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Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

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Re: Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

#41

Post by willio58 »

mattm wrote: post #35

> I built a SaaS in a few hours. It does its job better than tools people pay real money for. It's easy to build something for yourself that solves your own use case. You know how you work and what's important to you. Most of the effort in software goes into understand people other than you and building guardrails for them. > Whatever niche tool you’re sketching this week, a thousand people can prompt a working versi…

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

Fully agreed. It's also just a time saver. People are lazy, and I don't mean that in a bad way, just that people don't really want to sit there and explain to an agent exactly what they want software to function like. In fact, most people don't even actually know what they want software to function like.

It doesn't just stop at humans either. When I recently started creating my smart budgeting app, Claude pointed me to use Clerk for auth. So not even the AI wants to build everything from scratch.

Re: Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

#42

Post by sodapopcan »

lekevicius wrote: post #2

Unrelated, but since I see that the author posted this to HN: for a reader like me who likes to select text / fidget with mouse clicks as I read, this website is a nightmare.

Has it been fixed? What was the effect, I'm so curious now.

Re: Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

#43

Post by Terr_ »

Multicomp wrote: post #34
fraywing wrote: post #18

Adding to the topic rather than dog piling onto the website critique: I think "the context" the author defines also includes harder to unlock peripheral components that makes software products in 2026 defensible . For example, security is getting harder not easier. Enterprise trust rides on needing to have up-to-date knowledge on data regulation as well. Relationships, brand maturity, discovery; all of that becomes r…

In a way, this new dynamic of 'everyone can code' reminds me of the Unbundling -> Bundling -> Unbundling cycle of how entertainment media went from 3 broadcast channels to cable channels to web videos to our current state of bundled streaming services, with no end in sight. Not to forget DVD shipping eras (Sony should not discontinue physical game sales, someone needs to get us silicon/holographic/terabyte recording…

> Morlocks vs Eloi

We will either be experts in asbestos chemistry, safety mechanisms, and remediation... or we'll be helping people tweak it for sale as kitchen sponges and pinatas.

Re: Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

#44

Post by risyachka »

>> Because AI is crushing small standalone software

The only thing AI is crushing is newcomers.

Standalone software has expertise and distribution, the only 2 things that matter and that your new software does not have.

Also the needs of a business have nothing to do with software you vibe code for yourself. Its compliance, backups, reliability. Not a few features claude did for you.

Re: Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

#45

Post by Adrig »

jerf wrote: post #29
Adrig wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fable helped me edit since I'm not a native English speaker, so I might not catch these subtleties. Thought and structure are my own

A general question for HN: Are there any translation services that I can recommend that people use instead just asking a standard AI to translate in the naive way? I'm saddened by the number of times I'm seeing non-native speakers get tarred with using an AI because the naive way an LLM translates slathers its own style on top of the translation rather than being a more faithful translation.

Standard translation services lack the understanding of LLMs and LLMs are hilariously prone to these AI tells, even when you ask to avoid them.

I try to learn writing and copywriting directly in english to avoid the awkward translation effect, but I focus more on the rythm, structure and content than the prasing itself

Re: Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

#46

Post by whinvik »

I kind of get what the article is saying. But I am looking at it from a different perspective.

The same set of things like skills, and custom tools etc can actually be used to get faster to the a product that kind of fits 1000 customers. But the change is that one can build even more custom things for some customers with those skills and tools.

Last year I built a custom integration for a customer in 2 weeks. Now I can probably do it in 2 days. What does that mean for the future, I have no idea, but surely getting custom solutions like this would be more of a moat not less.

Re: Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

#48

Post by tahoemph999 »

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

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

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

Re: Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

#49

Post by rkuodys »

I expect full circle on this one. Short term - many enthusiasts build stuff. I can fully imagine someone in a given company creating something over the weekend and persuading manager to adopt the system. However, 6 months pass, the person now moved into new role or left a company, nobody knows the product and it becomes just another SaaS just without working support behind it. So for short term it is definitely bring some losses. Long term I think it will bite those who dropped the software. Over-customisation for the needs of everyone is probably here to stay in my opinion

Re: Micro-SaaS Is Dead. Service With A Software Replaces It

#50

Post by sandcat_ »

mattm wrote: post #35

> I built a SaaS in a few hours. It does its job better than tools people pay real money for. It's easy to build something for yourself that solves your own use case. You know how you work and what's important to you. Most of the effort in software goes into understand people other than you and building guardrails for them. > Whatever niche tool you’re sketching this week, a thousand people can prompt a working versi…

This is just the old argument in favour of SaaS, though. The article is pointing out that those long-standing rules may no longer make sense, in a world where 1. it no longer takes even a weekend to build the niche, perfectly custom tool and 2. the maintenance / feature requests side is also just a prompt away.

At my job (we're somewhere in the transition between startup -> enterprise), we still use a lot of SaaS and are continuing to do so, but even there we're starting to move off certain platforms (Pendo, is a recent casualty) as we've realized in many cases we can just build it ourselves, pay drastically less, and actually get to control how it all works.

My suspicion, though I could be wrong: SaaS will move more and more towards focusing solely on the enterprise. Personal users and startups will have a harder time justifying both the cost and lack of flexibility of pure software SaaS. Enterprise will continue to be ok with paying the costs in exchange for compliance and vendor stuff and integration and whatever else they care about.

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