e-commerce product page, built for affiliates and dropshippers. Sold five months after its January 2025 launch to a UK affiliate-marketing company for between EUR 10,000 and EUR 20,000.
A small newsletter about the newsletter industry that its founder grew to roughly 1,600 subscribers on beehiiv. Acquired in October 2023 by operator Matt McGarry on an agreed cost-per-subscriber basis and merged into his own list; dollar amount undisclosed.
Fintech app that automated performance tracking and reporting for frequent options and futures traders, replacing the spreadsheets they kept by hand. Founded in 2017 by Ben Latz and Piyush Puri while at Carnegie Mellon, it was acquired by SureSwift Capital on 29 April 2021.
Paid Substack newsletter about website investing by Richard Patey, grown to $5K MRR with 100+ paying subscribers in 10 months. Sold in 2020 to Travis Jamison and folded into investing.io.
WordPress plugin business behind Prevent Direct Access and Password Protect WordPress, which lock down private files and pages on WordPress sites. Onfolio sold the operations for $780,000 in an all-cash deal in December 2024.
A browser extension that auto-fills Stripe test cards and payment details for developers debugging checkout flows; hit #1 of the day on Product Hunt and sold within a week for EUR 1,500 (about $1,600), the maker's first exit.
Health-niche affiliate content site bought on Flippa for $10,000 in April 2021 and resold six months later for $16,000 to a private buyer, a flip its owner labelled a failure.
Email-forwarding service that routes mail sent to a custom domain on to any existing inbox. It was still an unmonetised side project when Antoine Minoux and Cyril Nicodeme bought it for $5,000 in 2018 and turned it into a paid product.
A free high-resolution stock photo site (StockSnap.io) built by the Snappa founders after a blog post on free HD photos ranked well on Google; it drove large traffic volumes and was later sold, price undisclosed.
Free WordPress plugin that clones any post or page in one click, carrying over featured images, metadata and SEO settings. Enrico Battocchi maintained it alone for a decade to well over 3 million users before Yoast acquired it on 16 June 2020 and hired him.
Search engine indexing 100k+ open-source SVG icons for designers and developers, with Figma, VS Code and Framer plugins. Creator Fayaz Ahmed sold it in July 2023 for $4,000 when it had no revenue and no traffic; the buyer grew it to roughly $6k/month within nine months.
An Italian edtech app for medical-school admission-test prep that reached 70,000 users; acquired by Testbusters in 2021 for about EUR 220k ($220,000).
Rustic-wedding content site founded in 2008 with millions of monthly readers; founder Maggie Lord sold it to David's Bridal in October 2020 for six figures and joined the buyer as a VP.
Chrome extension for organizing and managing browser tabs. Built as a side project over a weekend to solve personal productivity issues. Sold for $500 after six months of operation.
A technology niche blog started in early 2020 that grew to about 320 articles and peaked near $46k/month from display ads and affiliate links before a Google update cut traffic. Sold for a high six-figure sum, 15% above asking.
A headless-browser REST API for extracting structured data, screenshots and PDFs from any webpage. Listed for sale on X on 28 April 2026, roughly a month after launch, and sold the same day to another developer for $2,500.
A life-goal sharing site built in Django as a solo side project by Scot Hacker around 2010. After maintaining it himself for a couple of years he sold it to a group of private investors who kept it running; the price was never disclosed.
Pair of WordPress plugins extending Elementor forms - Form Input Masks for Elementor Form (10,000+ installs) and Extensions for Elementor Form (20,000+ installs). Cool Plugins acquired both from independent Brazilian developer Eduardo Villao in 2025.
Flea-market style marketplace where Japanese indie developers and startups listed and sold the services they had built. Transferred to T Accelerator Inc. in September 2019, price undisclosed.
An Android tower-defence game in which players built their defences out of letters. It passed 25,000 downloads and earned only a few dollars a month from ads before the solo developer sold the source code and worldwide rights to South Korean publisher Ubinuri for $3,000.
Hosted bug and issue tracking SaaS for small software teams, built and run by Garrett Dimon. Sold in March 2016; terms undisclosed.
Productized WordPress website service that built and maintained sites for restaurant owners, doing about $10K/month. Brian Casel sold it in 2015 for a low six-figure sum.
SaaS that automatically extracted structured data from incoming emails to kill repetitive admin work. Solo founder Moritz Dausinger sold it to SureSwift Capital in 2016; terms undisclosed.
Technical article and knowledge-sharing platform for Japanese engineers with a C2C paid-content marketplace, built solo by catnose and launched September 2020. Acquired by Classmethod on 1 February 2021, just four and a half months later; amount undisclosed.
Japanese web service that let users link their Twitter account and recruit voice calls from their followers. Built solo by a student in May 2020 and transferred to AppBrew about three months later; amount undisclosed.
Free Japanese SEO keyword research tool released in 2012 and run solo for eight years. Transferred to Syncraft Inc., operator of Rakko Keyword, in August 2020; amount undisclosed.
Niche job board running since 2005 where companies paid to post design and developer roles. Acquired by BuySellAds in January 2017; terms undisclosed.
Uptime monitoring service built solo by full-stack developer Victor. A buyer reached out through the landing page chat widget and acquired it in 2020, roughly 14 months after the idea started; the undisclosed price covered the founder's development costs.
App-store style directory for discovering and browsing chatbots, built during Japan's chatbot boom. Transferred to T Accelerator Inc. in September 2019, price undisclosed.
Web app that generated printable bingo cards for elementary school teachers, run as a one-person software business from 2006. Patrick McKenzie sold it in 2015; terms undisclosed.
A WordPress blogging-tips and internet-marketing blog, unmonetized at the time of sale. It changed hands in a private off-Flippa deal in late 2012, with the buyer negotiating the price down to 37% of the asking price.
Spanish platform connecting bus and minibus operators with customers wanting to charter them, earning a commission per trip. Billed 5,800 EUR in 2023, 16,960 EUR in 2024 and 15,307 EUR through September 2025, when founder Ruben Angulo sold it; price kept private at the buyer's request.
Android app for browsing and watching Vine videos, monetised with ads. It was turning over about $2,000 a month in revenue when it sold for $7,000 in 2013.
WordPress plugin adding honeypot spam protection, database storage, redirection and webhooks to Contact Form 7. Its original developer announced on the WordPress.org support forum that the plugin had been acquired by WPExperts; price undisclosed.
Open-core business around Leaflet-Geoman, the leading Leaflet plugin for drawing and editing map geometry layers, monetised through commercial licences. Founder Sumit Kumar accepted a purchase offer in 2023 in what he called his first exit; price undisclosed.
Spanish-language personal finance blog started as a side project in 2015 while both founders kept their day jobs. Sold six years later for EUR 25,000 (about $29,500) while billing around EUR 1,500 a month.
Bootstrapped premium WordPress theme shop founded in 2008 by Jason Schuller. Monthly sales had slid from $25-30k to under $5k and a Flippa auction ended unsold at $45k of bids before he sold it privately to Minneapolis agency Westwerk in 2014; price undisclosed.
Japanese search engine that aggregated comedy live-show listings nationwide by date and performer. Run solo for two and a half years before being sold to Playground Inc. in July 2020.
No-code service, originally called Anotion, that turns a Notion page into a full website with custom domains and design overrides. Built solo as a side project and sold to Peraichi Inc. in October 2021 in under a year; amount undisclosed.
Curated growth-marketing email newsletter launched in 2017 on a documented $99 total startup budget. Founder Miles Burke sold it at the start of 2018, less than 13 months in, for a little more than a 1,600% return on that outlay; the dollar figure was not disclosed.
Deliberately unbranded Android VPN app built in about three hours to bypass the Ukrainian block on VK, Yandex and Odnoklassniki; it grew to 170,000 daily active users. An inbound buyer offered $50,000 in 2017 and the solo developer accepted on the spot.
Popular free WordPress social-bookmarking and share-button plugin built by a solo developer. Shareaholic acquired it in 2010 and used it as the base for its WordPress publisher tools.
Bootstrapped two-person husband-and-wife mobile app studio making photo-album and video-editing apps, with roughly 7 million cumulative downloads and no outside investment. Sold to Metaps Inc. in February 2016; amount undisclosed.
A weekend side project that grew into an asteroid database and mining-value calculator with 3D orbit visualisations; acquired 13 months after launch by Planetary Resources.
A no-code database of mechanical-watch auction results for collectors, with five-figure ARR; Marc Montagne sold it for a six-figure sum to competitor EveryWatch in early 2024.
Small portfolio of WooCommerce extensions, Quick Checkout, shipping-method management and conditional checkout fields, built by Scott DeLuzio. E-commerce agency Mode Effect acquired the business on 14 July 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
WordPress plugin that let site owners redesign the wp-login page visually from the Customizer. Solo maker Rich Tabor sold it to WP Experts in January 2022 in a deal he announced in a post titled "On selling Login Designer"; terms were not disclosed.
Haiku-focused social network app with a seasonal-word search feature that ranked first for haiku in the Japanese App Store. Built by a Keio University student and transferred to newspaper publisher Mainichi Shimbun in June 2018; amount undisclosed.
Polish social photo and link sharing site with several million monthly users, built by a student founder without outside capital. Michal Sadowski and his partners sold it about a year in for over a million zlotys (roughly $320k at 2006 rates).
Free WooCommerce marketing-automation plugin for triggered emails and follow-up campaigns, built by a solo developer at RistrettoApps. WP Desk acquired it in September 2019 and turned it into a paid product line.
Web tool for creating and sharing custom sticker packs, built solo by Turkish developer Fatih Kadir Akin. Sticker Mule acquired stickker.net in 2022 for an undisclosed sum.
One of the internet oldest paid online communities, a subscription discussion forum founded in 1985 by Stewart Brand. Salon Media Group sold it in September 2012 to The Well Group, a company formed by 11 long-time members, for $400,000.
WordPress plugin with 20,000+ active installs that displays coming-soon and maintenance-mode landing pages while a site is being built. WPConcern acquired it in 2022.
WordPress permissions and roles plugin with ten premium extensions giving granular control over who can read and edit content. PublishPress acquired it from Kevin Behrens in February 2019.
Long-running solo-maintained WordPress plugin that shows related posts, pages and custom post types under an article. Shareaholic acquired YARPP in April 2019.
WordPress plugin with roughly 20,000 active installs, plus paid add-ons, for hosting and publishing a podcast from your own site. Hugh Lashbrooke handed it to Craig Hewitt of Podcast Motor in December 2016.
Daily-deals site selling discounted design assets, fonts, templates and courses to designers. Onfolio signed an asset purchase agreement to sell it for $120,000 and had already collected $110,000 of that by the March 2026 annual filing.
Niche job board for SaaS and tech marketing roles with a marketer audience built around it. Founder Corey Haines sold it in November 2020 for an undisclosed sum, then reacquired it years later.
WordPress SEO plugin that automatically builds internal links between posts from configured keywords. Team Updraft (Updraft WP Software Ltd) took it over, announcing the ownership change in the v2.23.4 changelog in August 2023; price undisclosed.
WordPress plugin that saves Elementor form submissions to the database and to Google Sheets. Cool Plugins bought the abandoned plugin, which still had 50,000+ installs, and relaunched it as FormsDB in v2.0.0 in December 2025.
Free Elementor add-on with 300,000+ active installs that applies sticky-header behaviour and scroll effects. POSIMYTH Innovations acquired it and folded it into its Nexter/The Plus ecosystem; price undisclosed.
WordPress backup plugin with 80,000+ active installs that schedules database and file backups from the dashboard. Human Made handed it to Xibo Development, who kept the free plugin alive but retired the paid Dropbox/Google Drive add-ons.
Self-hosted WordPress live-chat plugin with a Twilio SMS add-on, built by solo developer Dallas Read. Remetric acquired it and migrated users onto its own chat product in the v2.0.0 release; price undisclosed.
Lightweight WordPress coupon plugin for affiliate bloggers that renders coupon and deal boxes without bloat, built by brothers Brian and Brett Jackson. Blogger Anil Agarwal (BloggersPassion) acquired it in January 2025 and relaunched it with a free version.
A niche Shopify dropshipping store that resold supplier-fulfilled physical products to roughly 1,450 customers over two and a half years. Johnny FD sold it in May 2016 for $60,000, netting $57,635 after fees.
A keyboard-first desktop app for jotting quick notes and pasting them without leaving the keyboard. Marked "Acquired" on Denis Leonov's IndiePage portfolio, alongside Clipboard History Pro and TrackerJam; price undisclosed.
Privacy-first, GDPR-compliant WordPress analytics plugin that keeps visitor data anonymised on the site owner's own server with a dashboard inside wp-admin. TeamUpdraft announced the acquisition in April 2025; terms undisclosed.
WordPress cloud-storage, video-hosting and CDN SaaS (plus the Big File Uploads plugin) built by ex-WPMU DEV CTO Aaron Edwards with co-founder Joshua Dailey. Sold to ClikIT on 25 November 2024 at roughly 3x flat ARR, about 40% down with three years of seller financing.
WordPress plugin that cleans post revisions, transients and orphaned data and optimizes MySQL tables; acquired by NerdPress in January 2024, its second plugin acquisition in two months.
Podcast production agency that produced and grew branded B2B podcasts, reaching about $500K in annual revenue by 2021. Founder Rachel Elsts Downey was acquihired in a deal that valued the business in the mid-six figures.
Paid subscription digital magazine on iOS publishing essays and illustrations from independent writers. Marco Arment handed ownership to Glenn Fleishman on 1 June 2013; terms undisclosed.
Dog-breed guide website covering every breed, earning revenue from display advertising. Onfolio Holdings disclosed selling the business operations in July 2025; price undisclosed.
WordPress activity-log SaaS that streamed site events to an external dashboard for agencies and publishers. Founder Ralph Morris handed the business to PublishPress in April 2024 after a new job and a growing family squeezed his time; terms undisclosed.
Party, entertaining and crafts blog covering house parties, bachelorette ideas, recipes and DIY, monetised purely with display advertising. Onfolio Holdings disclosed selling the business operations in June 2025; price undisclosed.
Small social-proof notification widget for e-commerce sites built by an Australian indie maker. He sold it to Ryan Kulp and Justin Mares in 2016 in a tiny, largely seller-financed deal; they rebranded it Fomo and grew it far larger.
Cult iOS word game built solo by Loren Brichter under his one-man studio Atebits. He sold all assets and IP to Solebon LLC in December 2015 for an undisclosed sum; Solebon kept it alive and later brought it to the Mac.
Community-run Composer repository that mirrored the WordPress.org plugin and theme directories so developers could install them with PHP's dependency manager. Built by the Outlandish agency and acquired by WP Engine in 2026; price undisclosed.
Decade-old local-SEO training community: a seminar series plus a members forum run by a handful of independent consultants. Sterling Sky acquired it in December 2019 for an undisclosed amount and merged the LocalU forum into the Local Search Forum.
Long-tail SEO keyword suggestion tool with paying subscribers but shrinking usage. Its owners sold it to Rob Walling in August 2011 after three months of negotiation, for a price he described as less than most people pay for a new car.
WordPress plugin adding a WhatsApp click-to-chat button and chat widget, with 200,000+ active installs. QuadLayers acquired it and rebuilt it with extra features, stating the takeover directly in the plugin readme upgrade notice.
Private-label ecommerce brand selling boat anchors and boating accessories across 300+ SKUs, run for nearly eight years. Sold on 27 October 2016 for $867,000.
WordPress site-management dashboard for updating, backing up and monitoring many sites from one place, launched in 2010 by the bootstrapped agency Human Made. Sold on to Australian agency MyWork in 2017 and then acquired by BlogVault on 31 October 2019 for an undisclosed sum.
Japanese online mentoring marketplace matching learners with working engineers on monthly contracts, taking a fee per contract, at roughly $9.3K MRR. Launched June 2018 as the founder's 30th indie product and transferred to Lancers by share transfer in October 2020.
Reference-checking and candidate pre-screening platform used by recruitment firms, healthcare staffing agencies and in-house recruiters. Founder Poya Farighi sold the business to SureSwift Capital in spring 2024 for an undisclosed sum.
CBD subscription box business founded in 2018 by Lowell Bieber and Ryan Culver as a 10-15 hour per week side hustle. With around $50K monthly revenue, it sold in 2021 for mid-six figures, about 2x trailing twelve-month profit and 0.8x revenue.
Slack community of 35,000+ marketing and advertising professionals founded by Moshe Markovich in 2015, monetised through sponsorships, a job board, a solutions marketplace and member talent search. Foundry Holdings completed its acquisition on 14 September 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
Website feedback and bug-reporting widget (originally launched as BugMuncher) that let site visitors report issues with annotated screenshots. Founder Matt Bearman sold it in April 2020 for GBP 100,000 (about $134k) after growth stalled near $5k MRR.
A paid global community for bootstrapped startup founders (Slack group, in-person meetups, memberships). Founder Anthony Castrio sold it to Ramen Club (Charlie Ward) in April 2024 for roughly 1x annual revenue, a five-figure deal.
Curated gallery and template marketplace for single-page websites, run solo and bootstrapped by Rob Hope since March 2008 and monetised through paid submissions, template sales and sponsorships. Acquired by Some Studio in July 2026 for an undisclosed sum.
Chrome extension by Amit Agarwal that let users subscribe to RSS feeds in Feedly from any web page with one click, with 30,000+ users. Sold in 2014 for a four-figure amount via PayPal; the anonymous buyer later turned it into adware.
Training course and community teaching service-business owners how to turn custom client work into a repeatable productized service. Brian Casel sold the Productize brand in 2022 alongside his other businesses.
College counseling marketplace connecting students with admissions advisors. Founder Jason Patel sold its marketing assets - SEO rankings, blog traffic and reviews - to a micro private equity firm in an asset sale, avoiding an earn-out.
Gesture-driven minimalist RSS reader for iPhone and iPad, built and sold paid-up-front by solo indie developer Jared Sinclair. Two-person studio Supertop acquired it in September 2014, then resold it with all associated assets to Golden Hill Software in August 2017; neither price was disclosed.
WordPress plugin that redirects, tracks and customises Contact Form 7 submissions, with 200,000+ active installations. Its official wordpress.org changelog records the handover with the entry "Ownership change to Themeisle" in version 3.1.4, released 4 June 2024.
A review and buying-guide site for netbook laptops monetized with Amazon affiliate links and display ads. Chris Guthrie sold it in 2010 in a deal he described as worth six figures.
Project management and time-tracking SaaS built for freelancers and agencies. Brennan Dunn decided to sell at the end of 2015 and closed the sale in Q1 2016; terms undisclosed.
Small bootstrapped WordPress theme club launched in 2013 with a library of about 68 commercial themes and its own framework. Founder Marcel Sobieski announced the exit to Imagely on 9 June 2017; the amount was undisclosed.
A subscription SaaS that helped Instagram users grow their following and engagement. Founder Kenny Schumacher sold the bootstrapped tool for 300,000 dollars via broker FE International.
First 100 Users was a curated directory of 100+ marketing tactics and hundreds of tools to help founders get their startup's first users, built no-code on Softr and Airtable and a ProductHunt Product of the Day. Solo maker Olly Meakings sold it for $10,000 via a Twitter announcement and PayPal.
A video bookmarking web app billed as "Instapaper for video", built in a couple of weeks as a side project by Alex Kessinger. He sold it for $7,000, as he confirmed in a 2011 Hacker News thread on profitable weekend projects.
Downloadable ASP.NET invoicing application sold as a one-time license. Its original owner sold the codebase, sales site and domains to Rob Walling in 2007 in a small PayPal-settled deal that Walling later described as not a huge amount of money.
WordPress plugin for translating individual strings and words across a site without a full multilingual stack. Cool Plugins took ownership in v2.0.0 (January 2026) and rebuilt it as the AI multilingual plugin LinguatorAI; terms undisclosed.
WordPress plugin that maps individual domain names to single pages inside one WordPress install, letting makers launch mini-sites and landing pages without the cost and complexity of Multisite. Built in early 2020 by Jason Schuller and Phil Kurth, it was acquired by Themeisle in September 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
Subscription shop selling premium WordPress themes, run single-handedly by Rich Tabor. GoDaddy acquired it on 9 April 2019 in the same undisclosed deal as CoBlocks, and later released the whole theme inventory for free.
Small bootstrapped consultancy that helped brands design and run member communities, and wrote the book "Get Together". Co-founder Bailey Richardson and her partners sold the firm to Substack in 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
Small WordPress plugin that builds conference session and speaker schedules, with just over 200 active installs. Accessibility agency Equalize Digital sold it to The Events Calendar on 12 July 2022 for an undisclosed sum.
WordPress plugin for running job-listing boards, with a paid add-on ecosystem that peaked around $35,000-$40,000 a month and 30,000+ active installs. Mike Jolley sold it to Automattic in June 2015 for an undisclosed sum reported to be in the region of a year of expected income.
WordPress social-sharing plugin for bloggers, covering Facebook, Pinterest and X plus audience insights. NerdPress bought it from Mediavine in December 2023 in its first acquisition and relaunched it as Hubbub; the price was not disclosed.
Page-builder plugin that added a library of design-focused content blocks to the then-new WordPress Gutenberg editor. Built solo by Rich Tabor, it was acquired by GoDaddy on 9 April 2019 alongside Block Gallery and Block Unit Test, with the price undisclosed.
Lead-magnet builder that turns blog posts into designed ebooks, checklists and resource libraries with a drag-and-drop editor and AI copywriting, aimed at marketers with no designer. OptinMonster acquired it on 15 February 2024 for an undisclosed sum.
A bootstrapped corporate events/entertainment platform (began in live-music fan engagement, pivoted to B2B corporate events, under $1M annual revenue) whose founder Adam McIsaac completed a share sale to Thuzio in a micro-exit in November 2020.
WooCommerce product-feed plugin used by more than 90,000 store owners to push listings to Google Shopping and other marketing channels. Founder Joris sold it to Rymera Web Co in April 2024 for an undisclosed sum.
Community for people learning to code, grown by Saron Yitbarek from a weekly Twitter chat in 2014 into a podcast, the CodeLand conference and an online forum. DEV (Forem) bought it in January 2020 in its first acquisition, terms undisclosed.
Multi-vendor marketplace plugin for WooCommerce with 10,000+ active installs, run by founder Jamie Madden for more than eight years. It was acquired by Rymera Web Co on 10 May 2023 for an undisclosed sum.
Firefox add-on built solo by researcher Christopher Soghoian that set opt-out cookies for dozens of ad networks so users could dodge behaviourally targeted advertising. Privacy startup Abine acquired it in June 2010.
One-man contextual spelling, style and grammar checker that plugged into web editors such as TinyMCE. Raphael Mudge launched it in June 2009 and Automattic bought it that September, weeks later, for an undisclosed sum.
Solo-built iPad app that displayed sheet music with a piano roll and small keyboard, turning pages automatically when propped on a real piano. Dan Grover sold it to Steinway & Sons in September 2011.
Bootstrapped B2B demand-generation and marketing agency that reached seven figures in revenue with above-average margins before being acquired by fellow remote agency Reel Axis.
A 100,000-subscriber Reddit community for music, images and videos that give people chills. Its creator handed over moderating rights for a non-negotiable $1,000.
Community platform for no-code founders with 34,000 members, generating around $10k/month before being acquired, with founder Joshua Tiernan staying on to run it.
Small web design agency co-run by Kyle Racki and Kevin Springer, sold to a local businessman after a ten-month process so the pair could work full time on their SaaS Proposify. The founder states the sale did not net them much profit.
WordPress plugin by Corey Maass that put kanban boards inside wp-admin to track progress on a goal. Handed over to the teams behind Alpha Particle and Flowspoke, who announced it was under new management; the price was not confirmed on the product site.
A small remote digital marketing agency founded in 2018, running recurring Facebook and Google ads retainers for a compact client base. Sold for $155,000 to a strategic buyer drawn by its recurring ad revenue and scalable setup.
Niche job board connecting military veterans with employers hiring them. VA Claims Insider, a service-disabled-veteran-owned business, acquired it in December 2020; terms were not made public.
German independent blog and affiliate site about e-readers, e-books and digital reading, built and run by solo founder Johannes Haupt. Sold for three quarters of a million euros (EUR 750,000, roughly USD 825,000).
Subscription virtual-assistant service offering unlimited tasks under 15 minutes for $99 a month. Founder Omar Bohsali sold it to Need/Want in 2014 for a total of $15,000, with roughly 60 customers and $6,000 MRR.
SEO, usability and web-design discussion forum run solo by Kim Krause Berg since 1998. She sold it to Jim Boykin of Internet Marketing Ninjas in 2012 for an undisclosed sum and stayed on to run it.
SEO and lead-generation agency serving dental practices. Onfolio Holdings acquired the business for $600,000 in cash, preferred stock and a promissory note, with the transaction closing on 24 June 2024.
Freemium platform that gave freelancers one place to run their admin: invoicing, contract generation, digital signatures, project coordination and client feedback. Founder Chipper sold it in 2024 for a low five-figure sum while it was doing about $100 MRR.
A modern forum/community software for creators. Sold by its founder for a five-figure sum (exact amount under NDA) as one of two SaaS products he exited before quitting his job.
A Shopify app that let merchants show shoppers what a product would look like in their own environment. Its previous owner sold the underperforming app in September 2023.
Pair of solo-built WordPress plugins running on 50,000+ sites that restrict wp-admin access for non-admin users and generate temporary support accounts. TrustedLogin acquired Remove Dashboard Access and Support Me from Drew Jaynes in February 2022.
Service that turned Google Sheets into REST APIs, built as an MVP in a week and doing about $800 MRR a year later. Sold for $35,000 to micro private equity firm Xo.Capital.
macOS utility for creating multiple floating docks across monitors; sold by its original creator to indie developer pugdogdev around 2025, who rebuilt it over 10 months and grew it past 600 users.
Telegram bot that stripped watermarks from TikTok videos, grown by a solo Uzbek developer to 4.5 million subscribers and 400,000 daily active users, monetised with ads at roughly $10,000 a month. Sold to a Russian buyer for $150,000 in 2021.
Internet directory of writers, editors, publishers and literary agents with an attached discussion community. CrowdGather acquired it on 27 June 2011 for $100,000 ($70,000 cash plus 37,500 shares valued at $30,000); founder Stephan Spencer joined the buyer advisory board.
Quick API was a no-code tool that turned data sources like CSV, Excel and Airtable into working REST APIs without writing code. Founder Mohd Danish Yusuf sold it to Louis Lafont for $5,000 in a founder-to-founder Twitter deal in January 2023.
WordPress security plugin that renames the wp-admin login URL to a custom slug to block automated login attacks, acquired by WPExperts in March 2023.
WordPress plugin that adds honeypot anti-spam fields to Contact Form 7 forms without CAPTCHAs, acquired from Nocean by WPExperts in 2024 for an undisclosed sum.
WordPress plugin that auto-generates Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags for rich social previews, with 80,000+ active installs after 12 years; acquired by WPExperts in 2023.
WordPress plugin adding advanced styling controls and a template library to the Gutenberg block editor; Munir Kamal and the Gutenberg Hub team sold it to Extendify in December 2020.
One-man shop selling 11 WooCommerce extensions covering checkout, shipping and store customization; founder David Allsop sold the suite to Kestrel and joined the team in January 2025.
Open-source WordPress framework letting theme authors build Customizer option panels, with 400,000+ installations; David Vongries listed it at $30K and sold it to Themeum for just under the asking price.
WordPress plugin that builds Linktree-style link-in-bio landing pages on your own site; sold by developer Corey Maass to independent consultant Matthaus Klute in September 2023.
WordPress plugin adding multiple author bylines and guest-author profiles to posts, acquired by PublishPress in January 2018 with existing customer purchase agreements honored.
WordPress plugin adding 20+ extra Gutenberg blocks, a responsive layout manager and block permissions, with 20,000 active users; JoomUnited handed it over to PublishPress in August 2020.
WordPress plugin that schedules automatic expiration, unpublishing or category changes for posts and pages; developer Aaron Axelsen sold it to PublishPress in May 2021.
An addiction-recovery content site with an active member forum, built over four years to more than $2,000 a month in income and sold for a six-figure sum to one of its direct advertisers.
WordPress plugin that groups, displays and filters taxonomy terms via tag clouds and alphabetical indexes. Built solo under the Chatty Mango brand and acquired by Steve Burge's TaxoPress in October 2022 for an undisclosed sum.
WordPress role and capability editor plugin with over 100,000 active installs, maintained solo by Justin Tadlock. Acquired by MemberPress (Caseproof) in August 2021 when Tadlock left to write for WP Tavern.
WordPress plugin that embeds videos, docs, maps and 100+ other content sources into Gutenberg and Elementor. Had roughly 7,000 active users when WPDeveloper acquired it from Steve Burge in December 2019.
A roughly 120-post Amazon affiliate product-review site in a single niche, co-owned with a business partner and sold in mid-2017 for $235,000.
Niche content website about war documentaries and military films, monetised with display advertising. Bright Mountain Media disclosed buying it on 15 April 2013 for $1,925 in its 10-K.
A no-code tool that turned Google Sheets data into publishable charts and visualisations; sibling product to Sheet2Site and listed as "(Acquired)" on the founder's own site.
A mini-tool that generated tweet inspiration prompts for creators stuck on what to post; acquired by Tweet Hunter and listed as an exit on the founder's public project ledger.
A data product that scraped and analysed which digital products were selling best on Gumroad so makers could spot demand; marked "Sold" on the founder's public project ledger.
Spanish personal-finance blog covering stock investing, saving and crypto, monetised with SEO and affiliate links. Peaked at 4,000-5,000 daily visits in 2020-2021 and was sold by founder Marc Frau after about eight years; price undisclosed.
Seven secondary WooCommerce and WordPress plugins (Variation Prices, Express Shop Page, Shipping Calculator, Product Sample, Discontinued Products, Custom Add to Cart Button, Better Recent Comments) that bootstrapped plugin shop Barn2 divested to Kestrel in 2024.
A product for selling digital goods online ("upload it and sell"), built after the founder struggled to sell videos; sold and recorded on his public timeline.
An iOS app telling anime fans when the next episode of the shows they follow would air, with no user accounts or server-side data; sold and transferred to another developer.
An online essay and thesis editing service connecting university students, mostly non-native English speakers, with freelance editors; run as the founder's main business from 2001 until he sold it in 2007 to move into blogging.
An SEO/affiliate content site telling readers whether specific foods fit a ketogenic diet; ran fully passively in maintenance mode earning $1-2k a year before being sold to fellow indie founder Rasul Kireev.
Low-cost self-serve event ticketing tool. Jonny White sold the bootstrapped business to Time Out magazine in 2012 when it was doing about GBP 2,000 MRR, then bought it back roughly 18 months later and grew it far bigger.
An independent philosophy podcast on applying Stoicism to daily life, built solo and sold to Evergreen Podcasts for between $100K and $500K, with the founder staying on as host.
A homeschool curriculum bundle-sale platform that ran as a single annual week-long sale, netting $148,100 profit in its final year; sold for a six-figure sum after about a month on the market.
A browser extension adding a Twitter sidebar for searching a user's past tweets and surfacing their most popular posts; grew past 20,000 installs before being sold to Tweet Hunter.
A marketplace for Bootstrap themes and templates, grown to $10,000/month purely through SEO and content marketing by the bootstrapped team that later built Snappa; the founders confirm they sold it, price undisclosed.
WordPress plugin that turned spreadsheet data into interactive charts and data visualizations for site owners. Its code and rights were acquired outright by Joe Youngblood's marketing agency for an undisclosed sum.
Euro-denominated Bitcoin wallet app built by a solo developer, letting users hold euros while spending bitcoin. Acquired by wallet maker Hive in December 2013 for an undisclosed sum.
Anonymous question box for Twitter users, built in about six hours by a solo 26-year-old developer. It hit roughly 200M monthly pageviews in three weeks and was bought by Jiraffe Inc. just one month after launch; price undisclosed.
WordPress-based hosted website SaaS for hotels, the sister product to Brian Casel's Restaurant Engine. Sold in 2015 for an undisclosed sum.
Monetised Facebook group in the outdoor and camping niche with 54,000 members, bought in August 2020 by niche-site investor Mushfiq Sarker to funnel traffic into a content site. The buyer disclosed the price worked out at $0.046 per member.
WordPress plugin for building contact forms directly inside the Gutenberg block editor, created by Munir Kamal and taken over by WPChill in October 2021.
Bootstrapped web app for sending large files to other people instead of attaching them to email. Ryan Carson and his co-founder built it in 2005 and sold it three years later, in 2008, for an undisclosed sum.
SaaS that extracted structured data from PDFs and scanned documents and pushed it into other business tools. Sister product to Mailparser, sold to SureSwift Capital in 2018; terms undisclosed.
Membership website packaging table tennis video tutorials behind a subscription, built into a five-figure recurring revenue stream over eight years. Sold quickly by its owner, who prioritised speed and ease of transaction over maximising the price.
Military classifieds marketplace covering nearly 500 US military bases worldwide, aimed at active-duty members, veterans and their families. Bright Mountain Media announced the completed acquisition from Steve Harari in February 2016; price undisclosed.
Encharge was a bootstrapped, behavior-based email marketing automation platform built for SaaS companies; founder Kalo Yankulov sold it in 2024 for $800k after generating roughly $2M in lifetime revenue.
Korean university-life calendar app that pulled together academic schedules, club activities and campus festivals for 120,000 student users. Built by two undergraduates who met in a campus startup club in 2023, it was acquired by calendar-sharing platform TimeTree in February 2025 for an undisclosed sum.
A WordPress plugin for building interactive charts and data tables from spreadsheets or databases. It was acquired by Ionut Neagu's Vertigo Studio, a buyer of WordPress plugins in the $60k-$350k ARR band; terms were undisclosed.
WordPress plugin business behind the Nivo Slider and other jQuery projects, run solo by Gilbert Pellegrom. Sold in 2016 to Ionut Neagu of ThemeIsle for a price the founder placed between $25,000 and $50,000.
Japanese web tool that let anyone log in with Twitter and instantly create ranking and voting pages. Sold in 2019 to the owner of an SEO and web marketing firm for JPY 40,000 (about $370).
A Substack newsletter and companion Discord community covering alternative assets (websites, domains, crypto, NFTs), founded by Richard Patey; acqui-hired by Flippa.com in 2022 before being monetized.
Premium WordPress plugin that sets full-screen background images site-wide or per post, page, category and archive. Pippin Williamson tweeted he wanted a new owner and negotiated the sale to Scott DeLuzio in under 24 hours.
A daily lead-generation newsletter sending remote jobs and freelance projects to web developers, with a paid tier; sold by its founder in October 2020.
Paid private community and virtual accelerator running cohort-based programs for founders, freelancers and creators. Smart Passive Income acquired it in December 2020 and its founder Jay Clouse joined SPI as part of the deal.
A widely-used WordPress options/metaboxes framework installed on over 1 million sites, letting theme and plugin developers build settings panels; solo maintainer Dovy Paukstys sold it to Extendify in November 2020.
A Chrome extension (formerly YouTube Plus) letting users customise YouTube's UI and player behaviour; the solo developer sold the Chrome listing after naming a deliberately high price the buyer accepted.
A self-built social bookmarking service letting users save searchable, permanent copies of web pages; solo founder Mike Giles sold it to LookSmart in September 2004 for an undisclosed sum, without VC backing.
A peer-to-peer file-synchronization service built by Michael Merhej's bootstrapped startup ByteTaxi after VC funding fell through; acquired by Microsoft in November 2005 for an undisclosed amount, later seeding OneDrive.
WordPress plugin that routes outgoing site email through SMTP and other mailers with delivery logging, used on 300,000+ sites; sold by solo developer Yehuda Hassine to agency WPExperts for an undisclosed sum.
A personal library of advertising inspiration (AdsOfTheWorld.com) and a one-person Mac design blog (CreativeBits.org), both built by solo founder Ivan Raszl; Jupitermedia acquired both sites' assets in June 2007 for undisclosed terms.
Japanese community site where solo developers published the services they had shipped and shared bug fixes, KPIs and milestones. Transferred to T Accelerator Inc. in September 2019 alongside two sister projects, price undisclosed.
Remote job board built as a side project by Pete Codes. He sold it in 2022 to a member of the Indie London Slack community for an undisclosed sum.
One-man WordPress news, podcast and community site launched in January 2009 by Jeff Chandler. He sold it to Matt Mullenweg in summer 2011 for an undisclosed sum and stayed on as its writer until 2019.
CSS design gallery blog sold by the Big Money Tips blogger in January 2005 for an undisclosed five-figure sum.
One of roughly 20 Chrome extensions built solo by Muhammad Adil, who sold four of them in a single month after posting on Reddit. One buyer came back and paid $1,800 for a second extension.
WordPress backup and site-migration plugin creating full site and database backups to remote storage, one of the ten most popular WP backup plugins; acquired by Watchful in April 2020.
Guide site for Marine Corps families covering housing, schools, youth programs and relocation for every major USMC base. Bright Mountain Media acquired it from founder Kristine Ann Schellhaas on 2 January 2015 for $50,000 cash plus 250,000 shares valued at $187,500.
Unblocked-gaming platform letting students play games on filtered school networks. Built by Purdue student Maddox Schmidlkofer starting at age 16 on Google Sites; grew to ~1.5M monthly users and roughly $15k-$20k/mo revenue before selling to gaming company FreezeNova for $120,000.
Law-enforcement news site and forum, sold together with sister sites FireAffairs.com and TeacherAffairs.com. Bright Mountain Media bought the trio in January 2014 for $100,000 plus $4,167/month for 36 months of management and a traffic-based earn-out.
WordPress bulk image-compression plugin by Webcraftic with 100,000+ active installs. Themeisle announced the acquisition in the v1.9.0 changelog in October 2025, part of Webcraftic selling off its plugin portfolio; price undisclosed.
Neural-network service for target-audience analytics and automated content generation, built for roughly $500 of initial spend. Its founder sold the pet project for 20,000 euros in 2024.
A self-funded web research and annotation toolbar letting users save, organize, and share web clippings, built by a small team led by J.J. Allaire; Microsoft acquired its assets in March 2006 for an undisclosed amount to fold into Windows Live Toolbar.
WooCommerce extension letting stores offer buy-now-pay-later installment plans at checkout, acquired from SG Web Partners by WPExperts in April 2023.
Content blog about outsourcing business tasks to virtual staff in the Philippines, run as a side property by the Tropical MBA founders. Sold in 2011 to Chris Ducker, who took over as the new owner.
Open-source container vulnerability scanner written as a hobby project over Japan's Golden Week 2019. Acquired by Aqua Security; the author said the amount was nowhere near hundreds of millions of yen but covered several years of living expenses.
Polish hobby-built Android and Windows Phone app with offline public-transport timetables for 50+ Polish cities, monetised by a roughly 10 PLN/year premium tier and peaking near 3,000 PLN a month split three ways. Sold outright to Warsaw agency Mobiem in August 2014 for 15,000 PLN (about $4.8k).
Small shop selling premium WordPress and WooCommerce extension plugins, acquired outright by WPFactory on 17 March 2025.
One of the oldest discussion forums for domain-name investors, running since 2001. Domain Summit organiser Helmuts Meskonis acquired it from Ryan De Corsie Ewen in April 2023 for a reported five-figure GBP sum.
Kiosk software that printed conference name badges on the spot, with Eventbrite integration, charging $50-$300 per event. Used at TechCrunch events and TEDxSoma before being sold to a small company in 2011.
Law-enforcement community site with an attached storefront selling police-themed merchandise. Bright Mountain Media bought it from Jason Crawford in September 2014 for $120,000 cash at closing, with the founder staying on as a consultant at $1,000/month for 30 months.
An open-source hosted FFmpeg API that let developers run cloud video processing without wiring FFmpeg onto Lambda or EC2. With about 350 accounts and only five or six paying users, the founder was drafting shutdown emails when he instead sold it to ittybit for £20,000 (~$25,000) in stock options.
A Chrome extension surfacing the latest jailbreak prompts so users could work around ChatGPT's content restrictions; reached over 3,000 daily active users before being sold to a private investor.
A WordPress plugin that mass-produces landing pages from a dataset for programmatic SEO. It was acquired by Ionut Neagu's Vertigo Studio, a buyer of WordPress plugins in the $60k-$350k ARR range; the sale price was not disclosed.
An Australian WordPress maintenance and on-request-edits agency serving 343 customers across 64 subscriptions, acquired by WP Buffs in a contract signed 9 January 2021, WP Buffs' first acquisition.
Free WordPress plugin that lets site owners control core, plugin and theme updates, with more than 100,000 active installs. Backup plugin maker UpdraftPlus acquired it from Matthew Sparrow and BigWing Interactive in January 2018 for an undisclosed amount.
Spanish-language blog about indie and casual games, run as a spare-time side project from 2007 and monetised with ads and affiliate programs. Manuel F. Lara sold it in 2011 for $20,000 while it earned roughly $1,000 a month in profit.
Instagram-based education business about infant formula feeding with 175K followers and 30K email subscribers, monetized through digital products and one-on-one parent consultations. Founder Mallory Whitmore transferred it to US formula maker Bobbie in a 2022 acqui-hire.
Automation tool by Marc Köhlbrugge that cross-posts Instagram photos and videos to Twitter as native media. With $135 MRR, it sold in April 2020 for $30,000 ($10K upfront plus $20K contingent on revenue) to the maker of CreatorKit.
Content and community website for firefighters and first responders, built by Chris David. Bright Mountain Media bought it in October 2013 for $30,000, paid as $5,880 down plus $1,005/month for 24 months.
A downloadable Windows solitaire game that only dealt hands guaranteed to be winnable. Eric Sink sold it to Dennis Cronin of freecell.com in December 2005 for an undisclosed four-figure sum, which he donated to Katrina relief.
Twitter analytics and CRM SaaS for creators, featuring thread scheduling and a Chrome extension.
Link-in-bio page builder, short URL shortener, and QR code generator for marketers. Indie hacker project acquired by fellow founder for $50,000 via seller financing in April 2025.
Information site for people preparing for US military basic training, sold together with its .org twin. Bright Mountain Media disclosed buying both on 11 June 2013 for $2,500.
Long-running WordPress tutorial and review blog doing 54,648 monthly pageviews and $3,754 monthly profit. Owner Daan Tol, who had bought it from Oliver Dale for $205k in 2016, resold it for $160k.
Web app that gave website owners on-demand usability feedback by arbitraging Mechanical Turk workers. Dan Shipper built it as a UPenn sophomore and sold it for $3,500 in early 2012.
Outdoor and gear review site monetised with Amazon Associates, affiliate networks and display ads. Mushfiq Sarker bought it for $23,000 in April 2020, grew it to about $3,900/month and sold it in March 2022 for $175,000 to a private buyer from his newsletter.
Free Telegram anti-spam bot that CAPTCHA-challenged new group members, reaching 20.7M users across 190,621 chats without ever being monetized. Its solo developer sold @shieldy_bot to 1inch for $329,000 in 2021.
Premium WordPress plugin that turned an ordinary blog into an affiliate review site with ratings and comparison tables. It did over $250,000 in licence sales in 18 months before Dan Grossman sold the rights in 2011 for $90,000.
Design subscription agency (unlimited monthly design service) run for years by founder Santhiaroo as the core revenue source. The founder exited/sold Renlar in January 2026 to focus entirely on a new product, Sharebrand.
Freelance-writer community and newsletter with 3,000+ paid subscribers; acquired by freelancer-payments platform OutVoice in 2023 for six figures.
A small owner-operated SEO firm near Charlotte, NC doing content creation and online promotional campaigns for lead generation; sold through a Main Street business broker to Chicago agency Straight North.
Hosted, privacy-focused commenting system pitched as an ad-free Disqus alternative, built by Ashley Rich and Lewis Warren in 2018 and acquired by WooCommerce developer James Kemp of Iconic in April 2022.
Free WordPress plugin with 300,000+ active installs that locks an entire site or specific posts behind a single password. Solo developer Ben Huson, author of nearly 20 plugins, sold it to WPExperts in March 2022, which planned a commercial version.
Shopify app for customizing shipping rates by precise location, doing ~$200K ARR; acquired by Eyal Toledano's MicroAngel Fund for $425,000 plus 7% of future resale in August 2021.
Boulder, Colorado supplements ecommerce brand selling molecular hydrogen tablets, clinical and retail inhalers, dermal therapy devices and grounding mats. Onfolio Holdings disclosed acquiring the domains and business for a total purchase price of $120,000 in December 2020.
Hosted forum platform that let anyone create and run a modern-looking free forum, sold with sister domains eamped.com and makeforum.com. CrowdGather closed the asset purchase on 23 July 2010 for 970,859 shares valued at about $990,000, paid entirely in stock.
Military-affairs opinion blog written for service members and veterans. Bright Mountain Media bought it from Anthony Carr in February 2015 for $102,000: $27,000 in $1,500 monthly instalments plus 100,000 shares valued at $75,000.
Website screenshot API for capturing bulk screenshots of web pages via a simple REST endpoint. Founder Dirk Hoekstra was cold-DMed on Twitter and sold it to micro-PE firm XO Capital for $23,000 at about $550 MRR in late 2020.
Independent managed hosting service for Ghost publications, run single-handedly for 300+ customers at about $1.7K MRR. Founder Dan Rowden signed the purchase agreement in September 2025, selling it to Jannis of MagicPages.
PPOM (Product Options Manager) is a WooCommerce plugin that adds custom product option fields to online stores. It was acquired by Ionut Neagu's Vertigo Studio, which buys WordPress plugins doing $60k-$350k ARR; price undisclosed.
Hunting and outdoors website sold with its trademarks, logos, domain names, email lists and social accounts. Bright Mountain Media bought it from Christopher Fisher in June 2015 for $50,000.
Free forum-hosting platform sold together with 24 related domains including myfreeforums.com and greatboard.com. CrowdGather acquired it from GR8 Media on 15 April 2011 for $400,000: $300,000 cash plus 100,000 shares valued at $100,000.
Military-family blog publishing homecoming stories and content for deployed service members and their families. Bright Mountain Media bought it in March 2014 for $200,000, all cash at closing.
Military news and viral-content site with a large social following, monetised via display advertising. Bright Mountain Media bought it from Thomas Dale Wakefield (Eagle Empire LLC) for $100,000 payable on 1 July 2014.
Independent news site covering the US Coast Guard. Bright Mountain Media bought it in July 2013 for $7,000, with the seller staying on under a $500/month maintenance agreement for 36 months.
Directory built by 37signals that helped businesses find web designers by budget and location. Rather than shut it down, it was sold in July 2012 to a pair of entrepreneurs at its full $480,000 asking price.
Umbrella brand of small WordPress plugins and themes launched in 2017 by the AAWP/MH Themes developer; sold in early 2024 to a new owner found via Twitter (price undisclosed).
Real-time job search engine built on top of Twitter, surfacing hiring tweets as job listings. Solo maker Mohd Danish lists it on his portfolio as sold for $5,000.
UK modular HR software doing $40K annual revenue; sold to payroll provider KarbonPay for six figures in July 2022 after the founder hired an M&A consultant on Upwork to run the deal.
Lead generation website for franchise opportunities, run by the founders who later built DropInBlog. They sold it to their single biggest lead buyer for around $100,000 while living as digital nomads in Bangkok.
Android app built as a solo side project that had only 10-50 downloads and no revenue after a year on Google Play. Founder Lincoln W Daniel auctioned it and it sold two days later for $1,200.
Affiliate review site covering treadmills, exercise bikes and other fitness equipment, earning about $500 a month. Akshay Hallur sold it for $11,000 in 2019.
Failed-payment recovery SaaS built by Andrew Culver in 2013 and sold in 2015 to Matt and Joelle Goldman with Ken Johnson; price undisclosed.
Firefighting news website. Bright Mountain Media acquired the domain and all site content in April 2015 for $50,000, with the seller keeping a pay-per-click advertising arrangement on the site.
Email-tracking tool originally created by the Hunter.io team and run by Tom Benattar, acquired by mail-merge company Mailmeteor in October 2026; no terms disclosed.
Polish-built audio-to-text transcription SaaS (Laravel and Flask on AWS Transcribe) shipped as an MVP in about a month of after-work evenings. It reached roughly 30 registered users and almost no recurring revenue before being listed on SaaSPlace.io and sold in August 2020 to a Japanese buyer for $1,250.
UK productised SEO service selling guest posts, niche edits and link building through seobutler.com and a custom order-management system at orders.seobutler.com. Onfolio Holdings bought all the share capital of SEO Butler Limited from founder-owned i2W Ltd for $950,000 in October 2022.
Habits Garden was a gamified habit-tracker mobile app where users grow flowers by building habits; founder Marc Lou sold it for $10,000 at $450 MRR via a direct deal in 2023.
A hand-curated web directory of public APIs, grown from an open-source GitHub repo started in January 2019 to 50,000+ monthly page views mostly from organic search. An API company approached the founder and bought it for $23,000.
Firefighter and first-responder community and content website monetised through display advertising. Bright Mountain Media disclosed buying it on 21 June 2013 for $1,520.
Deliberately minimal email newsletter tool for individuals rather than commercial marketers, self-funded by Philip Kaplan and hosting roughly 30,000 newsletters sending about a million emails a month. MailChimp bought it in August 2011, nine months after launch, for undisclosed terms.
Spanish-language niche content site monetised with Google AdSense, averaging 368 EUR/month over the three months before sale. Sold in February 2022 for 8,000 EUR plus VAT (9,600 EUR, about $8.7k); the niche stayed confidential at the buyer's request.
WordPress plugin for white-labelling the wp-admin dashboard (branding, logos, menus) for agencies and their clients. Solo developer Morgan Hvidt sold it to Link Software LLC, a small serial acquirer of micro plugins; price undisclosed.
Twitter analytics and CRM tool for growing an audience on Twitter/X. Indie founder Tony Dinh sold it for $128,000 (at ~$14K MRR) to HypeFury after Twitter's 2023 API price hikes made the product costly to operate.
Direct-to-consumer clothing and accessories brand for firefighters with hand-drawn designs, founded in 2008 by Pedro Sostre III and James Love. Bright Mountain Media bought the business in December 2016 for $655,582 in cash, stock, assumed liabilities and forgiven advances; both founders signed three-year service agreements.
Japanese SaaS that added storefront and checkout functionality inside LINE Official Accounts so small merchants could sell directly in chat. The solo-built service was transferred to Tokyo-based INFLU Inc. on 1 July 2022 for an undisclosed sum.
Third-party hosted free forum community platform, successor to ezboard. CrowdGather purchased it and related domains from Inform Technologies on 7 September 2011 for $575,000 in cash, including user lists, databases and IP.
Aesop Interactive built Aesop Story Engine, a free WordPress plugin for building immersive visual longform stories, plus the Editus frontend editor and Story.AM. Solo founder Nick Haskins sold the company in November 2015 to an anonymous US East Coast buyer for close to his $100K asking price.
WordPress plugin giving admins a full file browser inside wp-admin, with 100,000+ active installs and a 4.8-star rating; acquired from Model Web by WPExperts in December 2024.
Domain discovery tool that paired a keyword with thousands of other words to surface available domains. Acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress, in July 2013; terms undisclosed.
Content site rebuilt on a $4,000 aged DR 51 domain that had previously hosted a WordPress plugin business. Sold in December 2020 for $7,000 to a private buyer through The Website Flip newsletter.
UK job board where startups posted tech and creative roles for free, used by tens of thousands of job seekers a month. Job-search engine Adzuna acquired it in October 2018 for an undisclosed sum.
A drop-shipping store selling homeschool curriculum at wholesale, grown through curriculum reviews and giveaways that built a large newsletter list. Sold for $150,000 to another company in the homeschool industry.
Solo-built automated browser and UI testing SaaS doing roughly $1,000 a month when San Francisco startup Runscope bought it in December 2014. Founder Justin Klemm called the payment a nice chunk of cash but not life changing, and bought the product back in 2016.
WordPress plugin that automatically builds branded social share images for every post, with customisable templates and developer hooks. Founded solo by Daniel Post and acquired by Jetpack (Automattic) in September 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
Event-florist software (formerly Ularas) built by a former florist to replace error-prone Excel pricing spreadsheets. At roughly $120k ARR and unprofitable during COVID, it was bought by competitor Curate in a $40,000 asset purchase that closed in about three weeks.
A data product aggregating information on indie products and startups for makers and indie investors researching acquisition opportunities; marked "Sold" on the founder's public project ledger.