Ask HN: What Paid Services Do You Use For Your Startup?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=545229

by quellhorst • 17 years ago

64 93 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

For your startup, what services do you use? I'm using Amazon AWS for hosting, Pivotal Tracker for project planning, GitHub, and a few others I can't think of right now.

What paid services do you find the most useful in running your startup?

cperciva• 17 years ago

AWS for application hosting and storage. Paypal for payment processing (if that counts).

jbrun• 17 years ago

Basecamp, Highrise, Harvest, Slicehost, GitHub, Paypal Merchant Account - that's about all for now.

jaxn2• 17 years ago

Github, LightHouse, The Planet

All of those services provide things that I need, but don't want to spend time administering. In the case of The Planet they are providing the network, but I still maintain the servers. I am thinking about moving to Amazon once the contract is up.

From a non-webapp perspective, I pay for legal and accounting too. I have thought about paying for a personal assistant, but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

andr• 17 years ago

Dropbox, Mantis, and git, the latter being hosted on Slicehost.

catone• 17 years ago

GitHub, Linode, AWS.

A merchant account is in the cards, though we don't know where yet (and haven't finished the process of incorporation, so can't get one yet).

At some point we might use Exceptional (I like the look of it, but I'm not a coder so I'm not making the decision of whether we need it or not) and if Get Satisfaction proves useful perhaps pay for a plan there. We'll see.

vorador• 17 years ago

By the way, why do you use github when you could host your sources yourself ?

MicahWedemeyer4• 17 years ago

Maintaining your own repo is usually more work than most people realize. I prefer to outsource as much sysadmin as possible and stick to dev work, and source control is a cheap one to outsource.

With unfuddle you can even get a (small) free private repo.

jaxn2• 17 years ago

I had been hosting it myself (subversion), but when I added another developer I wanted it somewhere that I didn't have to manage and that kept security completely separate.

sgoraya• 17 years ago

The Planet, Ringcentral, Google Apps

stuff4ben• 17 years ago

Unfuddle.com for subversion hosting, wiki, and bug tracking. Will be using AWS in the near future once some code gets written.

dangrover• 17 years ago

Slicehost, CampaignMonitor, Wufoo, AWS (just for S3 hosting of downloads)

Mistone• 17 years ago

we are an eCommerce biz so a bit diff: bigresponse (email marketing) MediaTemple Adwords (off and on) Facebook ads (now off no real interest in restarting) Amazon Merchant Account

bbuffone• 17 years ago

Google (Docs, Site, Mail), Skype (Communication), Unfuddle (Repository), AWS (Runtime), drop.io (File exchange), Vimeo (Video), Scribd (Docs)

lecha• 17 years ago

You asked for PAID services, not just any SaaS.

webfaction, AWS (ec2, sqs, s3), paypal

pierrefar• 17 years ago

Slicehost, AWS, Pingdom (downtime alerts).

Lots of freebies too, though.

tdavis• 17 years ago

Github, Lighthouse, Google Apps, Pingdom. That's all I can really think of at the moment. Hosting is situated firmly on the ground, so no AWS for now.

jlees• 17 years ago

Slicehost, trying out Basecamp at the moment.

hedgehog• 17 years ago

Question for AWS users: What are you running on AWS? (web, DB, static content, ...)

iamelgringo• 17 years ago

Elastic IP + EC2 + Elastic Block for hosting. S3 for backups. I also make judicious use of Mechanical Turk for usability testing.

I also use Google apps for my domain for email hosting (free). I also use Woopra's real time analytics (free).

I have an online store that I'm paying Yahoo Merchant Solutions for. I also pay for an extra line with Vonage for my business line. ($10 a month).

I've used Google Adwords for advertising occasionally.

calvin• 17 years ago

S3 for data backups and file storage. CloudFront as a CDN. A few EC2 instances for data processing and Elastic IPs for them.

bemmu• 17 years ago

Fetching URLs mentioned on Twitter. It scales great, but turns out the part where I save the results to a central MySQL DB does not. Surprised that you max out your InnoDB UPDATEs after only around two thousands per second. Will try memcachedb.

jaaron• 17 years ago

Different setup for different projects. Latest was all AWS: EC2 servers pushing out most static content to S3.

Also use EC2 for test and staging servers as then we only need them up for the actual test or staging period.

rmanocha• 17 years ago

I use AWS mostly for static content hosting (S3 + CloudFront). I plan to shift over to EC2 when I have enough users to warrant the expenses (Currently on a 256MB slice - $20/month).

fireteller4• 17 years ago

I'm using S3/cloudfront for assets, user data and backups, EC2 and elastic IPs, SQS, and FPS for payment processing. Love it.

To the question I also pay for authsmtp, and will probably be using the pay level of "New Relic" as well soon, for rails profiling.

wensing• 17 years ago

Pros and cons of FPS?

Derrek2• 17 years ago

I second the request for pros and cons of FPS

ible• 17 years ago

S3 for data backups, storage. Bunch of EC2 instances with EBS for crunching data and running web crawler.

pmikal• 17 years ago

Wordpress, Rackspace, Serverbeach, Onebox, Speakeasy Hosted VOIP

hikari17• 17 years ago

I'd add gliffy (for diagrams), balsamiq (for mockups) and onebox (for phone service) to the list...

kbrower• 17 years ago

linode, AWS(s3,cloudfront), getclicky

paraschopra• 17 years ago

Just curious, why don't you use Google Analytics?

endtime• 17 years ago

Google Apps, Slicehost

johns• 17 years ago

Serverbeach, JungleDisk/S3, MerchantPlus, CampaignMonitor

skmurphy• 17 years ago

Skype, Central Desktop, Silicon Ridge (web hosting), Webex Office (Calendar & Contacts), 123SignUp, Spellr, Dabbleboard, LinkedIn, iContact, Google Adwords,

RobGR• 17 years ago

Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, a VoIP provider for a 1-888 number to an asterisk machine (vitelity.net).

After that, it's just business class internet service and the electric company . . . I say screw all this hosting, cloud hosting, and bunches of paid web apps; in this day and age you should be able to install apache and set up whatever you need, and move to Rackspace or hire accounts if you are ever actually making money (which I'm not).

spif• 17 years ago

I'll add GetSatisfaction to the list after all the bashing they've received this week.

We (and our users) get satisfaction from them...

agotterer• 17 years ago

Free version of most of the paid apps work just find for us. Dropbox, getsatisfaction, basecamp.

We pay for slicehost.

tonystubblebine• 17 years ago

The services side of our business: highrise, basecamp, glance, blinksale

The internal side: serverbeach, github, campfire

I think they're all great, so it's easier to say what we would switch away from.

We would switch from serverbeach to slicehost if we were scaling faster.

We would switch from highrise to a different CRM if it was easier to write custom reports.

edawerd3• 17 years ago

We're using

Slicehost (Hosting) AWS (Storage) Authorize.net (Recurring Billing) Bank of America (Banking)

and we're currently looking into paying for an 800 number...anyone have any suggestions for this?

brianlash2• 17 years ago

GotVMail is a good value.

edawerd3• 17 years ago

This looks good. Do you have an account with them and/or want to refer me? I think we can both save some money. Shoot me an email

davidw6• 17 years ago

I'm surprised at all the people still using Slicehost. They are good people, and run a nice service, but in terms of money, you are leaving it on the table when compared to Linode:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode

I was with SH myself, and before I wrote that article, I dropped them an email asking about the 64 vs 32 bit thing, and was simply informed that they have no plans for 32 bit, so I went ahead and switched, then wrote my article and have been happy since. I sincerely hope the SH guys will get competitive again, at which point I'll gladly update my article.

Also, something that Linode was missing for a while was backups. They're rolling them out now:

http://blog.linode.com/2009/04/03/backup-service-enters-beta...

davidmathers• 17 years ago

I switched to Linode after reading your blog post. Also, Slicehost had some serious downtime last December.

The "community" section of the Slicehost website is really exceptional though. Insanely great.

mrduncan• 17 years ago

Agreed. Their articles are a really great resource as well (and aren't Slicehost specific). They have a ton of step by step guides for OS setup, Apache, MySql, Postfix, etc...

http://articles.slicehost.com/

ulysses• 17 years ago

I use Slicehost, after looking at Linode's pages these features seem to be missing:

Bandwidth is pooled between all of your slices.

Money is pooled -- if you pay a certain amount, you get the "annual discount", but then you can use that for paying for whichever slices each month. And you can bring slices up and down whenever you want to, and pay a prorated amount.

There's a nice API so you can automate a lot of your activities.

On the other hand, Linode does seem to be a bit cheaper on RAM and a lot cheaper on bandwidth.

atourino• 17 years ago

Bandwidth at Linode is also pooled for Linodes withing the same datacenter (of which they have 4). You can also bring up any number of Linodes and bring them down whenever you want. You will be charged for the full month but if you bring them down, they will give you credit for the unused portion of the month (rate is per day). Linode also has an API for their DNS service but I haven't really used it so I won't comment much on it. In short, Linode is a pretty good deal.

tasaro4• 17 years ago

Perhaps it's not prominent on the site, but:

Bandwidth is pooled between all of your nodes (and it doesn't matter which data center you place them in).

We offer prepayment discounts: 10% for 12 months and 15% for 24 months. We also prorate all billing to the day (you only pay for what you use).

There is an API for the DNS Manager, with more to come.

natrius2• 17 years ago

When my credit card expired, Linode deactivated my account and never responded to my emails after that. If I had data that I needed on that machine, I would've lost it forever.

They're cheap, so I still use them for personal projects, but personally, I'd never trust my business with them.

Just another data point.

lena2• 17 years ago

Wow. I just had the same situation with Slicehost. They notified me about the problem, said that there was a five day grace period, and that I could always contact them if I had any problems. They generally replied within the hour to all my e-mails.

tasaro4• 17 years ago

not sure how long ago that was, but I'd be happy to look into it. service at linode.com

patio112• 17 years ago

you are leaving it on the table when compared to Linode

In my case, the "left on the table" amount is about 1/100th of my sales. From last week. That doesn't exactly justify me dropping everything and spending my freaking expensive engineering time figuring out how to migrate without causing breakage or downtime.

edawerd3• 17 years ago

I've use both Linode (personal) and Slicehost (picwing). AFAIK, Linode still does not have automatic backups, which is really simple on Slicehost.

tasaro4• 17 years ago

We (Linode) announced a public beta of our new backup service in our NJ facility yesterday and hope to have it rolled out to all four locations shortly: http://tinyurl.com/db8tlf

jawngee• 17 years ago

@massify we use:

- Slicehost (some hosting)

- Datapipe (hosting)

- EC2 (Document/media conversion)

- S3 (Storage)

- Panther Express (CDN)

- PBWiki

- PivotalTracker

- Protoshare

- DNSMadeEasy

- Hosted MS Exchange

- JIRA/Fisheye/Crucible

swombat• 17 years ago

EngineYard (hosting)

Fogbugz (bug tracking)

Github (scm... paying but included with EY)

NewRelic (perf monitoring... paying but included with EY)

Protx (payment gateway. Awful customer service, don't recommend them)

Easyspeedy (test server that we should get rid of, really)

charlesju• 17 years ago

Engine Yard, New Relic, GitHub, Lighthouse.

Typical Rails shop stuff, :)

timcederman• 17 years ago

Omniture for metrics, ExactTarget for email campaigns.

wastedbrains• 17 years ago

Paying for GitHub, AWS (Ec2, SimpleDB, S3), LightHouse, Vonage, DreamHost.

rishi• 17 years ago

GoDaddy, BrainTree Financial, Quickbooks

pg• 17 years ago

We use Dropbox, Wufoo, CO2Stats, and Etherpad (which will soon be paid). The only one we have to pay for is CO2Stats, because they have to buy power certificates, which cost them money. But we'd pay for all of them if we had to.

Www.ycombinator.com is a machine at Pair Networks, and News is at The Planet. We use EasyDNS for domains.

We used to use Highrise (we may actually still be paying for it) but we abandoned it because it wasn't flexible enough.

mattculbreth• 17 years ago

Freshbooks for invoicing, etc.

oomkiller• 17 years ago

github

callmeed• 17 years ago

Hosting: Rackspace, EngineYard, Slicehost SCM: GitHub (included with EY) Project Management: Basecamp Storage: AWS S3 Merchant: PayPal and BrainTree VoiceMail: GotVMail Email: CampaignMonitor

ctingom• 17 years ago

Freshbooks, Jotform, CampaignMonitor, Paypal

zanders• 17 years ago

Used to pay for basecamp. Then switched to Dropbox.

peterarmstrong• 17 years ago

Current (and all recommended): GitHub AWS (S3, EC2, ...) Pivotal Tracker Dropbox

Migrating away from: Slicehost (redundant with AWS) Lighthouse (redundant with Pivotal Tracker)

Already migrated away from: Basecamp

patio112• 17 years ago

Rank ordered by amount spent:

AdWords (I spend more than everything else on this list, doubled.)

SwiftCD (outsourced CD fulfillment)

Paypal / Google Checkout

Slicehost

Microsoft AdCenter

CrazyEgg

Clicky (getclicky.com)

gills• 17 years ago

Github and Heroku (I'm hopeful they will start charging one of these days, because I think they are on to something good. And I'm very new to Rails so it works for me at least here in the beginning).

fireteller4• 17 years ago

Am I the only one here using AWS-FPS?

Derrek2• 17 years ago

What're your thoughts on FPS? Can you post a link to one of your sites using it? Thanks

fireteller4• 17 years ago

You only want to use it if you want a more robust payment then a 'buy now' button. In other words it's a lot to deal with if you only need that level of functionality. My app has a subscription model, and will be expanding out to a market at some point in the future. FPS handles all of those models. They also provide some good guarantees. Given some of the recent complaints about about google payments, and my own personal experiences with paypal I'm beginning to value these guarantees very highly.

However, my system is not fully implemented and deployed (hence no link yet), so I'm not ready to provide a full endorsement. I can only say that the experience so far on the development side has been very good, and the sandbox makes extensive testing before deployment very easy.

I will report back when I've deployed the system in production.

ecommercematt2• 17 years ago

What services do you pay for that are non-technical? Lawyers, Accountants, Copywriters, Consultants of various stripes? Anything recurring?

jwt• 17 years ago

We use the following paid services: Dropbox, Wufoo, Github, Slicehost, Skype, Google Apps, Uservoice, Basecamp and Pivotal Tracker

mjon7• 17 years ago

Most useful I would describe as 'wheels come off if we stop using'. Ours are: - Quickbooks Online (backoffice/finance) - Smartsheet (work management/collaboration/file sharing) - Amazon AWS (hosting infrastructure)

Other services I subscribe to and find work well are: - Zoomerang (online surveys) - MyEmma (e-mail marketing) - GoToMeeting (web conferencing) - Jott (voice capture and transcription, integrated with Smartsheet)

AndrewWarner• 17 years ago

I pay to monitor my credit report.

vivekamn• 17 years ago

github.com speedyrails(rails VPS)

Ask HN: What Paid Services Do You Use For Your Startup?

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