Building a $51k/mo ecosystem of small apps

Sorin Alupoaie researched a niche and built a solution to a common problem. Then he built another. And another... Now, Swifteq is a €44k/mo portfolio of apps.

Here's Sorin on how he did it. 👇

Building a €44k/mo portfolio

I’m a software engineer at heart. I’ve been building stuff for as long as I can remember, mostly in the web and SaaS world. Before Swifteq, I actually tried to launch another product that didn’t really take off, but it taught me a ton about shipping fast, talking to users, and not falling in love with the wrong ideas.

In 2020, I started Swifteq as a solo founder. We build apps for the Zendesk ecosystem that help support teams work smarter and use Zendesk more effectively. Think quality-of-life tools for agents and admins. Today, we have a suite of products on the Zendesk marketplace, including ticket and help center translation, an agent copilot, automation tools, and a few others that focus on efficiency and productivity.

Right now Swifteq is doing around €44k in MRR. Growth isn’t perfectly smooth every month, but the overall trend has been solid. Some months jump more than others, some are quieter, but it keeps moving in the right direction and that’s what matters.

Building the right kind of career

I had the itch to start a business for a while before I actually started. Of course, the financial upside matters, but what really pushed me forward was independence. I wanted to be responsible for my own wins and my own mistakes, not stuck somewhere deep in a giant org where decisions are made far above my head.

I love building things and the constant learning that comes with it. You think you’ve figured something out, then a week later, you realize you had barely scratched the surface. That cycle keeps you sharp. It’s addictive.

Impact is a huge part too. I didn’t want to be another engineer buried in the back of a big company, doing work that never saw the light of day. With Swifteq, every decision I make can have a direct impact on customers. When someone tells me one of our apps makes their day smoother or saves them time, that’s incredibly motivating.

And one more important part: the type of business I chose to build. Swifteq is fully bootstrapped and founder-owned. I’ve been through the investor route before, and I didn’t enjoy it. It killed the independence and added tension where I didn’t want it. Building a lean, profitable, bootstrapped business fits the life I want. It lets me support my family, be present with my kids, and build something meaningful without sacrificing everything else.

Researching and building the first app

For the first version of Swifteq, I tried to keep things simple. I started by choosing exactly who I wanted to serve —  support teams working on Zendesk. That gave me a clear focus from day one.

Then, I spent a lot of time digging through community forums. Zendesk has its own community site, but there are also independent places like Support Driven where support folks openly share their pain points. I read tons of threads, tried to understand what people were actually struggling with, and looked for patterns.

One issue I saw over and over was agents having to manually merge multiple tickets created by the same customer. It was tedious, and it pulled people away from actual customer problems. There were already some solutions on the market, but they weren’t great, and they were pretty pricey for what they did. So I built a solution that automatically merged duplicate tickets based on predefined rules. Agents stopped wasting energy on busywork, and that became my first app. It's called Merge Duplicated Tickets.

From there, it was all about shipping and iterating. I built a simple version, put it in front of real users, collected feedback, and kept improving it. That loop has been the foundation for every Swifteq product since: listen, build, test, repeat.

Navigating platform risk

One major challenge is platform risk. Swifteq is built on top of Zendesk. There are benefits like built-in distribution, exposure on the marketplace, and an existing customer base. But the flip side is that your entire business is tied to decisions you can’t control. When Zendesk releases new features that overlap with what I build, it can hurt.

It already happened with one of my apps that helped customers clean up attachments for compliance and storage reasons. Zendesk shipped a similar capability natively, and that will probably cost me around two thousand in MRR. It’s not catastrophic because I have multiple apps, but it is painful and it increases churn.

To deal with this, I try to spread the risk. I’ve started exploring other platforms. I build multiple apps instead of relying on a single one. I keep an eye on new trends and gaps in the market. But it’s still an ongoing challenge.

If I had to start over, I would probably avoid building directly on a platform. I’d go for a standalone SaaS, something I fully control.

A straightforward stack

I stick to tools I know well. The stack is pretty straightforward:

• On the front end, I use React.

• The API layer runs on Node and talks to MongoDB.

• For anything that needs heavier backend processing, I use Python with Flask.

• Everything lives on AWS. It’s simple, fast to ship with, and easy for me to maintain as a solo founder.

Organic growth

So far the strategy has been: Build genuinely useful tools, make them easy to find, stay connected with the ecosystem, and keep showing up with helpful content. It’s not flashy, but it works.

Communities

Growing Swifteq has mostly been about staying close to where Zendesk customers already hang out and being useful to them.

Free tools

One of the most effective channels has been free apps. We have a few simple, genuinely helpful tools on the Zendesk marketplace, like export utilities and an advanced search app that improves on a weak native experience. These are widely used and bring in a steady stream of people who discover the rest of our products. Because they all share the same account system, I often see free users exploring our paid apps. I don’t have detailed attribution yet, but the traffic is definitely there.

SEO

Content has also been a long-term play. We publish SEO-focused articles that bring in relevant traffic from Google, and we keep a weekly newsletter going to everyone using our apps, both free and paid. Even if the SEO curve isn’t explosive, it’s stable and it compounds. The newsletter keeps us top of mind and occasionally sparks upgrades.

Partners

Then there’s the partner angle. Over time I’ve built relationships with two groups: Zendesk employees on the customer-facing side, and independent Zendesk partners and consultants. The second group has been especially helpful.

They implement Zendesk for clients and often recommend our apps when they run into gaps. There’s no formal partner program in place yet, but the informal connections already generate meaningful referrals. Zendesk employees recommend us for things where we don’t overlap with Zendesk features. They will always prioritize the official suite of tools, so staying visible without being annoying is the key here.

Needed improvements

What can be improved? I see a few areas. I need better tracking to actually measure referral conversions and upsell rates between apps. I also want to produce more video content and lean into founder-led content on LinkedIn. There’s potential in doing walkthroughs of AI features, maybe even short training videos focused on customer service workflows.

There’s also an opportunity to formalize partnerships. A structured setup program or a simple referral incentive for Zendesk partners could help. And attending conferences like Zendesk Relate would get us in front of more consultants and employees.

Portfolios reduce risk and increase revenue

Our business model is simple. Swifteq is a portfolio of small, focused SaaS apps that plug into Zendesk. Each app solves a very specific problem that Zendesk doesn’t handle well, and everything runs on a recurring subscription. Because each app is lightweight and solves a clear pain point, customers can try exactly what they need without committing to a giant bundle.

Offering multiple apps helps stabilize and grow revenue. When you have a portfolio instead of a single product, you reduce platform risk and create natural upsell paths. Users who discover one useful tool often explore the rest.

So the model is recurring subscriptions across a portfolio of micro SaaS products, and growth has been driven by a mix of free tools, content, strong presence in the ecosystem, and steady improvements to each app.

Five pieces of advice

If you’re just getting started, here are the things I wish someone had drilled into my head years ago:

Focus on distribution

If you’re a developer, your instinct is to build. You sit down, write code for months, maybe years, and only then start thinking about customers. That’s how most of us start, and it’s a huge mistake. Building is the easy part. You need to keep marketing and distribution in mind from day one. Talk to people. Hang out where your audience hangs out. Learn what they actually struggle with. Look for patterns, not one-off complaints. Steve Blank calls it customer discovery for a reason.

Once you find a real problem, building the solution is only half the job. The harder half is figuring out how customers will find you. Cold emails and random outreach are fine in the early stages when you’re validating, but they don’t scale. Think about where your customers spend time and show up there as a helpful voice. Share knowledge, give advice, build credibility long before you try to sell anything.

Hire earlier than you think you should

If you get to the point where you’re making some revenue, don’t let yourself stay trapped in the builder cycle. Hire a developer earlier than you think. You need mental space for marketing, strategy, and distribution. Not just time, but actual headspace.

Price high

Pricing is another big one. Don’t price too low. It attracts low-commitment customers who never give feedback and churn easily. And if you’re selling to enterprise, you need to price like you’re selling to enterprise. Long sales cycles, security reviews, legal redlines, endless demos. You can’t charge pocket change for that level of effort.

Don't isolate yourself

Don’t isolate yourself. Solo founding doesn’t mean being alone. I’ve found it important to stay connected with people I respect and who support what I’m doing. I don’t have a formal mentor, but I’m picky about who I learn from. Listen to people who have already done what you’re trying to do. Podcasts, books, communities, anything that exposes you to real experience. Startups for the Rest of Us has been incredibly valuable for me, but there are plenty of great sources out there.

Protect your energy

And finally, protect your energy. Burnout is the only real failure mode for bootstrapped indie hackers. You’re not going to run out of investor money because you don’t have any. You’re not going to be fired. You’ll fail only if you burn out and give up. So take care of yourself. Exercise, have hobbies, spend time with people you love. Keep your mental health in check. A sustainable pace beats hero sprints every time.

Personally, I spend time with family, I exercise, I keep hobbies. I do a lot of fishing. Since I live by the sea, I can take an hour or two to reset when I feel stressed. It clears my head and I come back sharper.

Getting outside of platform risk

Looking ahead, I’m at a bit of a crossroads moment. Swifteq has been growing, and I’m proud of what I’ve built, but the platform risk is very real. Zendesk has been rolling out more AI features, and some of them overlap directly with what I offer. When that happens, I lose revenue, and it’s demoralizing. It makes me question how far I can realistically scale a business that depends so heavily on someone else’s roadmap.

My short-term goal is to keep improving what I have. I’ll continue investing in AI, building new tools, and finding new ways to help support teams. There’s still plenty of value I can create, and the business isn’t anywhere near its ceiling yet.

But at the same time, I’m starting to carve out time each week to explore new opportunities outside of the Zendesk platform. If and when I build my next product, it will be a standalone SaaS. I want more control over the roadmap, the distribution, and the long-term risk. I’d like to build something where a single decision from a platform provider can’t wipe out months of work or a chunk of MRR.

The big question I’m trying to answer is whether Swifteq can realistically reach one or two million ARR while being tied to a single platform. I know it’s possible because others have done it, but I’m not yet convinced it’s the right path for me.

So, my plan is to keep pushing the current business forward, keep learning, and in parallel explore ideas that give me a more independent foundation. The experience I’ve gained so far has been invaluable, and whatever I do next will build on top of it.

Follow along

If you want to follow along or reach out, I’m most active on LinkedIn. You can also find all our products on the Swifteq website, and if you ever want to chat, you can drop me an email (sorin at swifteq dot com). I’m always happy to connect with other indie hackers and share experiences.