pirsquare

Opps sorry url got mixed up.

the password reset link if you replace "console/console" with "console" it should work.

I will push a fix shortly.

I feel it's way too hand wavy on consistency and correctness. My opinion as someone who've implemented marketing workflows that breaks all the time (and tons of painful lessons).

Strong correctness guarantee is something that should not be undermine. Even more important than availability.

The examples on the website is simple but heavily undermines the importance of correctness. Anyone who implement similar pseudo-code directly will eventually suffer from data correctness issue in crashes.

  @DBOS.workflow()
  def checkout_workflow(items: Items):
      order = create_order()
      reserve_inventory(order, items)
      payment_status = process_payment(order, items)

      if payment_status == 'paid':
          fulfill_order(order)
      else:
          undo_reserve_inventory(order, items)
          cancel_order(order)

Hahaha totally relatable. Love Zendesk but they kept charging and adding more features I don't need.

I built https://pointanswer.com/ for myself to host 3 of my own SaaS instead of paying more than $100/mo for simple helpcenter. I'm the only one using it with no customers but it's still way better than paying for Zendesk.

But did spent too much time on it as I built in pre-Claude era.

My personal experience: For many years I used Zendesk to manage support and host my documentation. It's a powerful platform with help center structure that I liked liked the most. I was paying about US$30/mo for OnVoard.

When I use Zendesk for my second SaaS business, RenderKu, it costs me $70/mo. This amount is more than 3 Hetzner servers I'm paying to host the whole infrastructure. And I'm only choosing Zendesk mainly for hosting documentation.

At this point, when I was planning to start my 3rd app business, the thought of forking another $70/mo for hosting documentation made me rethink my options. I've eventually come to the conclusion it would be better for me to start PointAnswer and use it as helpcenter for myself since I only needed simple and affordable helpcenter.

Being an advocate for GCP all these years, I can only say the earlier you get out of it, the safer it is for your business. All it takes is for their automated system to go haywire, and you can say bye bye to all your goodwill and customers. Go look at twitter how many customers are blaming railway. Founder had history getting screwed by GCP, yet still choose to depend on them.

You can't rely your business on GCP. Honestly, this is the most silly way to kill your own business.

For context, copied from my post 3 years ago.

March 10, 2023 | hide | past | favorite As a 4 years customer, our production severs have been suspended by Google Cloud because we didn't fill up some information on-time. Contacted support but they expect us to wait for 24-48 hours to get it resolved while all our servers are down. Anyone linked with someone powerful in google cloud can help?

======

- Running production on google cloud for 4 yrs with my startup. 100% legit SaaS business.

- Always pay bills on-time no issue. Good customer never open tickets, ask for help or what just quietly pay my bills each month.

- Our servers was abruptly suspended yesterday midnight and my whole business is now down for > 10hrs.

- We run a SaaS business that other ecommerce stores rely on and have hundreds of paying merchants.

- My customers have been grilling me and I don't feel gcloud's trust and safety team understand/care how urgent the issue is.

======

Why were our servers suspended? Because we didn't fill up information in time?

- See https://imgur.com/a/x0Y3RJl

- Apparently they dropped us an email 10 days back that I missed out

- Titled "Important Information Regarding Your Google Account" with no indication of suspension or what in title.

- Given the number of subprocessor "Important" emails they send it's too easy to miss out the email.

- 10 days gone by and our servers were abruptly shutdown with zero suspension notification or what.

- We've been paying $400-$700/mo for the past 4 yrs consistently and they shut us down because we didn't fill up some information?

When I tried to ask them to at least temporarily get our servers back while the verification is ongoing, I didn't get any answers.

Google Cloud have zero empathy for customers.

It's not like my account got suspended for fradulent issue or what. It's suspended because I didn't fill up some information on-time and they don't even allow me to temporarily reactivate my services or what. Especially when I had to wait for hours to get their team to verify my details before I can get my servers back.

You can't trust them with your business. Don't run any production stuffs with Google Cloud, ever.

Facebook doing that is actually good, to protect consumers from data abuse after incidents like cambridge analytica. They are holding businesses who touches your personal data responsible.

excellent idea, this will eventually be the SendGrid for email agents. Just automating 2FA alone is worth the gold. And there's tons of use cases.

I have no doubt this will be huge.

postmark is a garbage now. This is coming from a previous postmark advocate and moved to SES.

SES is terrible in the past but now it is at least on-par if not better than postmark.

Only issue with SES is setup can be tedious.

Because all other aspects of their businesses except services beat expectations. So we can't really say if this change will be permanent indefinitely.

Because business owners don't have the time and resources to keep changing vendors to save 10% costs. Time is money.

Switching cost is more than you think. For example, I don't like Zendesk it's expensive and over-engineered. But I stick to it because I know how hard it is to port my docs over and re-setup the live chat. It's half a day work. To save $50/mo, it's not worth my time. My focus is growing my company, not to save $50/mo.

I run SaaS and spent alot in SaaS products.

Why would you allow users to unsub from transactional emails?

This is the direct link to the guidelines. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126

Strange there's no mentioned about transactional emails. Since we wouldn't include unsubscribe link for transactional emails.

Amazon is A-tier.

GCP is F-tier

GCP - Shutdown our production servers and took 1 whole week to get it resolved. Nothing fraudulent on our end. Just for missing out on KYC form.

Yep shutdown our production servers and take 1 whole week to get it resolved. Nothing fraudulent on our end. Just missing out on KYC form.

GCP will shutdown your production servers and take one whole week to get it back. All for missing out on a KYC form.

Our story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35133917

Forget about the initial shutdown, how can you take 1 whole week to resolve something critical like this.

Even if Google is offering me $1mil cloud credits today I wouldn't risk my business with them anymore.

Reminds me of https://killedbygoogle.com/

Makes me wonder. Is there a market for something like Upvoty (to gauge interested) + Kickstarter (to get commitment) for dead projects?

Or at the v least, showing possible alternatives. After all, life is about moving forward.

AWS support is so nice, you can't believe it.

This! They even custom-coded their support portal better than those off-the-shelf vendor like Zendesk. I say this as a Zendesk paying customer.

GCP on the other hand, is a F-tier in support. Almost feel like I need to beg them to get any level of help.

We need a free Postman replacement tool with Photopea business model that is driven by ads, not VC-funds.

It used to be cheap and affordable, then one day some Google executive decided to 10X the Map APIs pricing.

The key to long term success in Shopify ecosystem is to focus on a niche market. For example, a scheduling tool for merchants. If you build something that almost every merchant will use, it will be eventually added to Shopify's core offerings.

Webflow need a mode for this. I struggle dealing with "icons" over raw code.

FWIW Render is moving most of their infrastructure from GCP to AWS https://twitter.com/anuraggoel/status/1670863526272077825

It's dirt cheap.

But I still prefer EU region =).

As usual, the expected Google Clown Platform support.

FWIW, 3 months ago they shutdown my servers for some minor issue and I'm only able to get them to reactivate after a week.

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35133917

I can resonate this. I used to be a huge Google Clown Platform fan but boy these folks displays a sense of condescending attitude to their users/customers.

Long story short. They don't give a shit of you and have zero empathy.

When the money from ads stop, it will be inevitable.

Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35133917

And you will get proper customer support with Hetzner

Just go with AWS or Azure. Google Clown Platform is okay until you need to have any form of support.

I'm like you, bootstrapper. Went with GCP for 4 yrs until they shutdown my production servers last fri.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35133917

Hi everyone, I'm the customer in this case. Wanted to let everyone know that this sort of abrupt suspension for production apps has been a recurring issue that has happened time and again with Google Clown Platform.

Similar horror stories:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32547912

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33737577

-----

[Update 1]

Yes I agree I have some fault for the initial suspension, but that's not the biggest issue here.

The biggest issue for me is how they "react" to help a customer get things back to normal when something goes wrong.

First, I had to wait for 8 hrs for their Trust and Safety team.

Then it was 24-48 hrs. See https://imgur.com/a/i0OHXcI

Until now I still haven't had a resolution.

And the most ridiculous part is they could still tell me "I just received an email from the Trust and Safety team and they mentioned that they have sent you a separate email." when I had replied 3 times within an hour after they requested for more details. See proof https://imgur.com/a/1ZSmGBH

I want to add one more thing. Whether or not if it's my fault for the initial suspension isn't the main thing.

The main thing is how they "react" to help a customer get things back to normal when something goes wrong.

Verdict: Never ever trust Google Clown Platform with your business

"You missed emails asking for verification"

Did you saw the title of the email? "Important Information for your Account". It reads more like an informational email. How many important emails you've received this week? Could've been worded "[Action Required]", "Account Suspension Notice" etc. And they didn't even drop a notification when my servers were shutdown.

"This will happen to you again on AWS or any other provider."

Can't really agree to this. I read all the horror stories and GCloud is the only one who would suspend you for something like this. I need to be very clear, the suspension is not due to fraudulent issue. It's due to "missing some paperwork". I've been paying using the same card for the past 4 yrs.

Then voila they choose to suddenly dropped you an informational email and suspend you 10 days later.

How many saas apps are you using? 10, 20? Imagine if everyone pulls up something like this would you even have time to run your business?

See similar horror stories below. AWS doesn't pull this shit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32547912

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33737577

And lastly, when something like this happens, the minimal they could do is to get my servers back asap. But you know what? I've been trying all my means to get them to it back at least temp but nobody there gives a fuck. It's all the "none of my business" attitude between their teams.

Here's one more thing that I didn't mentioned. I replied to their verification team 3 times within an hour last friday. You know what happened? Their support team told me "their verification team" already replied to ask for more details when they haven't even read my replies (done all checks on my end can 100% confirm my msg was the last one out). And they've been dead silence over 3 days already. They don't give a fuck about screwing you and don't understand or care about the criticalness of their role.

Their support is so horrible that we should rename Google Cloud Platform as "Google Clown Platform"