Looks promising and a neat landing page.
Have to agree with others that $30 is pricey for 1000 tasks. On lambda you can do thousands of them for free.
How do you plan to standout and survive as so many others are in this space ?
Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows
#32Congrats on launch. Looks like a great platform. I went through the typeform and would consider paying $30/month but not without a free trial. Have you considered offering a free trial, even for a very limited time frame?
Thanks, we've edited our post above to clarify why we aren't offering a free trial right now, although we do plan to in the future.
Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows
#33Who are your audience here? I’m trying to figure out whether this is some Zapier/Integromat type of tool, but the emphasis on more “high volume” integrations and scenarios is interesting. I’m personally just doing some simple workflows with Gitlab-to-Telegram etc, and I have to say that I find it quite difficult to accomplish that what I consider “medium complexity” stuff: one Gitlab push event has multiple commit me…
Try https://devscore.com
It allows you to code and do this type of automation very quickly. let me know [info @ devscore] if you are interested to learn more.
Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows
#34No Code / Low Code skeptic here. I fail to see how using this GUI mixed with raw code approach would make my development workflow any faster. For example, I've posted below a Node.js implementation of what you created in the YouTube demo linked in the OP, and it took me less time to write than it did for you to create the same "workflow" using the GUI in the video demo. And the best part is I can run this JS code on…
Good point - many experienced engineers like yourself can build things like this quickly without Paragon. However, many of our users are frontend engineers or semi-technical product managers who may not be as comfortable spinning up their own service as you are. For backend engineers who do use Paragon, they can handoff workflows to other, less technical team members who then don't have to rely on engineering every time they need to make a small change. We've gotten feedback from customers who've told us this is well worth the $30/mo we charge for Paragon.
Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows
#35No Code / Low Code skeptic here. I fail to see how using this GUI mixed with raw code approach would make my development workflow any faster. For example, I've posted below a Node.js implementation of what you created in the YouTube demo linked in the OP, and it took me less time to write than it did for you to create the same "workflow" using the GUI in the video demo. And the best part is I can run this JS code on…
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Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows
#3610 questions' animated form just to learn there is no free tier nor free trial? not too cool.
Appreciate the feedback. We mention in the post that we charge for Paragon and that it starts at $30/mo. I've added another edit to clarify why we don't offer a free trial, although we plan to in the future.
Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows
#37Who are your audience here? I’m trying to figure out whether this is some Zapier/Integromat type of tool, but the emphasis on more “high volume” integrations and scenarios is interesting. I’m personally just doing some simple workflows with Gitlab-to-Telegram etc, and I have to say that I find it quite difficult to accomplish that what I consider “medium complexity” stuff: one Gitlab push event has multiple commit me…
Our focus is on helping developers and product teams build integrations between their core product and 3rd party services. "Medium complexity" is a good way to describe it - you can accomplish a good amount on Paragon without writing code, but if you need to write a custom function to go the last mile, you can.
Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows
#38No Code / Low Code skeptic here. I fail to see how using this GUI mixed with raw code approach would make my development workflow any faster. For example, I've posted below a Node.js implementation of what you created in the YouTube demo linked in the OP, and it took me less time to write than it did for you to create the same "workflow" using the GUI in the video demo. And the best part is I can run this JS code on…
Writing the code yourself is always going to give you the most flexibility. This comes at the cost of complexity and domain expertise.
If you wanted to run something like this on a schedule, monitor execution results step by step, ensure your credentials are stored securely, etc, the barrier to entry to building this in terms of time and expertise suddenly jumps significantly, as well as the services / infrastructure required. We provide all of this out of the box with Paragon.
However, if you have all the domain expertise of the variety of languages, services, etc and prefer to spend the time writing the code yourself and managing the infra, that's okay. If you prefer to code, no code's just not for you and it doesn't have to be ^__^
Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows
#39Looks promising and a neat landing page. Have to agree with others that $30 is pricey for 1000 tasks. On lambda you can do thousands of them for free. How do you plan to standout and survive as so many others are in this space ?
Thanks, edited our post to clarify why we're charging $30/mo - we do plan to offer a free version or trial in the future.
I think that most other "low-code" players are focused on RPA (helping ops automate internal business processes) whereas we're focused on helping product & engineering build integrations between their product and other services.
Re: Launch HN: Paragon (YC W20) – Visually Build API Workflows
#40This is interesting but pricey. How are you guys planning on distinguishing yourselves from similar self-hosted solutions like NodeRed or Huginn?
I made an edit to the original post to clarify the reasoning around our pricing. I think that many people want a fully hosted solution so they don't have to manage their own servers, performance, etc. and we can take care of all of that for you.