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Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

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Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#91

Post by hnrodey »

swalsh wrote: post #47
danieljacksonno wrote: post #45

In the end I subscribed to so many digital services that I made a tool for collecting email receipts for bookkeeping... If you think it's worth one more subscription to cut down the work bookkeeping for all the other subscriptions, then check out receiptrunner.com

There's something to this. I recently changed my credit card number due to some fraud activity. Since the change there has been a number of services I no longer use, but that I had completely forgot about popping up asking me to update my info.

You can partially solve this with something like privacy.com. That's what I'm using after cancelling my credit card (lost) and getting a new number.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#92

Post by three_seagrass »

inviromentalist wrote: post #30

My biggest concern is being dependent on these systems, the systems changing, and it breaking the process. I have the mentality of self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. Most these services have a learning curve anyway. Are the services really worth it?

It's the perennial Build vs. Buy debate.

The tradeoff of buying is that yes, you are at the will of the service provider, but the alternative is taking on all the technical debt of building your own services. For most, $N/month is cheaper than putting the maintenance hours in, even if it means needing to find another service provider if one is changing.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#93

Post by inviromentalist »

akamia wrote: post #90
pembrook wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mentality of DIY and self hosting is the default for most hackers, and in my opinion its the number 1 thing holding back most engineers who build businesses. I have a buddy who’s an amazing engineer, he takes pride in doing everything himself and spent years building a platform from the ground up. Elegant, fully automated, built in his favorite languages and frameworks. 3 years in it makes 50k a year. I have anot…

One of the problems that a lot of engineers have is failing to recognize that their time has a cost. Spending 4 extra hours of your own time setting up a mail server that will cost you $5/month to run instead of paying $10 per month for Office 365 or some other service is not really saving you money because that initial 4 hours of labor is time you could've spent doing other things for the business. It's not free tim…

Counter points-

There is no telling if it will actually save time. You could be messing with configurations, have to learn their docs, etc... Or future migration could be expensive in both time and money.

The cost savings can/do exist. Especially as things scale or last a long time.

Custom is more configurable.

People overestimate their time worth? Sure you can theoretically work for 75$/hr, but can you get overtime/additional revenue that easily?

What is your value add? If it's software, I might suggest custom is best because that's your business. If you mash a bunch of software suppliers together, you become a middle man. I'm not saying that doesn't work, but I've seen companies go back and forth on this.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#94

Post by lunchables »

balls187 wrote: post #42
inviromentalist wrote: post #30

My biggest concern is being dependent on these systems, the systems changing, and it breaking the process. I have the mentality of self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. Most these services have a learning curve anyway. Are the services really worth it?

> Are the services really worth it? Yes. > self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. What is the cost to get something that has a better uptime than the SLA's of the services you are replacing? Focus on getting to paying customers. After that, you'll see where your time is better off spent. Example: I just signed up for a trial for Stripe Sigma. I was going to build my own basic BI usi…

Well, you could also be outsourcing your "build, test, deploy" to someone else and save even more time!

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#96

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

balls187 wrote: post #42
inviromentalist wrote: post #30

My biggest concern is being dependent on these systems, the systems changing, and it breaking the process. I have the mentality of self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. Most these services have a learning curve anyway. Are the services really worth it?

> Are the services really worth it? Yes. > self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. What is the cost to get something that has a better uptime than the SLA's of the services you are replacing? Focus on getting to paying customers. After that, you'll see where your time is better off spent. Example: I just signed up for a trial for Stripe Sigma. I was going to build my own basic BI usi…

The problem is no using a service and having it briefly be unavailable. The problem is that you use a service, get reliant on it, and then they 10x their price, remove key features, and then go out of business.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#97

Post by rchaud »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #82
crazygringo wrote: post #18

Side note, but why on earth is the body text set to 35 px?! I need to zoom my browser down to 50% (a quarter of the pixel area) just to make it readable. This trend of gargantuan body text in blogs has been going on for a while, but this is the worst I've ever seen. When the size of each letter is something like six times the area of letters in my computer's menu bar, something is seriously wrong. Is it unreasonable…

The beauty of web clients is that you can control the font size if it looks bad on your device.

I don't think it's possible on mobile. Yesterday I found myself needing to adjust the font size on rateyourmusic.com's responsive site, and it wasn't possible. On a desktop it's as simple as "CTRL +" but that doesn't exist on mobile browsers.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#98

Post by kupopuffs »

qubex wrote: post #53

I’m going to be cynical and applaud the author at one of the most effective S.E.O. efforts I have seen lately: including his own app on a list of effective and well-curated apps for startups.

Do cynical people applaud? This is more of a woke economist perspective.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#99

Post by rchaud »

jasonhr13 wrote: post #16

Find someone with a college email address and sign up for Github Student Developer Pack. SendGrid for free (15k/month sends) as well as 150/year in AWS credit for 4 years if you continue to have access to the student email.

and how much would he have to pay to said college student to have access to his email account for 4 years?
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