Online Business Tool

3 Online Business Tool Success Stories [2025]

•

Updated: April 17th, 2025

Struggling to manage your growing list of tasks? Consider venturing into the world of online business tools. Online business tools are software applications designed to streamline and optimize your business operations. This can range from project management tools, like Trello and Asana, to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, like HubSpot and Salesforce.

Developing or curating a suite of such tools helps businesses automate repetitive tasks, enhance productivity, and improve overall efficiency. The demand for reliable online tools is ever-increasing as more businesses move their operations online. This is not a simple endeavor; it requires a deep understanding of business needs and technical know-how.

Yet, the impact and potential revenue from relieving common business headaches can be substantial. For those interested in providing solutions through technology, creating or reselling online business tools offers a promising and meaningful business opportunity.

In this list, you'll find real-world online business tool success stories and very profitable examples of starting a online business tool that makes money.

1. Upvoty ($240K/year)

With a background in building online businesses, the founder needed a customer feedback solution for his own business.

The founder did not find any suitable tools for his SaaS platform, so he decided to build Upvoty on the side to “scratch his own itch.”

How much money it makes: $240K/year
How many people on the team: 0

My Customer Feedback Tool Makes $20K MRR

A case study on the founder of Vindy and Upvoty, who used his experience with his first startup to quickly grow his second startup to over 100 customers and $500 MRR, all while financing everything with the profits of his first company.

Read this case study

Read by 7,947 founders

2. stagetimer.io ($100K/year)

Lukas came up with the idea for Stagetimer during a casual visit to a recording studio where he noticed a problem: his friend was running back and forth to manually start and stop a timer for recordings. This inefficiency sparked Lukas's curiosity, and he began searching for a remote-controlled timer but found none that met this specific need. Seeing an opportunity, he decided to develop a basic version of such a timer over a weekend to test his skills and see if there was any interest.

To validate his idea, Lukas posted about his project on Reddit, seeking feedback from potential users. The response was encouraging, with users providing valuable suggestions that shaped the tool's development. This direct engagement highlighted the demand for a more convenient timing solution, and the enthusiastic feedback helped Lukas refine the Stagetimer based on real user needs.

Throughout the ideation phase, one of the main challenges was managing the development and feedback process while both Lukas and his wife, Liz, had full-time jobs. By leveraging a freemium model and continuously iterating the product in response to user feedback, they were able to prioritize features that customers genuinely found valuable. The key lesson here was that listening to paying customers' needs is crucial, and building a tool based on a clear market demand proved to be more successful than merely chasing interesting ideas.

How much money it makes: $100K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 0

How We Built An $8K/Month Niche Online Tool [Business Idea Validated On Reddit]

Stagetimer generates $8,000 in monthly revenue by providing a simple online countdown timer for event producers to keep meetings and presentations on time, built based on a need in the market and validated through word of mouth and search engine optimization.

Read this case study

Read by 24,764 founders

3. pgMustard ($36K/year)

When Michael Christofides and his co-founder Dave realized that many developers still needed help despite existing tools for slow PostgreSQL queries, they founded pgMustard and now boast $30k in annual recurring revenue.

How much money it makes: $36K/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 1

My PostgreSQL Side Project Makes $30K ARR

Case study about pgMustard, an online tool for developers helping troubleshoot PostgreSQL queries, growing steadily with $30k ARR, highlighting the importance of fixing pricing strategies and the impact of COVID on revenue streams.

Read this case study

Read by 1,672 founders