Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup • Hacker News Board

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#31

Post by jazzdev » Tue, Mar 30, 2010, 8:02 PM UTC

eop wrote: post #27

jazzdev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 30 second per page limit can be a pain too. If you need to manipulate (i.e. validate, import, export, etc.) more than a few hundred persistent objects, you'll need to write your code to do it in chunks.

That's what Task Queue is for: With the Task Queue API, applications can perform work outside of a user request but initiated by a user request. If an app needs to execute some background work, it may use the Task Queue API to organize that work into small, discrete units, called Tasks. The app then inserts these Tasks into one or more Queues. App Engine automatically detects new Tasks and executes them when system r…

The task queue has the same 30 second limit. Follow either of those links above and you'll find:

the lifetime of a single task's execution is limited to 30 seconds

You still have to do more coding to chunk the work.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#32

Post by sharpn » Tue, Mar 30, 2010, 8:11 PM UTC

torial wrote: post #30

sharpn wrote: post #29

I found this helps when collaborating remotely, to send big files around - and there are other companies offering a similar service: http://free.mailbigfile.com/index.php

Yeah, I like the Axosoft free variant: http://www.transferbigfiles.com/

Good suggestion - I like their higher size limit of 1Gb. I'll check this out, thanks.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#33

Post by pchristensen » Tue, Mar 30, 2010, 8:14 PM UTC

boundlessdreamz wrote: post #2

The madmimi website gave me a headache. Is there any site which allows me to display a text box on my site and collects the emails given and allows me to send newsletters?

Mailchimp is awesome. Don't know how it compares to Campaign Monitor. If you're a belt & suspenders type, use a Wufoo form and send that to MailChimp, then you can easily switch later.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#34

Post by grinich » Tue, Mar 30, 2010, 8:39 PM UTC

pchristensen wrote: post #33

boundlessdreamz wrote: post #2

The madmimi website gave me a headache. Is there any site which allows me to display a text box on my site and collects the emails given and allows me to send newsletters?

Mailchimp is awesome. Don't know how it compares to Campaign Monitor. If you're a belt & suspenders type, use a Wufoo form and send that to MailChimp, then you can easily switch later.

The email collection tools in Campaign Monitor are totally free. You just pay when you send mail.

When I was organizing Startup Bootcamp, I emailed both CM and MailChimp to ask for a donation. MailChip offered us a discount, but CM gave us an extremely generous number of credits that easily covered our needs.

Using CM is a breeze. Originally we were using a Google Doc as a signup, and felt the need to switch once we hit a few hundred people. Importing the data was effortless, and CM has built-in checks for both duplicate and malformed emails. Their analytics and reporting is also great. Highly recommended.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#35

Post by cmelbye » Tue, Mar 30, 2010, 8:53 PM UTC

CytokineStorm wrote: post #18

Wait, no Heroku? It should definitely be listed in the Price-Scalable Hosting section. Like AppEngine it's also free starting out, and super easy to scale. Plus it's all rails, so you don't even have to learn any App Engine API.

I think it's a lot more expensive than App Engine though. You quickly get into hundreds of dollars a month range for just a few extra features and two running processes.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#36

Post by cmelbye » Tue, Mar 30, 2010, 9:02 PM UTC

cgrinds wrote: post #14

phsr wrote: post #10

How is Google App Engine? Are there any pain points one should be aware of before using it?

Cold startup sucks - it's horrendous for Java and just bad for Python. If you have a popular app, this isn't an issue. If you don't, it hurts.

They're fixing this in the future by allowing reserved instances that will always run.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#37

Post by torial » Tue, Mar 30, 2010, 9:03 PM UTC

Didn't see this category, but for the developers of a startup, an easy to use / free bug tracking system can be found in BugNotes: http://www.bugnotes.com/home.php

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#38

Post by imagetic » Tue, Mar 30, 2010, 9:07 PM UTC

http://lighthouseapp.com and http://tenderapp.com for bug tracking and support tools that integrate.

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#39

Post by Groxx » Tue, Mar 30, 2010, 9:49 PM UTC

For browser compatibility: browsershots.org

Litmusapp may be nicer and have summaries, but it's hard to beat browsershot's simplicity, breadth, and free-ness. Though I have yet to see any provide decent testing for anything dynamic (videos, perhaps?).

Re: Cheap or free web-based tools for your web startup

#40

Post by hopeless » Tue, Mar 30, 2010, 10:03 PM UTC

cmelbye wrote: post #35

CytokineStorm wrote: post #18

Wait, no Heroku? It should definitely be listed in the Price-Scalable Hosting section. Like AppEngine it's also free starting out, and super easy to scale. Plus it's all rails, so you don't even have to learn any App Engine API.

I think it's a lot more expensive than App Engine though. You quickly get into hundreds of dollars a month range for just a few extra features and two running processes.

That's a humorous exaggeration, right?

2 x processes + 20GB database = $51/mth

Most people won't require every addon, and there's a free or cheap option in every case. Yes, you can spend "hundreds of dollars a month" but not easily