Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

pipedream.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 113 posts

Re: Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

#81

Post by michannne »

todsac wrote: post #2

Co-founder here. We have been heads down working Pipedream for the past 9 months and are excited to share our beta with you. Pipedream is an integration platform built for developers. Develop any workflow, based on any trigger with authentication management built-in and no server or cloud resources to manage. Workflows are code, which you can run for free. The beta version includes the ability to: - Run any Node code…

Haha, damn nice job. I actually thought about this 1 yr ago and started working on something very similar, though it was more interactive. Even started an LLC and got a good prototype, but didn't have the time to work on it.

Great work! This is incredibly useful stuff and can't wait to start trying it out

Re: Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

#82

Post by michannne »

codezero wrote: post #54
andyburke wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build a cost model. Set prices that would make them profitable based on that model. Offer the service at that price. See if people are willing to pay for it. Verify that costs and profitability match the model. If the model turns out to be inaccurate: A) Change the architecture to reduce costs to the point where it becomes profitable at an attractive price point for customers, or B) Move on to the next idea. It's not…

I feel like there's too much focus on the price here, and the thing I am concerned with is that the original comment was about how services shut down and they didn't want to invest in the unknown. Paying for that seems doubly risky to me. That said, I get your point that if you can create a model that gives you a good sense of future profitability, you are in a better position not to die as a company.

I think it's helpful to consider. You'll definitely need the cash to ramp up infrastructure

Re: Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

#83

Post by dylburger »

Hi y’all, this is Dylan, a Pipedream engineer and co-founder. We launched today to get early feedback from developers on what we’ve built and we’ve received a lot of thoughtful comments. Thank you to everyone who signed up!

I especially appreciate the discussion around how and why Pipedream is free, and the concerns around the lack of a visible, scalable paid tier. Those concerns are valid and I want to give you a little more insight into our thinking on this and what the future holds.

Workflows created by one developer can be forked, run, and modified by others. We all build a lot of the same integrations across companies and believe if this code is shared and executed on a common platform that’s purpose-built for running these workflows, it’ll save us all a lot of time.

We’ve worked with thousands of alpha users to understand how they’re using the product and considered what features enterprises ultimately will want and need to pay for. These include: higher workflow limits, private workflows and actions, SLAs, premium support, and more. We didn’t launch with that today because we’re focused on getting feedback from individual developers who will be the majority of users moving forward.

Of course, you can’t run a business solely on free workflows. We’ve set some limits on these workflows that help us control excessive use [1]. Our team has a wealth of collective experience scaling software companies on the business and tech side, and we have confidence that we’ll be able to retain a generous free tier while building a sustainable business.

I empathize with the skepticism of Pipedream and of hosted platforms in general, and welcome any more specific questions. We truly love feedback. We’ve implemented some ideas that we believe facilitate the developer experience for building workflows but are looking for y’all to test that, validate or invalidate it, and give us specific thoughts as you have time.

dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com

[1] https://docs.pipedream.com/limits/

Re: Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

#84

Post by dylburger »

michannne wrote: post #81
todsac wrote: post #2

Co-founder here. We have been heads down working Pipedream for the past 9 months and are excited to share our beta with you. Pipedream is an integration platform built for developers. Develop any workflow, based on any trigger with authentication management built-in and no server or cloud resources to manage. Workflows are code, which you can run for free. The beta version includes the ability to: - Run any Node code…

Haha, damn nice job. I actually thought about this 1 yr ago and started working on something very similar, though it was more interactive. Even started an LLC and got a good prototype, but didn't have the time to work on it. Great work! This is incredibly useful stuff and can't wait to start trying it out

Thank you so much for the kind words! Let us know if you have any feedback or questions.

Re: Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

#85

Post by dylburger »

hanniabu wrote: post #71
dylburger wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, Dylan, a co-founder here. Deploying workflows from source via CLI or your CI/CD pipeline is in the works! We want you to host workflows on Github / Gitlab and be able to deploy them using your standard process. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you'd like more information and I can let you know when we're testing this. dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com

Speaking of which, it's always overwhelming learning new tools. I know I can benefit from this, but at the same time I'm not sure I can risk trying it out given the time it will take to experiment and learn. I'd be using triggers based off Github commits and merges, but I don't see any specific examples for that and it's not exactly clear how the tutorial on the home page would translate to what I want to do so I cur…

Thank you!

I completely empathize with the time involved learning new tools. I'm happy to create a tutorial specific to your use case. We've built a few workflows to process Github events and I'd love to show you how this works end-to-end.

Is there anything specific you'd like to do with the commit / merge events, just so I make sure the tutorial targets your use case?

Feel free to reach out directly if you'd like to talk more at dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com.

Re: Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

#86

Post by zlagen »

The example demo looks very slick! it looks like Zapier but a bit more low level. Also for anyone interested in running functions but not interested in handling the complexity of aws lambda I'd check Cloudflare workers https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/

Re: Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

#87

Post by hanniabu »

dylburger wrote: post #85
hanniabu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of which, it's always overwhelming learning new tools. I know I can benefit from this, but at the same time I'm not sure I can risk trying it out given the time it will take to experiment and learn. I'd be using triggers based off Github commits and merges, but I don't see any specific examples for that and it's not exactly clear how the tutorial on the home page would translate to what I want to do so I cur…

Thank you! I completely empathize with the time involved learning new tools. I'm happy to create a tutorial specific to your use case. We've built a few workflows to process Github events and I'd love to show you how this works end-to-end. Is there anything specific you'd like to do with the commit / merge events, just so I make sure the tutorial targets your use case? Feel free to reach out directly if you'd like to…

Thanks for the response and involvement in this thread, it really shows how committed you guys are to providing a great user experience.

The specific use-case I have in mind is that when a commit made I'd want to run various checks on configuration files in the repo to make sure specific conventions are followed and that certain file references exist. Upon a merge I'd like run a build process and send the build files to Heroku, Digital Ocean, or AWS.

Re: Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

#88

Post by gitgud »

pritambaral wrote: post #39
zimmund wrote: post #12

It looks like an interesting alternative to Zapier (or its open source counterpart n8n [1]). As a potential user, before even trying the tool I'd like to know how are you planning to monetize it. Free sounds awesome, but you'll get to a point where it costs you actual money to keep all this working. I don't want to waste my time creating pipelines in a tool that won't exist in a year or two -or that will become paid…

> or its open source counterpart n8n Unfortunately, n8n is not[1] Open Source, despite claiming to be "Open Source and so free" on their website[2]. 1: https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md 2: https://n8n.io/

That's a shame, seems like a great product...

What about the license makes this not open-source?

Re: Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

#89

Post by dylburger »

hanniabu wrote: post #87
dylburger wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! I completely empathize with the time involved learning new tools. I'm happy to create a tutorial specific to your use case. We've built a few workflows to process Github events and I'd love to show you how this works end-to-end. Is there anything specific you'd like to do with the commit / merge events, just so I make sure the tutorial targets your use case? Feel free to reach out directly if you'd like to…

Thanks for the response and involvement in this thread, it really shows how committed you guys are to providing a great user experience. The specific use-case I have in mind is that when a commit made I'd want to run various checks on configuration files in the repo to make sure specific conventions are followed and that certain file references exist. Upon a merge I'd like run a build process and send the build files…

Got it! I'll aim to get something to you in the next couple of days.

Re: Show HN: Pipedream. Develop any workflow, on any trigger, with auth and no infra

#90

Post by quickthrower2 »

masukomi wrote: post #47
todsac wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do not need enterprise use cases (single sign-on, higher level SLAs, shared authentication, etc) and your scale fits within our defined constraints, then free is the price.

to me that translates as "WARNING! TRAP!" because I may decide I like your thing, and then my users may decide they like _my_ thing, and then suddenly I find out what your price is for my scale and "oh shit! I'm going to go broke OR have to recode everything" ESPECIALLY since this would become a key part of the infrastructure / how my app gets its stuff done. Replacing your service with a competitor or something home…

RMS has the solution here: “Free” software. If they shut down you have the source and can self host on aws.
Post reply on HN