Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs

#61

Post by samcrawford » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 7:11 AM UTC

lsv1 wrote: post #59

What makes this better than using the Google Docs API? I could have anyone write to a spreadsheet and in turn it would be updated when called on their API. In fact I do that for many small business clients of mine which don't want to deal with databases for things like their product catalog and pricing lists. Additionally you get version control, busier sites get the google doc scraped X times a minute as to not reac…

For me, as the author:

- Simplicity. It's fine for you to create an API via Google Docs, but I suspect it'd be tough for your (presumably) non-technical clients.

- Generated API docs

- Granular control of who sees what data and APIs

- Usage tracking (see who's using your APIs/data and how often)

- Easy integration for API clients: example code, no messing around with authenticating their Google account

I don't think you're wrong though: For publishers who already have their spreadsheets held in Google Docs and have setup an API, and are happy with that process, then there isn't a _huge_ benefit here.

That said, I've had quite a few emails overnight from people asking to support importing spreadsheets from Google Docs, so clearly they're missing something - I'll have to ask to find out whether it's something from my list above or something else.

Re: Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs

#62

Post by nodesocket » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 8:41 AM UTC

Honestly I think you are giving away too much on the free plan. You should try removing the free plan and have pricing like:

   Hobby => $8
   Business => $29
   Enterprise => Contact

Also, where are you located, since I noticed that you spell organization as organisation. :-)

Re: Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs

#63

Post by samcrawford » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 8:56 AM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #62

Honestly I think you are giving away too much on the free plan. You should try removing the free plan and have pricing like: Hobby => $8 Business => $29 Enterprise => Contact Also, where are you located, since I noticed that you spell organization as organisation. :-)

I wanted to encourage people here to give it a try and get some feedback. The splash page doesn't do a great job of selling it by itself; I think you need to try it to see the value. The Free tier allowances are probably a bit generous though.

It's worth noting that the costs for this really are tiny - just a couple of servers. I've done the sums, and even with the business tier costing $20, the profit margins are significant.

The biggest unknown is how much support each user will generate, and that's probably a good reason to raise the business price. Anyone who signs up before then will be offered the existing price of course.

Based in the UK. The site already does some work with geolocating the user (for giving localised pricing and also for inferring date formats when you upload spreadsheets), so I suppose I could localise spelling too ;)

Re: Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs

#64

Post by tn13 » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 9:03 AM UTC

nodesocket wrote: post #62

Honestly I think you are giving away too much on the free plan. You should try removing the free plan and have pricing like: Hobby => $8 Business => $29 Enterprise => Contact Also, where are you located, since I noticed that you spell organization as organisation. :-)

The correct English spelling is Organisation. People in America using American version of English tend to spell it as Organization.

Re: Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs

#65

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 9:03 AM UTC

samcrawford wrote: post #63

nodesocket wrote: post #62

Honestly I think you are giving away too much on the free plan. You should try removing the free plan and have pricing like: Hobby => $8 Business => $29 Enterprise => Contact Also, where are you located, since I noticed that you spell organization as organisation. :-)

I wanted to encourage people here to give it a try and get some feedback. The splash page doesn't do a great job of selling it by itself; I think you need to try it to see the value. The Free tier allowances are probably a bit generous though. It's worth noting that the costs for this really are tiny - just a couple of servers. I've done the sums, and even with the business tier costing $20, the profit margins are si…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs

#66

Post by berkay » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 9:06 AM UTC

samcrawford wrote: post #60

zmmmmm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stared at that for 10 minutes trying to find the spreadsheet. I assume there is a spreadsheet backing it? You should actually show people the spreadsheet - just seeing an API description without demonstrating that it runs off a simple spreadsheet almost kind of defeats the whole purpose of the service!

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, it is backed onto a spreadsheet effectively. Showing it is a good idea for the front page. But I don't think showing the spreadsheet in the API docs is so useful; the idea is to present a clean API to the users, and they don't even need to know that the data was originally from a spreadsheet.

+1 on showing the spreadsheet. It doesn't have to be on the docs, can be on the website. I'd put front and center, if you have this spreadsheet, it creates this API. You can even look into giving access to the sample spreadsheet for testing directly from the web pages.

Re: Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs

#67

Post by victorantos » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 9:13 AM UTC

I am actually working on something similar, called http://apifox.com it's not yet for public but it will be soon

Re: Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs

#68

Post by nodesocket » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 9:17 AM UTC

tn13 wrote: post #64

nodesocket wrote: post #62

Honestly I think you are giving away too much on the free plan. You should try removing the free plan and have pricing like: Hobby => $8 Business => $29 Enterprise => Contact Also, where are you located, since I noticed that you spell organization as organisation. :-)

The correct English spelling is Organisation. People in America using American version of English tend to spell it as Organization.

Nearly almost every American spells it organization.

Re: Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs

#69

Post by deepsand » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 9:27 AM UTC

Great idea. From my experience Excel is still the main data manipulation tool for many organisations (small business to large enterprise). Although it might be apparent for more technically minded users, I think an explanation about the security of the data would be beneficial for your target market.

Re: Show HN: Sheetlabs – Turn your spreadsheets into APIs

#70

Post by kinj28 » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 9:39 AM UTC

malditojavi wrote: post #38

They (Ycombinator) should implement 'mark as favorite'. There are so many similar tools included in the comments that I'm writing this comment just to have a quick shortcut to find the thread in future references.

you may give teamgum a spin for helping you to remind you about this next time you google on something similar.