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Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

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Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#31

Post by creshal »

kevsim wrote: post #6
Operyl wrote: post #3

Are there plans for self-hosted versions? That's pretty much the "if I will use it or not" question for me. Atlassian's killing of their self-hosted solutions for smaller companies is just really a shame.

We've been waiting on this a bit to see if there's much demand for this and so far the answer has been "not much" but we're open to the idea. So the answer is "not right now". Good news I don't think it would be super tough for us since we're built using pretty boring tech (i.e. not a lot of dependencies on a particular cloud vendor), don't have a bajillion microservices, etc.

If we were to use it (which would need gitlab/mattermost integration as mentioned before), we'd very much depend on having a self hosted option.

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#32

Post by kevsim »

solarkraft wrote: post #28
kevsim wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been waiting on this a bit to see if there's much demand for this and so far the answer has been "not much" but we're open to the idea. So the answer is "not right now". Good news I don't think it would be super tough for us since we're built using pretty boring tech (i.e. not a lot of dependencies on a particular cloud vendor), don't have a bajillion microservices, etc.

I wonder why. Putting confidential data in the hands of some cloud vendor doesn't seem to be an option for any company I know in my country (which is why Jira will die out here).

My hunch is it's somewhat related to the companies who have been using us thus far (other startups, mainly) and also that people are pretty used to it since many of our competitors don't offer a self hosted option.

That being said, maybe it's an interesting way for us to stand out from the crowd.

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#33

Post by kevsim »

creshal wrote: post #31
kevsim wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been waiting on this a bit to see if there's much demand for this and so far the answer has been "not much" but we're open to the idea. So the answer is "not right now". Good news I don't think it would be super tough for us since we're built using pretty boring tech (i.e. not a lot of dependencies on a particular cloud vendor), don't have a bajillion microservices, etc.

If we were to use it (which would need gitlab/mattermost integration as mentioned before), we'd very much depend on having a self hosted option.

GitLab is our next planned integration and one of our current paying customers is using mattermost so it's something we're strongly considering.

And this HN launch has given us a lot to think about in terms of self hosting!

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#34

Post by kevsim »

creshal wrote: post #30

Gitlab/Mattermost integrations would be nice to see.

GitLab is our next planned integration.

One of our paying customers uses Mattermost so we've started the process of peeking at their API to see what we're up against. Since we've already got Discord/Slack it probably won't be super tough. That being said, there were plenty of gotchas added Discord after we already had slack since their API was different enough to be a bit annoying at times.

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#35

Post by kevsim »

zersiax wrote: post #27

Just had a quick look at this, and I think a lot of accessibility wins could be made with relatively little work here. This is another thing most of the competition gets wrong, so if you guys are open to it i'd love to work with you to get that at a better state for, for example, screenreader users and people dependent on dictation software.

This would be amazing! Please reach out to kevin@kitemaker.co

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#36

Post by bachmeier »

kevsim wrote: post #29
bachmeier wrote: post #16

You're selling yourself as a fast alternative to Jira. There's already an established company doing that ( https://clubhouse.io/ ). They also offer a free plan for teams of up to 10 users. You're obviously in business to make money, so good that you're focused on selling your product, but why would someone pay for Kitemaker rather than use Clubhouse for free? Edit: Yes, Kitemaker has a free plan, but it looks quite l…

Great question! Our pricing is definitely something we think about a lot, so feedback like this is super helpful. The free plan usually gives a small team more than a month to try it out since teams tend to larger (and thus fewer) work items than they might in another tool. We definitely think it’s a huge market and it’s undeniable that products like clubhouse will keep having success. But for us, we’ve set out to bu…

One suggestion in that case - many apps have comparisons on their landing page. Clubhouse has "vs Trello" and "vs Jira" on theirs. I found your discussion here on HN to be much more informative than your website. You might consider adding more information for the prospective customer wondering why to give you their money and data rather than going with the competition.

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#37

Post by kevsim »

bachmeier wrote: post #36
kevsim wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question! Our pricing is definitely something we think about a lot, so feedback like this is super helpful. The free plan usually gives a small team more than a month to try it out since teams tend to larger (and thus fewer) work items than they might in another tool. We definitely think it’s a huge market and it’s undeniable that products like clubhouse will keep having success. But for us, we’ve set out to bu…

One suggestion in that case - many apps have comparisons on their landing page. Clubhouse has "vs Trello" and "vs Jira" on theirs. I found your discussion here on HN to be much more informative than your website. You might consider adding more information for the prospective customer wondering why to give you their money and data rather than going with the competition.

That's actually a great suggestion. We'll add that!

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#38

Post by mjaniczek »

This is exciting! As a person that has begun writing my own JIRA client (frustrated with JIRA Cloud performance compared to JIRA Server and frankly anything else), I welcome this alternative :)

One little nitpick: something about the video on the homepage makes it look weird - very sharp (non-antialiased) while downscaled: https://i.imgur.com/bNWJAIE.png

Re: Launch HN: Kitemaker (YC W21) – Fast alternative to Jira, built for remote teams

#40

Post by kevsim »

mjaniczek wrote: post #38

This is exciting! As a person that has begun writing my own JIRA client (frustrated with JIRA Cloud performance compared to JIRA Server and frankly anything else), I welcome this alternative :) One little nitpick: something about the video on the homepage makes it look weird - very sharp (non-antialiased) while downscaled: https://i.imgur.com/bNWJAIE.png

Thanks!

And thanks for the feedback on the video. We'll check it out. Which browser/os are you using?

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