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SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups

juicefs.com

51–60 of 61 posts

Re: SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups

#51

Papertrail used to be awesome, until the SW acquisition. I've been very happy with LogDNA/Mezmo as a replacement (no affiliation, just a happy customer!).

Could you expand on why it’s no longer awesome? I’ve only used papertrail in Heroku, until recently on a new project. It seems the same as before, but I’m haven’t needed to use it heavily yet.

Re: SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups

#52
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as the Get Things Done aspect goes, I'd happy replace Github + Github Actions + Travis/other CI/CD tools with Gitlab. It really does all that, and the CI/CD tool is >>> Github Actions.

Could you explain more on that thought?

Sure! As far as normal DVCS features go, I'd say Gitlab and Github are almost at feature parity(I happen to use both extensively). The UI may just come down to a matter of preference.

Github indeed has somewhat superior code-review tools. But I've found Gitlab to be perfectly adequate.

When it comes to CI/CD, Gitlab CI blows Github Actions out of the water by a HUGE margin.

So, if I just wanted a tool that got things done for me, instead of fragmenting myself with Github + Github Actions + TravisCI / CircleCI, etc, I'd just get one Gitlab subscription and call it a day.

Re: SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which tools?

I use these: contracts / signatures, docs, e-mail, social, email campaigns, transactional email, website, crm, invoicing, books, appointments, webinars, meetings, project management, helpdesk, ecommerce. But there are way waaaay more apps included: https://www.zoho.com/one/applications/web.html

And project has Gantt charts (I clicked your link just to check that). I have always been disappointed by project/ticket apps that pretend to do project management but don't have a gantt view of tasks.

Re: SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups

#54

Travis CI and Solarwinds on the list eh...

As far as the Get Things Done aspect goes, I'd happy replace Github + Github Actions + Travis/other CI/CD tools with Gitlab. It really does all that, and the CI/CD tool is >>> Github Actions.

Totally agree, and their free tier (unless it's changed in the last 2 years) is frankly amazing. We ran a start-up entirely in the free tier with our own hosted runners which are also amazing. (Required a bit of hacking but we had scale-to-zero fleet of ARM and x86 runners in AWS with the necessary rights to do whatever, right up to deploys into DEV, packer builds etc)

Re: SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups

#55
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who moved from Mandrill to Sendgrid, and not exactly satisfied...can you tell me what Mailgun does better?

Skip Mailgun and go straight to Postmark. Phenomenal delivery rates. They were recently acquired by ActiveCampaign though so hopefully things don't change.

I actually misremembered and meant postmark.

Re: SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups

#56
post #47
post #21

expensify -> brex sendgrid -> mailgun travis -> probably anything else

> expensify -> brex Brex is a shitty company that doesn't want your business[1] unless you're a VC money pit. 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/brex-drops-small-business-cu...

ramp is an alternative. cards over reimbursement or purchase requests is a game changer for small teams though

Re: SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups

#58
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was younger I thought it is cool to be admin and have access to stuff, run things on my own being like Neo in Matrix. Then I had admin access to wi-fi router in dorm, it stopped being funny when people shitty laptops could not connect and they would blame you or for any kind of connection issue for that matter :) Then I had a job with support duty, 1 A.M. calls because you need to check logs are not cool. Now…

Yep. Again, the nuance of this point is lost on the "homelab" crowd, but if you're in a software business, your software is what your business is. Not running a monitoring platform, not running a logging system, not building your own PaaS. Outsource this as much as possible to 3rd-party agents with a sizable economy of scale. Nearly all engineering teams(outside of FAANG) simply aren't resourced to re-invent the whee…

Agree to a point. I'd say that "nearly all" teams outside those in medium to large companies aren't resourced enough to maintain existing well-packaged wheels. It's a gradient, not a binary. If you've got someone who's capable of deploying EKS and setting up a CI/CD that lets developers move quickly, it mightn't be a big deal for them to deploy the Grafana stack (loki, mirmir, grafana) and have logs and metrics on the cheap. Log/metric/APM services can get ludicrously expensive and unless you're in fintech, you might only need them for debugging and capacity planning.

Re: SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups

#59
post #37
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who moved from Mandrill to Sendgrid, and not exactly satisfied...can you tell me what Mailgun does better?

Deliverability is not one of its strengh. Considering a change right now.

Deliverability is not a strength of...which one? Postmark or Sendgrid?

Re: SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups

#60
post #57

Nice sharing! One question, how could 10G tier for solarwinds-papertrail is enough for you? I am expecting you to have more logs generated, it's due to only short-term data being queried in it(cold ones will be archived in different infra?) or?

Only core critical logs are saved in solarwinds-papertrail, it's easy to search. Others are saved in #JuiceFS. Eat our own dog food
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