Any similar back office projects written in python? I'd like to reuse some existing data access code and I'm currently looking at using django. So I'd love to hear if others have a better suggestion.
Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
91–100 of 171 posts
Re: Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
#92For something like this, I bet a chunk of your target market for "Pro" level is people running ActiveAdmin. The beauty (and nightmare) of ActiveAdmin is it just looks at your tables and gives you an admin UI. If you have a mostly API based app, this can be great to give internal people some power tools so they leave the engineers alone.
Would love to see demos with real world complexity level of things instead of the typical Blog or Todo list trackers. To give that some scope for a complex Rails application lets use counts of objects, something like 100 models and 80 active admin pages, scatter in some 50-100 jobs/workers and like 50-100 service objects.
What does Avo provide for a menu-ing or UI customization to deal with that level of complexity?
Re: Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree with you, but that's on more "traditional" SaaS products. When it's a service. This is more of a product. There are developers and agencies that buy Avo, build something for a customer and then transfer the license to them. The customer might not even know that the agency bought something. They might not want to pay something ongoing. Yes, one could make the case that "hey, you pay hosting ongoing afte…
I see your point, but I think it’s just a framing issue. It’s great to have an option for people who are concerned about this, but not at the expense of confusing customers who just want to pay you and keep paying you for your thing, and also killing your year 2 retention by making it opt-in instead of a normal subscription. Looking at jumpstart rails, they seem to be doing exactly what I’m suggesting. It’s a simple…
Well... Avo's pricing is exacty like Jumpstart's (except the $750 for unlimited). So pay $250, get Avo (or Jumpstart) with a year of updates. When you stop paying, you keep what you have until that point and no more updates. Isn't that the same? Am I missing something?
Also, you do make a point regarding agencies "sign a client up for a bunch of services". I'll try and experiment with that. Thanks for the nudge!
Re: Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
A very pertinent question. If you're asking if Avo "pays the bills", it doesn't. I hope it will some day. Damn, I hope I earn money in some other way and donate Avo to Ruby central, becomes free so it becomes the default way of building Rails apps. Until that time, I am pretty stocked that other developers want (and pay) to use something I've created. Yeah, it takes a lot to build the messaging around a product. This…
I respect your hustle and understanding of what makes a successful product. I'm making no comment on that. I was in general asking the community about how often they get paid to start apps vs. continue them.
Oh, I see what you mean. What kind of "gigs" they get. "Starters" or "continuers" (maintenance).
Gotcha! Personally I started a lot of projects. Probably more than 50%. And the money were good, but not as good as doing maintenance for a big company with a big product.
Re: Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see your point, but I think it’s just a framing issue. It’s great to have an option for people who are concerned about this, but not at the expense of confusing customers who just want to pay you and keep paying you for your thing, and also killing your year 2 retention by making it opt-in instead of a normal subscription. Looking at jumpstart rails, they seem to be doing exactly what I’m suggesting. It’s a simple…
Well... Avo's pricing is exacty like Jumpstart's (except the $750 for unlimited). So pay $250, get Avo (or Jumpstart) with a year of updates. When you stop paying, you keep what you have until that point and no more updates. Isn't that the same? Am I missing something? Also, you do make a point regarding agencies "sign a client up for a bunch of services". I'll try and experiment with that. Thanks for the nudge!
Right, that’s exactly my point! Jumpstart has basically the same pricing/licensing but doesn’t frame it in a confusing way.
At first glance, it’s just a yearly subscription per project. Simple and standard. Everyone understands it.
If I’m concerned about what happens if I stop paying for jumpstart, I can find that information, but it’s not emphasized at the top like it is on your pricing page. And the yearly subscription is the default, not something I have to opt into again every year.
Most customers are just going to sign up for a yearly subscription and never look back. It’s better for the customer and for jumpstart.
Re: Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
#96How would you compare or contrast this with motor_admin https://github.com/motor-admin/motor-admin-rails
Re: Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
“I don't want to seem harsh, but I challenge non-believers to give Avo an hour of their time to see how it's different. TBH, I believe Avo is the secret weapon in any developer's toolbox.” Earnestly, I wish you well. These are rather bold claims.
I was on the fence if I should add those in, but I'm kind of glad I did. I feel a little bit like Taylor Otwell in the old days when he was telling people about Laravel, or Evan You back in the day when you'd search for "JS framework" and you'd only get React and Angular. They were on the verge of something new and useful, but nobody believed. I think developers, in general, are pretty inflexible when it comes to new…
When I was skimming your homepage I was thinking “I really wish this was built on Hotwire” and then I saw that it was. That architecture choice makes me think your bold claims might actually pan out, :).
The fact that the ways to customize/escape are “vanilla rails” and avo is deployed within my app as an engine, make this very very interesting.
As compared to:
* something like retool which is deployed (ie hosted) as an additional layer which calls an api my app exposes. Great for huge organizations, but overkill for a small team (similar to SPA vs Hotwire tradeoff)
* activeadmin where escaping the standard path is extremely hard. Not to mention it’s built on gems which are no longer in favor (inherited resources, etc)
* administrate which I really enjoyed, but felt like the support/roadmap was more of a side project vs an “open core/commercial offering”
Re: Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
#98For something like this, I bet a chunk of your target market for "Pro" level is people running ActiveAdmin. The beauty (and nightmare) of ActiveAdmin is it just looks at your tables and gives you an admin UI. If you have a mostly API based app, this can be great to give internal people some power tools so they leave the engineers alone. Would love to see demos with real world complexity level of things instead of the…
I would say that the Community version (free) covers most of what Active Admin does. The search is paid with Avo (and included in AA).
The Pro users are those who need to build upon Avo. They need custom content (fields, resource tools, custom pages), and they need to make it look the same as the rest of the app. Avo provides view components that help with that. This way you create a seamless UI for your users.
I think of Avo as more than just and admin panel framework (although power tool sounds great), but the place where you build your app. It becomes the app your users see.
Regarding API based apps, yeah, that's something I'd loke to support soon. Offer HTTP adapters where you coudl hook in your Stripe/Shopify/Intercom/Custom API endpoints.
Regarding complexity, I tried to cram as much as I could (whenever I push out a new feature, I add it) to the demo site[0].
One of the biggest apps I've seen has about 41 resources, 431 fields, and quite some complexity because it's a multi tenancy app that serves three marketplace platforms. There's a lot of complex scoping applied to the data to match the accounts and views.
But, yeah, I'd love to see an app that size. I think the project is still young (about two years. version 2.0 three months old) and these kinds of projects tend to get built out with time. I can't imagine there are a lot of teams with an app that size you mentioned that are in a hurry to rip out everything they have to replace it with Avo (or any other package or app) in such a short time. Even our customers above are slowly switching from their homegrown admin panel to Avo.
Right now, the UI customization wasn't our main concern. I do want it to look amazing so I work a lot (alongside the designer) to keep it looking excellent. This being Rails, you can always override the partials and view components to add your own and tweak Avo's. The first iteration of UI customization will be to enable the developer to change the colors of the UI.
Regarding general customization, you can already plug in Avo on multiple levels. One can add new fields, sections on resource pages, totally new custom pages, etc.
Avo is ready for customization complexity.
Re: Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
“I don't want to seem harsh, but I challenge non-believers to give Avo an hour of their time to see how it's different. TBH, I believe Avo is the secret weapon in any developer's toolbox.” Earnestly, I wish you well. These are rather bold claims.
I was on the fence if I should add those in, but I'm kind of glad I did. I feel a little bit like Taylor Otwell in the old days when he was telling people about Laravel, or Evan You back in the day when you'd search for "JS framework" and you'd only get React and Angular. They were on the verge of something new and useful, but nobody believed. I think developers, in general, are pretty inflexible when it comes to new…
I haven't used Avo, but if it works well, I think it's an appropriate claim.
I've worked in the industry for a while and admin pages / reports usually being at least 50% of the effort. Sometimes, it's more like 90%.
So, there's a lot of potential impact there.
Re: Show HN: Avo – Build Ruby on Rails apps faster
#100You may want to check your branding -- https://www.avo.app/