Sandee

What Sandee does

Sandee is a privately held US-based company operating a global beach discovery platform accessible at sandee.com. Founded in 2016 as Sandee, LLC and headquartered (per firmographic data) in Los Angeles, California, the platform serves individual consumer travelers seeking to identify beach destinations that match specific interests such as family-friendly, dog-friendly, nude, camping, disability-accessible, and surfing beaches. The company maintains a manually curated database covering thousands of beaches across at least 15 countries, including 11,453+ beaches in the United States, 4,632+ in Spain, 4,415+ in Italy, 2,881+ in Australia, 2,329+ in France, and 2,327+ in Croatia, with additional coverage in the Bahamas, Maldives, Greece, Portugal, Mexico, Cuba, Thailand, Morocco, and the British Virgin Islands.

The core product is a web-based beach directory built on a content management system with hierarchical country/region/city navigation, an interactive worldwide map, specialized filter pages, curated expert lists (most popular, most famous, best snorkeling, family-friendly, white sand, bioluminescent, shipwreck beaches), and an accompanying blog. The platform is augmented by a branded audio extension called "The Beaches Podcast" and a four-channel social media presence (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, YouTube). Users access the platform without registration or payment, and revenue is inferred to be generated through advertising and brand partnerships with travel and tourism businesses; a "License Our Data" footer link also suggests a potential B2B data-licensing channel.

The company operates as an independently held LLC with no disclosed venture capital or private equity backing, no funding rounds on record, no management team beyond founder and CEO Randall Kaplan, and headcount reported at 1-10 employees. Distribution follows a content-led, product-led growth model reliant on SEO-driven organic discovery, curated editorial content, and social media engagement rather than a sales-led or paid acquisition motion. No mobile app, API, or SDK is offered, and no AI or machine learning capabilities are disclosed.

Name

Sandee

Legal name

Sandee, LLC

Website

https://sandee.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2016

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Sandee is a privately held US company operating a free, consumer-facing global beach discovery platform with specialized filters for family, dog-friendly, nude, camping, disability-accessible, and surfing beaches. It serves individual travelers via SEO-driven web content, curated lists, a podcast, and social media, monetizing through advertising.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Beach Travel Directory

NAICS

Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services (519290)

akta.pro industry

PRIMARYTHAAAAAJ

Marine & Coastal Ecotourism (Diving, Snorkeling, Whale Watching)

Travel & Hospitality/Adventure, Amusement Parks & Ecotourism/Amusement Parks & Theme Parks

Keywords

• Beach discovery platform
• Travel directory
• Beach information services
• Travel content platform
• Beach database

Headquarters

HQ city

Los Angeles

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Revenue model

1. Advertising/Sponsorship: Platform appears to be free for end users. Revenue likely generated through advertising, sponsored content, or brand partnerships with travel and beach-related businesses. The platform drives significant traffic to beach destinations making it attractive for tourism-related advertising.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

Sandee operates a worldwide beach discovery platform that catalogs beaches across 100+ countries, enabling users to search and filter destinations by attributes such as family-friendliness, dog-friendliness, nude beaches, camping availability, disability accessibility, and surfing conditions. The platform combines a curated directory with original content (blog articles and a podcast) and offers a data licensing service for commercial use of its beach database.

Product overview

Sandee is a single unified beach discovery platform providing a worldwide beach directory with specialized filtering capabilities. The core offering is the beach directory itself, which enables users to find beaches by country, region, and specific attributes such as family-friendliness, dog-friendliness, nude beaches, camping accessibility, disability access, and surfing conditions.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Sandee Worldwide Beach Directory

Segments8 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature5 records

Scale indicators14 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Yelp: Yelp is a large local-discovery platform with beach and travel-related business listings supported by reviews and ads. It is a broad incumbent for ad-supported local-discovery queries where Sandee competes, though it lacks beach-specific filtering depth and curated editorial.
• Booking.com: Booking.com is a global OTA with extensive destination content and beach-specific landing pages powered by its booking inventory and ad stack. It competes for the same travel-intent queries Sandee targets and pulls ad spend away from smaller, travel-only ad-supported platforms.
• Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a global travel guide brand producing destination content across countries, regions, and themes including beaches. It competes with Sandee for destination-research intent on a much broader portfolio basis, and represents the kind of established content incumbent Sandee must out-niche to win.

Direct peers

• The Inertia: The Inertia is a surf and beach lifestyle media site covering destinations, travel guides, gear, and ocean conservation. It overlaps Sandee in surf/beach content, editorial voice, and brand sponsorship monetization, despite a more surf-centric focus.
• AllTrails: AllTrails is a specialized outdoor-activity discovery platform with filter-based browsing, global coverage, and a freemium/ad-supported model. It validates the same niche-vertical discovery playbook Sandee uses for beaches and represents the closest comparable business-model analog.
• Atlas Obscura: Atlas Obscura operates a curated database of unique destinations supported by editorial content, a podcast, and community contributions. It shares Sandee's model of monetizing deep, specialist destination content (curated lists + blogs + multimedia) for travel-intent audiences.
• Surfline: Surfline is a leading surf-forecasting and surf-media platform with global coverage of surf beaches, cameras, and editorial content. It owns the surf-specific beach category in which Sandee also competes (32,181+ surfing beaches), with the added advantage of real-time conditions.
• Roadtrippers: Roadtrippers is a map-based discovery platform for points of interest along routes, including beaches, parks, and quirky stops. It shares Sandee's filter-driven, map-first discovery UX and use-case segmentation, and targets similar mid-funnel travel-planning intent.
• Tripadvisor: Tripadvisor is the dominant global destination discovery and reviews platform covering beaches, hotels, and attractions worldwide. Sandee competes for the same top-of-funnel beach-research queries and ad/destination marketing budgets, albeit in a far narrower and more specialized niche.
• BringFido: BringFido is a U.S.-focused discovery platform for dog-friendly hotels, restaurants, and beaches. Its dog-friendly beach filter and pet-traveler audience closely mirror one of Sandee's strongest category filters (39,926+ dog-friendly beaches), making it the most direct comparator on filter-driven niche place discovery.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xtwitter.com/sandee?lang=en
• YouTubeyoutube.com/@sandee
• Facebookfacebook.com/sandeeapp
• Instagraminstagram.com/sandee

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

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 Sandee