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Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

daily.patwalls.co

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Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#101

Post by taytus »

webmobdev wrote: post #80
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 is an engineer, the other is a businessman (salesman and fund raiser).

Both are imaginary thou.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#102

Post by hello_moto »

inviromentalist wrote: post #93
akamia wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

> 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.

This refers to self-hosted / diy tools: you have to do them all up-front. Most SaaS don't require configs or deep-learning compare to FOSS. Self-Hosted/DIY tools also require future migration. Especially when the self-hosted/DIY tools did not capture future requirements due to limited vision.

> Custom is more configurable

Technically SaaS provides API which allows folks to stitch up a few SaaS-es to automate their workflow if needs be.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#103

Post by bunchOfCucks »

inviromentalist wrote: post #93
akamia wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

I agree. He could also build the servers and crimp up some Ethernet cables.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#104

Post by vivienvivien »

marceldegraaf wrote: post #12

@patwalls a note regarding Sendgrid. As a user of their free tier (for a freelance job) I was recently bitten by a shared IP that was put on a block list, probably due to abuse by another Sendgrid user. Support does not migrate accounts on the shared IP pool to another IP, basically leaving me unable to send email for days. Might be worth upgrading to their Pro plan ($90/mo). This gets you your own dedicated IP so th…

> Sendgrid. As a user of their free tier (for a freelance job) I was recently bitten by a shared IP that was put on a block list, probably due to abuse by another Sendgrid user. Support does not migrate accounts on the shared IP pool to another IP, basically leaving me unable to send email for days.

Same problem here with SendGrid, very annoying. Answer of the SendGrid support:

> I have looped in our Compliance team to start the delisting process. I am unable to provide you with an exact ETA for when this will be complete

After days it's still not resolved, and emails still bounce for all recipients at Hotmail.

The only solution seems to be the $90/mo plan with dedicated IP... Pretty expensive for < 5,000 emails per month.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#106

Post by riffic »

john-tells-all wrote: post #105

hi Pat! I'd love to subscribe to your blog, but couldn't find an RSS feed. Could you add one? Thanks! My wife has a consulting business, so forwarded your practical list of service to her.

Looks like the site is built from a somewhat hobbyist-class (although quite impressive and open source) CMS:

https://github.com/gkiely/ydnw

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/you-don-t-need-wordpress

I would as well echo support for adding RSS capabilities here.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#107

Post by stevenwliao »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #96
balls187 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

At that point, if you then build your own, you're still ahead.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#108

Post by pembrook »

inviromentalist wrote: post #93
akamia wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

Another classic mistake is worrying about scaling issues and future configurability or migration when you don't even have a proven business yet.

There's a 95% chance your business won't last long enough to reach any scaling or migration issues. Tackle those problems when they start surfacing.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#109

Post by arrenv »

marceldegraaf wrote: post #12

@patwalls a note regarding Sendgrid. As a user of their free tier (for a freelance job) I was recently bitten by a shared IP that was put on a block list, probably due to abuse by another Sendgrid user. Support does not migrate accounts on the shared IP pool to another IP, basically leaving me unable to send email for days. Might be worth upgrading to their Pro plan ($90/mo). This gets you your own dedicated IP so th…

I had the same issue recently as well and have since started using Postmark successfully.

Re: Apps I pay for as a bootstrapped business

#110

Post by patwalls »

john-tells-all wrote: post #105

hi Pat! I'd love to subscribe to your blog, but couldn't find an RSS feed. Could you add one? Thanks! My wife has a consulting business, so forwarded your practical list of service to her.

I built this daily journal thing a few months ago, just been hacking on it. Not too much of a blog but just to keep myself writing every day and putting my ideas down.

Thinking about ways to keep people updated, but I want to keep it minimal with no CTAs or email list. RSS is easy to add.

Open to suggestions.

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