What 37signals does

37signals is a privately held, bootstrapped software company founded in 1999 in Chicago (registered office in Oak Park, IL) and operating as a fully-remote organization across five continents. The company builds and sells a suite of productivity and communication products — Basecamp (project management), HEY (email), ONCE (calendar and Campfire chat), Fizzy (insurance technology), and Highrise (CRM) — distributed directly to consumers and small and mid-sized businesses via product websites on a self-serve, subscription basis with annual or monthly billing. It deliberately targets the 'Fortune 5,000,000' (small companies underserved by enterprise vendors) and refuses to sell customer data or monetize through advertising.

Underlying the product suite is the Ruby on Rails framework, invented at 37signals in 2004 and still maintained by the company; Rails is open source and powers platforms including Shopify, Coinbase, GitHub, Airbnb, Kickstarter, Square, Twitch, and Basecamp itself (the first Rails application). 37signals has continued to expand the Rails ecosystem with Hotwire (web and native mobile), Turbo, Strada, Solid Cache, Solid Queue, Mission Control, Kamal, Lexxy, Action Push Native, and Upright, alongside the Shape Up methodology (six-week development cycles with fixed time/budget and variable scope). After 2022, 37signals completed a cloud repatriation from AWS to on-premises infrastructure, citing roughly $1M in annual savings and $10M+ projected over five years.

The business model combines recurring software subscriptions with one-time book sales (Getting Real, REWORK, REMOTE, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work, Shape Up), supplemented by merchandise. The company has been profitable every year in business, holds no external funding, has no board of directors, and pursues no exit. Distribution relies on product-led growth through the product websites and community-led growth through the Rails developer ecosystem, with no enterprise sales function. Founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH, creator of Ruby on Rails) lead the company.

Name

37signals

Legal name

37signals LLC

Website

https://37signals.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

1999

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

37signals is a bootstrapped, profitable software company that builds and sells Basecamp, HEY, ONCE, Fizzy, and Highrise to small and mid-sized businesses globally via self-serve subscriptions, while also creating and maintaining the Ruby on Rails framework and an open-source developer ecosystem.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Project Management and Collaboration Software

NAICS

Software Publishers (5132), Software Publishers (513210), Custom Computer Programming Services (541511)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Developer Portals, SDKs & Documentation Platforms (BPAMADAG)

Keywords

• Project management software
• Team collaboration tools
• Email services
• Customer relationship management
• Open source frameworks

Headquarters

HQ city

Chicago

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Infrastructure, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Software Subscriptions: 37signals generates revenue through paid software subscriptions for Basecamp, HEY, and other products. Customers pay for products directly with no advertising or data monetization. The company follows a 'we don't sell you' philosophy, refusing to sell customer data or use personal information for targeted advertising. Subscription pricing includes annual and monthly billing options with refund policies for unsatisfied customers.
2. Book Sales and Content: 37signals publishes business and software books including Getting Real, REWORK, REMOTE, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work, and Shape Up. These books serve both as revenue streams and as marketing tools that drive awareness and credibility for the company's products and methodologies.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

37signals develops and sells subscription-based productivity and communication software, including Basecamp for project management and team collaboration, HEY for email, ONCE for calendar and team scheduling, Fizzy for insurance technology, and Highrise for customer relationship management. The company also invented the open-source Ruby on Rails web framework and maintains a suite of related open-source developer tools, while generating ancillary revenue from published business and software methodology books.

Product overview

37signals is a software company known for creating Basecamp (project management), HEY (email), ONCE (calendar/Campfire), and Fizzy (insurance). The company also invented Ruby on Rails and maintains an extensive open-source toolkit including Hotwire (for native mobile apps), Kamal (deployment), Solid Queue (job queuing), Mission Control (job monitoring), and Upright (monitoring). They operate a fully-remote team across five continents serving paying customers in over 160 countries. The company has been profitable every year since founding, with no investors or board of directors, maintaining independence while publishing influential business and software books including Getting Real, REWORK, REMOTE, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work, and Shape Up.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Basecamp: Project management and team collaboration software
• HEY
• Fizzy
• ONCE
• Highrise

Products and services

• Basecamp Project management and team communication platform for small and mid-sized businesses, enabling project collaboration, task management, automatic check-ins, Hill Charts for progress visualization, and company-wide discussions in a single centralized tool.
• HEY Email service for privacy-conscious individuals and small businesses, featuring a screening system where users act as examiners reviewing senders before they reach the inbox, with encryption and no data selling.
• ONCE Calendar and team scheduling application that also includes Campfire functionality for team chat, now available as an open-source app server for self-hosted deployment.
• Fizzy Insurance product offered by 37signals as an ambitious infrastructure experiment with pivoted architecture before launch.
• Highrise Customer relationship management (CRM) software for managing contacts, deals, and tasks, available as part of 37signals' product suite.
• Shape Up methodology book Free online book describing the Shape Up methodology invented at 37signals for software teams to design, develop, and ship excellent software every six weeks without burning out, available free at basecamp.com/shapeup.
• Business and software books (Getting Real, REWORK, REMOTE, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work) Published books on software design, business, and remote work authored by 37signals founders, sold as physical and digital books through bookshop.org and Amazon, used both as a revenue stream and as content marketing for the company's products and philosophies.

Quantifiable outcome

• $1 million in annual savings after cloud repatriation
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers1 record

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability3 records

Feature4 records

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Others

• Basecamp (the original product brand) – included as self-reference, omitted.

Direct peers

• Proton (ProtonMail): Privacy-focused email and productivity suite (Mail, Calendar, Drive, VPN). Closest direct competitor to HEY on the privacy-first, encrypted email positioning for both consumers and SMBs.
• Asana: Public work-management platform serving teams with project tracking, goals, and automation. Directly competes with Basecamp for SMB and mid-market project management budgets, though Asana's enterprise motion is far larger.
• Monday.com: Work operating system with project management, CRM, and team collaboration modules. Competes head-on with Basecamp in the SMB-to-mid-market segment and offers a broader feature set with active AI investments.
• Notion: All-in-one workspace combining docs, wikis, databases, and project tracking. Directly competes with Basecamp for SMB team-collaboration budgets and has aggressively expanded with AI features.
• Linear: Issue tracking and product-development platform popular with software teams. Competes with Basecamp and HEY for the software-development-team persona that 37signals targets with Shape Up–style workflows.
• ClickUp: All-in-one productivity platform spanning tasks, docs, chat, goals, and whiteboards. Competes with Basecamp on the 'one app for everything' positioning for SMB teams.
• Fastmail: Independent, paid email and calendar service emphasizing privacy and no advertising. Competes with HEY for users willing to pay for email outside of Big Tech free tiers.

Broad incumbents

• Atlassian (Trello): Trello (under Atlassian) is a direct project-management competitor to Basecamp, while Atlassian's broader Jira/Confluence portfolio overlaps with 37signals' software-team positioning. Atlassian's scale and enterprise reach dwarf Basecamp's.
• GitLab: DevSecOps platform built on Ruby on Rails. While not a direct product competitor, GitLab sits within the same Ruby/Rails developer ecosystem that 37signals stewards, and competes for developer mindshare and tooling budgets.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/37signals
• Xx.com/37signals
• Facebookfacebook.com/profile.php

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about 37signals