We analyzed the natural visitors progress of 1,600 SaaS firms to find the search engine marketing methods that work finest in 2024.
On this article, we’re specializing in bootstrapped software program firms—those that have by no means raised exterior funding. All search engine marketing knowledge featured right here comes piping sizzling from the Ahrefs API.
It is a checklist of bootstrapped SaaS firms ordered by estimated month-to-month natural visitors progress from August 2023 to August 2024. Did you make the reduce?
Rank | Firm | Visitors 2023 | Visitors 2024 | Visitors Development | Change | Estimated Income |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Smallpdf | 41,145,810 | 55,455,141 | 14,309,331 | 35% | $17.5M |
2 | BuiltWith | 526,880 | 3,149,986 | 2,623,106 | 498% | $31.0M |
3 | Ahrefs | 2,171,168 | 4,271,413 | 2,100,245 | 97% | $100.0M |
4 | Surfshark | 992,020 | 1,510,739 | 518,719 | 52% | $20.0M |
5 | IPQS | 1,194,124 | 1,660,482 | 466,358 | 39% | $32.0M |
6 | ExpressVPN | 1,620,815 | 1,927,577 | 306,762 | 19% | $14.9M |
7 | OpenWeather | 203,917 | 470,687 | 266,770 | 131% | $5.5M |
8 | Clockify | 600,071 | 859,005 | 258,934 | 43% | $5.5M |
9 | BambooHR | 652,833 | 808,660 | 155,827 | 24% | $237.8M |
10 | Surfer | 45,197 | 189,261 | 144,064 | 319% | $37.5M |
11 | Doofinder | 55,317 | 184,746 | 129,429 | 234% | $75.0M |
12 | Oxylabs.io | 92,671 | 207,640 | 114,969 | 124% | $375.0M |
13 | Todoist | 545,900 | 639,398 | 93,498 | 17% | $20.3M |
14 | Toggl | 295,570 | 388,062 | 92,492 | 31% | $14.7M |
15 | JetBrains | 2,712,320 | 2,796,818 | 84,498 | 3% | $252.1M |
16 | Zadarma | 130,940 | 214,538 | 83,598 | 64% | $175.0M |
17 | MXToolbox | 738,595 | 802,633 | 64,038 | 9% | $9.0M |
18 | TeamGantt | 120,783 | 176,899 | 56,116 | 46% | $5.0M |
19 | Mailtrap | 103,564 | 156,873 | 53,309 | 51% | $5.5M |
20 | GetResponse | 192,850 | 243,514 | 50,664 | 26% | $129.2M |
21 | DeviceAtlas | 59,267 | 109,341 | 50,074 | 84% | $19.0M |
22 | Elfsight | 65,359 | 104,938 | 39,579 | 61% | $8.0M |
23 | Vector Magic | 169,389 | 199,343 | 29,954 | 18% | $10.0M |
24 | Referral Manufacturing unit | 943 | 27,591 | 26,648 | 2826% | $5.5M |
25 | Crowdin | 17,602 | 43,155 | 25,553 | 145% | $17.5M |
26 | Kaspr | 10,476 | 33,515 | 23,039 | 220% | $5.5M |
27 | Wisepops | 13,698 | 36,295 | 22,597 | 165% | $3.0M |
28 | SavyCal | 11,926 | 33,984 | 22,058 | 185% | $5.5M |
29 | Voucherify | 37,111 | 58,832 | 21,721 | 59% | $5.5M |
30 | Buzzsprout | 97,961 | 118,040 | 20,079 | 21% | $617K |
31 | Assembly Room 365 | 5,738 | 25,637 | 19,899 | 347% | $500K |
32 | vFairs | 18,175 | 37,812 | 19,637 | 108% | $75.0M |
33 | Helpjuice | 73,249 | 92,177 | 18,928 | 26% | $6.0M |
34 | Yardi | 64,177 | 81,896 | 17,719 | 28% | $5.5B |
35 | SpyFu | 62,410 | 79,361 | 16,951 | 27% | $2.0M |
36 | Wappalyzer | 61,561 | 78,303 | 16,742 | 27% | $500K |
37 | Filemail | 142,226 | 158,133 | 15,907 | 11% | $1.0M |
38 | Float.com | 29,088 | 44,737 | 15,649 | 54% | $5.5M |
39 | Free on-line HTML editor | 29,523 | 44,269 | 14,746 | 50% | – |
40 | BrightLocal 🇺🇦 | 52,853 | 66,876 | 14,023 | 27% | $10.3M |
41 | ShortPixel | 6,192 | 20,006 | 13,814 | 223% | $10.0M |
42 | GetMyInvoices | 10,880 | 23,767 | 12,887 | 118% | $5.5M |
43 | Mangools | 67,615 | 80,324 | 12,709 | 19% | $5.5M |
44 | La Development Machine | 13,668 | 26,321 | 12,653 | 93% | $5.5M |
45 | Aha! | 135,156 | 147,570 | 12,414 | 9% | $100.0M |
46 | GTranslate Inc. | 7,739 | 20,125 | 12,386 | 160% | $5.3M |
47 | Slickplan | 13,270 | 24,857 | 11,587 | 87% | $1.0M |
48 | Uptime.com | 28,164 | 39,394 | 11,230 | 40% | $5.5M |
49 | Homerun | 23,049 | 33,883 | 10,834 | 47% | $38.4M |
50 | Glassnode | 13,321 | 24,111 | 10,790 | 81% | $5.5M |
Prime 5 bootstrapped SaaS firms
For every of the highest 5 firms, I ran a five-minute evaluation utilizing Ahrefs Web site Explorer to grasp the search engine marketing methods driving their progress.
In a nutshell: free instruments, programmatic content material, and content material localization function closely.
Smallpdf gives free instruments for enhancing and changing PDF information. They’ve an estimated annual income of $17,500,000.
Smallpdf | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | % change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Natural visitors | 41,145,810 | 55,455,141 | 14,309,331 | 34.78% |
Natural pages | 3,367 | 3,506 | 139 | 4.13% |
Natural key phrases | 466,048 | 416,115 | -49,933 | -10.71% |
Key phrases in prime 3 | 54,933 | 69,359 | 14,426 | 26.26% |
Smallpdf’s visitors progress comes solely from—you guessed it—free PDF instruments. Conversion instruments (changing from PDF to Phrase Doc, from JPG to PDF, and so forth) drive the vast majority of the positioning’s visitors:
These free instruments goal extraordinarily excessive quantity key phrases, like pdf to phrase with an estimated 3.9M searches in Indonesia alone. Right here’s the precise web page that ranks so nicely:
These instruments have additionally been localized to totally different languages, with the Spanish-, Indonesian- and Portuguese-targeted subfolders producing a big portion of the web site’s visitors progress:
BuiltWith is a device for locating the applied sciences firms use to make use of to construct their web sites. BuiltWith has an estimated annual income of $31,000,000.
BuiltWith | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | % change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Natural visitors | 526,880 | 3,149,986 | 2,623,106 | 497.86% |
Natural pages | 81,615 | 93,716 | 12,101 | 14.83% |
Natural key phrases | 126,541 | 111,371 | -15,170 | -11.99% |
Key phrases in prime 3 | 4,538 | 4,307 | -231 | -5.09% |
The largest single driver of BuiltWith’s progress is the addition of a Korean language subfolder, builtwith.com/ko, housing localized variations of 191 web site pages:
Different language subfolders (significantly /de, /es, and /fr) additionally generate an honest quantity of visitors:
Oh hey, that’s us! Ahrefs is a strong all-in-one search engine marketing toolset, and the supply of all of the search engine marketing knowledge on this article.
Ahrefs | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | % change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Natural visitors | 2,171,168 | 4,271,413 | 2,100,245 | 96.73% |
Natural pages | 4,522 | 18,982 | 14,460 | 319.77% |
Natural key phrases | 225,855 | 231,761 | 5,906 | 2.61% |
Key phrases in prime 3 | 14,291 | 20,618 | 6,327 | 44.27% |
We don’t want conjecture right here. Our free AI writing instruments are accountable for an enormous a part of our natural visitors progress:
Our paragraph rewriter (113k visits per thirty days), paraphrasing device (99k), and instagram caption generator (73k) are significantly standard:
Attempt them out for yourselves right here: https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools.
We additionally launched a programmatic search engine marketing marketing campaign, utilizing Ahrefs knowledge to rank the world’s hottest web sites:
The localized variations of those pages—significantly Swedish and French—account for almost all of the visitors:
Surfshark is a VPN device with an estimated annual income of $20,000,000.
Surfshark | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | % change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Natural visitors | 992,020 | 1,510,739 | 518,719 | 52.29% |
Natural pages | 2,610 | 3,964 | 1,354 | 51.88% |
Natural key phrases | 205,194 | 248,267 | 43,073 | 20.99% |
Key phrases in prime 3 | 5,359 | 9,390 | 4,031 | 75.22% |
Considered one of Surfshark’s fastest-growing pages is a free IP deal with checking device:
However curiously, many of the firm’s natural progress has come from branded key phrases, like surfshark low cost code, surfshark offers, and surfshark login:
It is a good indication that the corporate has been investing closely in model advertising, rising branded search queries as a byproduct.
Wanting on the Paid search experiences in Ahrefs, we are able to see that the corporate launched a considerable promoting marketing campaign within the final couple of months (we’ve logged 876 separate advertisements):
Massive, costly model promoting campaigns should not widespread for bootstrapped firms.
Though the fundraising knowledge means that Surfshark has by no means raised outdoors capital, their web site shares that “In 2022, Surfshark and Nord Safety merged below one holding firm to type a cybersecurity powerhouse whereas nonetheless working independently.”
This implies that Surfshark will not be bootstrapped within the truest sense (however I’ve left it in as a result of it showcases an attention-grabbing—and costly—method to develop natural visitors).
IPQS is a fraud, bot detection, and IP validation device with an estimated annual income of $32,000,000.
IPQS | 2023 | 2024 | Absolute change | % change |
---|---|---|---|---|
Natural visitors | 1,194,124 | 1,660,482 | 466,358 | 39.05% |
Natural pages | 22,378 | 31,350 | 8,972 | 40.09% |
Natural key phrases | 72,181 | 75,390 | 3,209 | 4.45% |
Key phrases in prime 3 | 5,092 | 7,065 | 1,973 | 38.75% |
All of IPQS’ visitors progress (and actually, 57% of their complete estimated natural visitors) comes from a single web page, a free device for trying up telephone numbers:
This web page manages to rank in first place for key phrases like telephone quantity lookup (353K month-to-month searches within the US), telephone lookup (48K), and examine this telephone (35K):
This, regardless of simply 84 referring domains and a design that in all probability regarded good circa 2005:
Closing ideas
We’ll share extra of those analyses within the coming weeks. Need us to incorporate your organization within the subsequent spherical? Simply fill out this brief Google Type.