The archive · Developer & Business Tools · Product decision · 2015–2017
Sitebulb's two-person team launches a desktop SEO crawler that sells pre-built reports
Two bootstrapped founders launched Sitebulb in 2017: a desktop SEO crawler for 500k+ page sites that auto-builds audit reports and visualizations.
Sitebulb
What the business is
Sitebulb is a desktop website crawler and auditor for Windows and Mac aimed at SEO consultants and agencies: it crawls sites of 500,000+ pages, then does the data processing, graphs and hints that turn a crawl into an audit report.
How it started
Patrick Hathaway and Gareth Brown ran a bootstrapped two-person SEO software business — they had been selling URL Profiler for Windows and Mac for about three years — when they spent roughly two years building Sitebulb and launched it on 2017-09-28. Their aim, stated in the launch post, was the reporting capability of a SaaS crawler with the convenience of a desktop crawler, and their pitch against cloud tools was immediacy: set up a crawl, watch URLs appear within a minute, view audits offline, and keep every byte of data local.
What happened
The launch thread mixed praise with pushback: beta users called Sitebulb genuinely useful and said it was already a key tool on client work alongside Screaming Frog, while skeptics priced it at £705.60 a year including VAT against Screaming Frog's £149, asked for Linux and App Store versions, and debated whether cloud crawlers were inherently faster. The founders answered each objection, promised yearly plans if demand showed up, and leaned on what they had built: unlimited domains and URL volumes at desktop prices, with the reporting work done inside the product.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
Sitebulb is a desktop website crawler and auditor for Windows and Mac, aimed at SEO consultants and agencies: it crawls sites of 500,000+ pages, then runs the data processing, graphs and hints that turn a crawl into an audit report. The bet behind the 2017-09-28 launch was that SEOs would pay a monthly subscription for that saved time — for the reporting itself — rather than for raw crawling, where cheap incumbent Screaming Frog already dominated.
Patrick Hathaway and Gareth Brown built Sitebulb over about two years while running a bootstrapped two-person shop that had sold URL Profiler for Windows and Mac for three years. Their technical wedge was writing crawl data to disk instead of holding it in RAM, which removed the scale ceiling that made other desktop crawlers resource-hungry, and then shipping the analysis in the product: graphs, hints and Crawl Maps that previously meant hours of manual work.
The Show HN thread reached 120 points with 72 comments. Beta users said they were already running client audits through Sitebulb, while the main pushback was price — about £705.60 a year with VAT versus Screaming Frog's £149 — plus requests for Linux and App Store builds. The founders defended the premium as payment for saved auditing time, promised yearly plans and platform support by demand, and kept the product bootstrapped with no funding disclosed.
What has to be true
- It sold saved hours, not crawl features: SEOs still had to turn raw crawl data into reports, and Sitebulb did that processing and visualization inside the product.
- Desktop convenience was real at the time: crawls started within a minute, ran on staging sites behind VPNs, kept data local, and audits worked offline, which cloud crawlers could not match.
- Writing data to disk instead of RAM removed the scale ceiling, so 500,000+ page crawls ran on a laptop without the dedicated machines agencies used for other crawlers.
- Two years of building, funded by three years of URL Profiler revenue, meant no investor clock forcing a premature or weaker launch.
What can be applied
Bootstrapped two-person teams can beat entrenched tools by selling time saved: automated audit reporting on top of familiar desktop crawling justified a price several times Screaming Frog's.
Aftermath
As of 2017-09-28 Sitebulb was live for Windows and Mac with a free 14-day trial and monthly billing, with yearly plans, Linux builds and further features listed as demand-driven roadmap items. Beta users in the launch thread said they were already using it on client work; the company remained a bootstrapped two-person team with no funding disclosed in the material.
Sources
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