MailCheap: Revenue, team and how it was built

Solo founder · 27 months after launch, revenue growing

Said US$245K a monthRecords US$263K MRRSaid less than the records

The founder took a twenty-year-old product category with no open-source entry and open-sourced all of it, which gave him millions of Docker downloads and 37,000 GitHub stars without a marketing budget. Revenue stayed small for a year. It multiplied when he turned the product toward people who automate their posting with n8n workflows and, from late 2025, with AI agents, which need an API-first scheduler and keep paying because they post without human effort.

Solo founder · 7 months after launch, revenue growing

It went where the users already were: an app in ChatGPT's app store, a plugin in Claude's directory and in Claude Code, and setups for Cursor and Codex, in the months when these directories were new. It charges per tool call instead of a share of ad spend, so a small advertiser starts at US$49 a month. And it applied to the platforms' own API programs; the company says Google approved it in June 2026 and Amazon admitted it to its partner network.

Team of 2 to 10 · 34 months after launch, revenue falling

It entered a market where people already paid for tools such as Taplio, and did the one core task better: writing the post. The founders' public posts brought the first customers and a lifetime-deal platform, and that deal paid for growth without investors. Subscriptions, partnerships with LinkedIn influencers, affiliates and a move to team plans came after.

Solo founder · 14 months after launch, revenue falling

A carousel needs both writing and design. Draft AI asks for a minute of speech instead and returns finished slides, plus scripts, threads and hooks from the same recording. It charges before the first result, so everyone who uses it has subscribed or started the trial of a paid plan.

Team of 2 to 10 · 42 months after launch, revenue falling

It put the founders' marketing method behind a simple form at the time when people were trying to do marketing with ChatGPT and getting weak answers. A one-time price matched a need that comes rarely, and free tools brought search traffic without paid ads.

Team of 2 to 10 · 27 months after launch, revenue falling

Many experts know that regular LinkedIn posts bring clients, but they do not have the time or the writing habit. UpLinked sells one narrow job, about one hour a week of LinkedIn posting for business-to-business experts, first in Dutch and later in English. Coaches and consultants who teach LinkedIn used it themselves and for their own clients, and the sellers wrote that this word of mouth brought every customer, with no paid ads. TrustMRR recorded US$200,908 of Stripe payments to the founding company up to October 2026. Monthly revenue fell by more than half in 2026, the business was listed for sale, and since late October 2026 another company is named as its operator.

Team of 2 to 10 · 34 months after launch, revenue falling

Two co-founders with full-time jobs elsewhere built a narrow tool for one post format that marketers found slow to design, and launched it on Product Hunt. A partner deal turned the editor into an SDK that other social media tools embed, which gave a second sales channel. Revenue peaked at US$14,386 in November 2025 and then fell to under US$4,000 a month by mid-2026, with the product still being rebuilt.

Solo founder · 6 months after launch, revenue falling

The founder was a LinkedIn ghostwriter with about 44,000 followers and a newsletter of about 17,000 readers, so he sold to an audience that already read him. He built the product around the interview that he used to do by hand for clients, instead of a text box that asks a model to write. The verified revenue grew from US$574 in April 2026 to US$19,343 in September 2026.

Team of 2 to 10 · 48 months after launch, revenue falling

The founders first ran a marketplace that paid creators in free products, and saw that their clients' results were decided inside the ad platforms. In 2024 they rebuilt the company around ad buying, sold it themselves through demos to agencies and brands, and added a plan where their own staff run the ads. Stripe shows revenue almost four times higher in March 2026 than in October 2025, then a fall.

Solo founder · 27 months after launch

The founder built it for his own inbox, published the code from the first day and launched it on Product Hunt the day after Christmas 2023, where he says it finished first. The open-source community, two newsletters and the GitHub trending page brought the first thousands of users. According to the Startup Founder Stories summary of his Indie Hackers interview, he then narrowed the product to a niche when larger competitors arrived and reached US$10,000 in monthly recurring revenue about a year after the first customer.

Team of 2 to 10 · 11 months after launch, revenue falling

It took a narrower job than the general AI design tools, mobile apps only, for people who build apps without design skills. The three founders reused what they had learned from four earlier design tools, built it in three weeks, and showed finished designs on X before the launch. Each new Gemini model gave them a better result and a new demo to post.

Team of 2 to 10 · 42 months after launch, revenue falling

The plugin lives inside Obsidian's community plugin store, which the founder says gave it organic growth with no ads or paid creators: 300,000 downloads by the end of 2024, 1 million by February 2026 and 2 million by October 2026. The code is free, so there was nothing to sell until the company added a managed layer on top: hosted models, web search and tools that work without any setup. One-time lifetime plans, first Believer and then Supporter, brought large payments in single months. TrustMRR, reading the company's Stripe account, shows US$913,644 of revenue in total and US$17,899 of monthly recurring revenue from 1,356 subscriptions on 27 October 2026, after a fall of about 51% from the best month, February 2026.

Solo founder · 11 months after launch, revenue falling

It named a problem that many builders saw in 2025 and 2026: screens written by AI coding tools look alike. It sold the fix inside those tools, as an MCP server for Claude Code, Cursor and other coding agents, first published on 29 March 2026. Stripe revenue in April was 12.2 times March. Since April revenue has fallen, and September was 37.2% below it.

Started small, grew after funding · 26 months after launch, revenue growing

Three founders treated each app as an experiment in pricing and paywalls. Lessons from Pixi, the first app, went into Cue. The studio rents the models, does not train them, and spends its effort on design, data and paid user acquisition, which its founders call the three Ds.

Team of 2 to 10 · 8 months after launch, revenue growing

It entered a crowded category in March 2025 with paid advertising instead of a personal audience, and it treated the economics of each ad channel as the product to optimize. Cheaper attribution let it test low-cost traffic, and weekly advances on App Store payouts let it put each week's earnings back into ads within days instead of 45. Adapty, the company whose software runs the app's subscriptions, published the figures under its own name.

Solo founder · sold 5 months after launch

Its result is a before-and-after picture of the user's own face, which a short video shows in seconds. The founder chose TikTok as the channel before he built the app, then tripled revenue from almost the same installs by moving and testing the paywall with Adapty.

Team of 2 to 10 · 25 months after launch, revenue falling

Said US$90K a monthRecords US$61.9K in JuneDid not hold

A developer in Bangalore formed a company with an American YouTuber who already had an audience of people who want faceless channels, so customers paid from the first day. Affiliates receive 33% of every payment and brought about a tenth of all revenue, and Meta ads brought more. Nobody could use the product without paying, so no free user consumed paid AI models. Verified revenue reached about US$85,000 a month for six months, and then fell by half.

Team of 2 to 10 · 19 months after launch, revenue falling

Said 500+ paying agenciesRecords 207 subscriptionsDid not hold

The founder had an audience before the product existed: a daily YouTube show about SEO since 2023 and an X account that has 62,000 followers today, so the first customers cost nothing. A developer co-founder built the software with AI coding tools. The product started as one plain rank tracker at US$19 a month, grew into a bundle at US$57 to US$2,997 a month, and by July 2025 the first payment of a new customer from a paid ad covered the cost of that ad.

Solo founder · 36 months after launch, revenue flat

The first customers came from a lifetime-deal sale on AppSumo, at a time when the product had no AI at all. That gave about a thousand users, word of mouth and a Powered by Guidejar link on every free guide. From April 2024 the founder sold subscriptions instead, and added AI writing, voiceover and translation to the paid plans, metered in credits.

Solo founder · 20 months after launch, revenue flat

It entered a crowded category, habit trackers, with a free tracker and a paid AI coach on top. The founder shipped 83 versions in 21 months, so the product changed every week or two. Many buyers pay for a year at once, and whatsthe.app read that the money in the last 28 days was almost twice the monthly recurring revenue.