Case Study: Hiri achieves 25% of total revenue and a Linux market breakthrough with Ubuntu

Hiri successfully monetises their snap to dispel myths around proprietary Linux apps

Hiri is a Dublin startup (founded 2012) that builds a business-focused email client for Microsoft Exchange as an alternative to Outlook. Although Linux users lacked a solid Exchange client, Hiri hesitated to pursue the platform because of a common belief that Linux users won’t pay for proprietary software; previous tarball releases were hard to install, fragmented across distributions, and costly to support.

With help from Canonical, Hiri packaged the app as a snap and published it in the Snap Store, making installation and updates simple across distributions. The move paid off: the snap fixed about 90% of existing Linux users’ issues, reduced support overhead, and now accounts for 25% of Hiri’s total revenue, demonstrating that Linux users will pay for quality proprietary software.

Hiri

Dave Power

Co-Founder