Ask HN: Are there any examples of profitable Google Chrome extensions? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are there any examples of profitable Google Chrome extensions?

43 pointsThomPete37 comments

I have been trying to see if I could find any Google Chrome extension that were either profitable or at least created revenue so far without any luck.

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Adblock Plus seems to have a very good business model extorting money from Google and others to show their ads. http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/adblock-plus-accused-of-sha...

That website popped up another one of those "Subscribe to get our newsletter" things that are infuriatingly common nowadays.

I always enter some variation of "nobody-likes-popups@digitaltrends.com" with the domain changed to suit in the vain hope it tips the balance in a discussion someday.

Ugh. Yeah I immediately leave the site when something like that pops up. I can't stand that.

I do the same. http://thosefuckingpopups.tumblr.com/ collects screenshots of people who join the cause.

Be aware that simply disabling Javascript by default and only whitelisting it when you need it gets rid of obnoxious brain stressers like these.

I have dumped Adblock Plus in favour of uBlock. Its low on memory and I don't think it does something like this.

Does uBlock work as well? I have thought about switching for the memory issues as well.

Is it worth pointing out that both times they were taken to court they won and maintain that no one can buy their way on to their whitelist?

Postman is a great example for this. https://www.getpostman.com/

They're based out of India and they have been featured in TC too. http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/26/postman-api-platform-1-mill...

I love postman, but how do they make money from it?

There are paid licenses for the standalone chrome app (not the extension) that let you do extra things like pre/post JS processing on requests. I think the licenses are also tied to their new sync feature which would let you sync a collection of requests (say all your API requests) across your team.

Oh, nice. I couldn't make heads or tails of their website. Seems like a lot of potential there, tho, for sure.

Postman is the only Chrome app, I have spent money on. Personally I did not find enough reasons to buy anything else in the Webstore.

These are extensions that make money and are just in Gmail.

Us (Streak YCS11) Yesware Boomerang Bananatag RightInbox Grammarly Cirrus Insight Minmax

I just signed up for the $39/mo plan for Streak CRM (www.streak.com) -- the product rocks and the support has been phenomenal (thanks, Andrew!).

You have to install the Streak Chrome extension to get the CRM inside your Gmail.

Synergyse provides interactive training inside Google Apps, our extension is deployed at over 2000 organizations supporting 2.5m+ users.

https://www.synergyse.com

Zenmate, One click VPN, have a premium version for €5 a month https://zenmate.com/

Honey (http://www.joinhoney.com/), the automatic coupon-finding extension does pretty well.

Our textbook price-comparison extension (http://www.OccupyTheBookstore.com) generated 5-figures during the January back-to-school rush.

Not sure how profitable it is, but Dimensions costs $1 per year and I’ve been using it for a while https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dimensions/oajdmmi...

I used to use Dimensions (paid, I was reminded just now), but the latest Chrome Dev Tools made the space very competitive.

LastPass's Chrome (and Firefox and IE) extension is a big part of their product and they definitely have some revenue.

The camelizer will create price alerts for amazon and makes money. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-camelizer/ghno...

I've created an anti-adware/malware extension called Extension Defender which has a free and paid offering, the paid offering has made around ~$750

https://www.extensiondefender.com/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extension-defender...

I've had a few emails about our Enterprise offering but I have not had to the time to really land the sales. I know there are alot of people on HN looking to acquire projects, if someone is interested in the project, you can contact me at contact@extensiondefender.com

Boomerang for Gmail

http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/06/09/turn-paywall-c...

Hola VPN is a very good example[0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9614993

Invisible hand: http://www.getinvisiblehand.com/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/invisiblehand/lghj...

I work at Virtru and we create software to allow people to send end-to-end encrypted email directly from Gmail. Our Chrome Extension is our most downloaded client and customers can purchase the Virtru Pro plan for more advanced features.

https://www.virtru.com/other-platforms/

JSTorrent : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jstorrent/anhdpjpo...

Mixmax seems to be doing well with a Chrome extension for Gmail. Not sure if they're profitable though.

https://mixmax.com/

(I found out about them because they use Meteor.js and blog about it)

I guess at this moment, the conclusion is: not really, but there are a few exceptions.

Rescuetime isn't extension-only, but the extension is arguably an important part of the product, and I like the product lot.

https://www.rescuetime.com/

The company I'm interning at right now works on a chrome extension that helps teams manage projects in GitHub. https://www.zenhub.io

We do alright with http://fetching.io. The extension itself is free but it's a critical part of our paid for product.

Could you please share Cloud vs Native usage ratio/%?

Entanglement is a game I considered buying. I have bought only Postman so far. In fact, I find the "native" desktop software for REST API testing less friendly than Postman.

So far most mentioned profitable extensions are for Gmail?!

You are looking for an extension that automatically generates money ? I'm afraid neither Google nor anyone has developed such thing yet.

Of course this was a joke.

Jokes aside Adblock Plus has got a pretty good business model based on ads whitelisting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus)

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