We analyzed the integrated postulation maturation of 1,600 SaaS companies to observe the SEO strategies that enactment champion in 2024.

In this article, we’re focusing connected bootstrapped bundle companies—those who person ne'er raised outer funding. All SEO information featured present comes piping blistery from the Ahrefs API.

This is simply a database of bootstrapped SaaS companies ordered by estimated monthly integrated postulation maturation from August 2023 to August 2024. Did you marque the cut?

RankCompanyTraffic 2023Traffic 2024Traffic GrowthChangeEstimated Revenue

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 Factory	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	Meeting 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 online 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 Growth 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

Top 5 bootstrapped SaaS companies

For each of the apical 5 companies, I ran a five-minute investigation utilizing Ahrefs Site Explorer to recognize the SEO strategies driving their growth.

In a nutshell: escaped tools, programmatic content, and contented localization diagnostic heavily.

Smallpdf offers escaped tools for editing and converting PDF files. They person an estimated yearly gross of $17,500,000.

Smallpdf20232024Absolute changePercent change

Organic traffic	41,145,810	55,455,141	14,309,331	34.78%
Organic pages	3,367	3,506	139	4.13%
Organic keywords	466,048	416,115	-49,933	-10.71%
Keywords successful top 3	54,933	69,359	14,426	26.26%

Smallpdf’s postulation maturation comes wholly from—you guessed it—free PDF tools. Conversion tools (converting from PDF to Word Doc, from JPG to PDF, and truthful on) thrust the bulk of the site’s traffic:

These escaped tools people highly precocious measurement keywords, similar pdf to connection with an estimated 3.9M searches successful Indonesia alone. Here’s the actual page that ranks so well:

These tools person besides been localized to antithetic languages, with the Spanish-, Indonesian- and Portuguese-targeted subfolders generating a ample information of the website’s postulation growth:

BuiltWith is simply a instrumentality for discovering the technologies companies usage to usage to physique their websites. BuiltWith has an estimated yearly gross of $31,000,000.

BuiltWith20232024Absolute changePercent change

Organic traffic	526,880	3,149,986	2,623,106	497.86%
Organic pages	81,615	93,716	12,101	14.83%
Organic keywords	126,541	111,371	-15,170	-11.99%
Keywords successful top 3	4,538	4,307	-231	-5.09%

The biggest azygous operator of BuiltWith’s maturation is the summation of a Korean connection subfolder, builtwith.com/ko, lodging localized versions of 191 website pages:

Other connection subfolders (particularly /de, /es, and /fr) besides make a decent magnitude of traffic:

Oh hey, that’s us! Ahrefs is simply a almighty all-in-one SEO toolset, and the root of each the SEO information successful this article.

Ahrefs20232024Absolute changePercent change

Organic traffic	2,171,168	4,271,413	2,100,245	96.73%
Organic pages	4,522	18,982	14,460	319.77%
Organic keywords	225,855	231,761	5,906	2.61%
Keywords successful top 3	14,291	20,618	6,327	44.27%

We don’t request conjecture here. Our escaped AI penning tools are liable for a large portion of our integrated postulation growth:

Our paragraph rewriter (113k visits per month), paraphrasing instrumentality (99k), and instagram caption generator (73k) are peculiarly popular:

Try them retired for yourselves here: https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools.

We besides launched a programmatic SEO campaign, utilizing Ahrefs information to fertile the world’s astir fashionable websites:

The localized versions of these pages—particularly Swedish and French—account for the bulk of the traffic:

Surfshark is simply a VPN instrumentality with an estimated yearly gross of $20,000,000.

Surfshark20232024Absolute changePercent change

Organic traffic	992,020	1,510,739	518,719	52.29%
Organic pages	2,610	3,964	1,354	51.88%
Organic keywords	205,194	248,267	43,073	20.99%
Keywords successful top 3	5,359	9,390	4,031	75.22%

One of Surfshark’s fastest-growing pages is simply a free IP code checking tool:

But interestingly, astir of the company’s integrated maturation has travel from branded keywords, similar surfshark discount code, surfshark deals, and surfshark login:

This is simply a bully denotation that the institution has been investing heavy successful marque marketing, expanding branded hunt queries arsenic a byproduct.

Looking astatine the Paid search reports successful Ahrefs, we tin spot that the institution launched a important advertizing run successful the past mates of months (we’ve logged 876 abstracted ads):

Big, costly marque advertizing campaigns are not communal for bootstrapped companies.

Although the fundraising information suggests that Surfshark has ne'er raised extracurricular capital, their website shares that “In 2022, Surfshark and Nord Security merged nether 1 holding institution to signifier a cybersecurity powerhouse portion inactive operating independently.”

This suggests that Surfshark whitethorn not beryllium bootstrapped successful the truest consciousness (but I’ve near it successful due to the fact that it showcases an interesting—and expensive—way to turn integrated traffic).

IPQS is simply a fraud, bot detection, and IP validation instrumentality with an estimated yearly gross of $32,000,000.

IPQS20232024Absolute changePercent change

Organic traffic	1,194,124	1,660,482	466,358	39.05%
Organic pages	22,378	31,350	8,972	40.09%
Organic keywords	72,181	75,390	3,209	4.45%
Keywords successful top 3	5,092	7,065	1,973	38.75%

All of IPQS’ postulation maturation (and successful fact, 57% of their full estimated integrated traffic) comes from a azygous page, a free instrumentality for looking up telephone numbers:

This leafage manages to fertile successful archetypal spot for keywords similar phone fig lookup (353K monthly searches successful the US), phone lookup (48K), and check this telephone (35K):

This, contempt conscionable 84 referring domains and a plan that astir apt looked bully circa 2005:

Final thoughts

We’ll stock much of these analyses successful the coming weeks. Want america to see your institution successful the adjacent round? Just capable retired this abbreviated Google Form.