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Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

duetapp.com

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Re: Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

#181

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

I'm so happy you're selling this. After years of dicking around with free open source plugins and scripts I have started avoiding them. The authors abandon them, they have no road map, no future, bad design, no time to read feedback.

But when I see a for-profit script I know that the creator has an incentive to keep pushing updates and maintanance and design.

Also, you should sell your script yourself AS WELL as selling it on CodeCanyon. That way you can funnel people towards your site and make more money per sale PLUS get the benefits of being on CodeCanyon's community.

The internet is NOT Walmart, there's no exclusivity contract, you don't have to sell your product or service in only one place.

Re: Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

#182

Post by maratd »

troels wrote: post #141
bluedino wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a vendor of some mailing list software that you install your save (basically a tarball of php code). If we have an issue with it, they basically refuse to help unless we give them ssh access to our server. Stupidly we have this mailing list software running on our production web server (the same one our customers use to access our apps), so we can't do that. I mean I trust the guy to not go in an install a ba…

You don't trust him with ssh access to your server, yet you trust him to run arbitrary code there. That doesn't make any sense.

> You don't trust him with ssh access to your server, yet you trust him to run arbitrary code there. That doesn't make any sense.

When people say "ssh access" they usually mean root. The software that's running there, if the server is properly set up, will be running on a restricted account with restricted privileges. Now, granted, even with that there can be quite a bit of damage, but not as much as giving somebody root access to your system.

Re: Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

#183

Post by maratd »

michaelbuddy wrote: post #170

I'll probably get buried but, here's what I'm going to suggest. Don't deviate from the price too much. I'll tell you why. You're competing with pancakeapp, buggenie, bugify, redmine, bugkick, mantis, Zoho (on some level) and many more, including some of the cheaper hosted basecamp clones. And I'm already considering buying yours. Your pricing is great. And I appreciate what you're doing. I wouldn't go more than $69 o…

Agreed.

I'm currently using http://www.fusioninvoice.com/ which is a free open source Bootstrap/PHP/MySQL invoicing system. Has clients, estimates, invoices, etc.

Very pretty, but doesn't have project management. This does. So I bought it. Pretty sure I wouldn't have if it was three hundred bucks.

And yes, I'm a solo freelancer, so you're spot on.

Re: Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

#184

Post by markdown »

michaelbuddy wrote: post #170

I'll probably get buried but, here's what I'm going to suggest. Don't deviate from the price too much. I'll tell you why. You're competing with pancakeapp, buggenie, bugify, redmine, bugkick, mantis, Zoho (on some level) and many more, including some of the cheaper hosted basecamp clones. And I'm already considering buying yours. Your pricing is great. And I appreciate what you're doing. I wouldn't go more than $69 o…

> Or don't sell it exclusively on codecanyon

Nobody in their right mind would do this. Envato rob you blind if you don't sell with them exclusively.

Re: Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

#185

Post by dools »

danenania wrote: post #79

I can understand the appeal of selling on codecanyon for the existing marketplace you get access to there, but I would consider an independent checkout for the website. Your design and branding are well done and signal high quality, while codecanyon has more of a script/component flea market feel. I think taking someone out of the flow of your site to buy there is a bit jarring and might cause people to reconsider, e…

Yeah gumroad is absolutely trivial to setup and takes only a small portion of the total sale price.

Re: Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

#187

Post by DigitalSea »

michaelbuddy wrote: post #170

I'll probably get buried but, here's what I'm going to suggest. Don't deviate from the price too much. I'll tell you why. You're competing with pancakeapp, buggenie, bugify, redmine, bugkick, mantis, Zoho (on some level) and many more, including some of the cheaper hosted basecamp clones. And I'm already considering buying yours. Your pricing is great. And I appreciate what you're doing. I wouldn't go more than $69 o…

Pancake user here and completely agree. Raising the price will only harm the product, I don't just base applications like this on their demo but rather the quality of the codebase itself. If I spend $250 on an app that promises the ability for me to customise it only to discover it's a poor mixture of PHP and HTML everywhere, I'd probably reconsider buying it.

As it stands, I have no real use for this product because I already use Pancake, but I am inclined to check out the codebase. The benefit of Pancake is that it is built on Codeigniter and Codeigniter is a great, easy-to-use framework to modify.

Re: Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

#188

Post by eropple »

aioprisan wrote: post #176
eropple wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of app servers; I'd rather segment my running applications. I use maven-shade or sbt-assembly to create an executable .jar with an embedded web server. (Also makes it easier to just provide a runtime interface with jsvc.)

Also makes it a hell of a lot harder to scale horizontally. With an app layer you can just horizontally scale your app server stack and put a load balancer in front of it and you're done.

I don't know where you're getting your information, but your claims do not match my experience or, apparently, that of pretty much anyone else using Play (embedded Netty) or Dropwizard (embedded Jetty with a handler). Or anyone who is writing a Rails app or a Django app or anything else that lives as a standalone HTTP handler.

I have a Puppet script that sets up deployment on a new server. Puppet does not care how many machines the application is running on. Neither does the load balancer/reverse proxy in front of it; it takes a list of IPs and does its thing across them.

I have never seen an app server do anything that wasn't essentially this process, only with more XML and aggravation.

Re: Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

#189

Post by oelmekki »

maratd wrote: post #182
troels wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't trust him with ssh access to your server, yet you trust him to run arbitrary code there. That doesn't make any sense.

> You don't trust him with ssh access to your server, yet you trust him to run arbitrary code there. That doesn't make any sense. When people say "ssh access" they usually mean root. The software that's running there, if the server is properly set up, will be running on a restricted account with restricted privileges. Now, granted, even with that there can be quite a bit of damage, but not as much as giving somebody…

That's indeed the core of the problem. If your server is properly set up, you probably have one unix user per app, with other home directories not traversable and you can simply add a temporary ssh key. But then again, if customer have difficulties to install your software being just a php / mysql app, chances are great his server is not properly set up.

I think that the proper solution to any paid, self hosted application would be ... to provide hosting for less tech savvy users. Granted, your main selling point is to be self hosted, but you should not alienate people who are interested just by the product itself. And having a less costy per month plan is a great mean to let users try your app before deciding they should takes time or money to educate or hire a sysadmin.

Re: Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

#190

Post by troels »

maratd wrote: post #182
troels wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't trust him with ssh access to your server, yet you trust him to run arbitrary code there. That doesn't make any sense.

> You don't trust him with ssh access to your server, yet you trust him to run arbitrary code there. That doesn't make any sense. When people say "ssh access" they usually mean root. The software that's running there, if the server is properly set up, will be running on a restricted account with restricted privileges. Now, granted, even with that there can be quite a bit of damage, but not as much as giving somebody…

Yeah ok, but then a) the software should probably not run under root. In fact it should probably not run at all, if you haven't done any kind of audit on it/the developer.

And b) assuming you have done your due diligence on the developer in the first place, why not trust him with access to your machine? And again - you shouldn't grant him root of course, but a shell account with privileges similar to the application would be fine.

But really - Purchasing a script from some back-alley developer you have no knowledge of and placing it on your production server? That's the reckless part.

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