[HN Gopher] SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups
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SaaS tools that get things done for tech startups
Author : mountainview
Score : 80 points
Date : 2022-07-15 14:34 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (juicefs.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (juicefs.com)
| riders_of_____ wrote:
| Could use Asana
| gehen88 wrote:
| Or Linear. The only project management tool I enjoy using as a
| developer.
| delgaudm wrote:
| I'm not a dev, so some of the dev specific tools I can't speak
| to, but after looking through this list, for biz admin I suggest
| looking at Zoho One -- it literally has 90 percent of the tools
| already and they're integrated, for one price per user. It's been
| incredible for me as a freelancer to have one place and one price
| for all my needs: docs, mail, social, email campaigns,
| transactional email, website, crm, invoicing, books,
| appointments, webinars, meetings, project management, helpdesk,
| ecommerce etc... It's a pretty robust platform (and for a one-
| person operation it's less than $500 a year)
|
| I don't work for them, I'm just a fan.
| cemerick wrote:
| My roots _are_ in engineering, and I agree wholeheartedly: zoho
| one is a no-brainer compared to having to cobble together
| solutions for standard business functions from a dozen vendors
| at triple the aggregate cost. Just the savings vs QBO or Xero
| makes it worthwhile.
| getcrunk wrote:
| Which tools?
| delgaudm wrote:
| I use these: contracts / signatures, docs, e-mail, social,
| email campaigns, transactional email, website, crm,
| invoicing, books, appointments, webinars, meetings, project
| management, helpdesk, ecommerce.
|
| But there are way waaaay more apps included:
| https://www.zoho.com/one/applications/web.html
| macNchz wrote:
| I feel like the promise of Zoho One is strong, but when I was
| using it I found myself frequently frustrated with the way that
| most of the services seemed to range from slightly-to-
| dramatically worse than the competition. As soon as you start
| paying for a couple of alternatives because the Zoho versions
| are bad, the one-price-for-everything proposition becomes less
| appealing.
| avowud wrote:
| If you had to criticize Zoho One, what would you say?
| deedubaya wrote:
| Papertrail used to be awesome, until the SW acquisition. I've
| been very happy with LogDNA/Mezmo as a replacement (no
| affiliation, just a happy customer!).
| jboogie77 wrote:
| Been using logdna for a while now and only wished I started
| using it sooner. My only complaint is lack of mobile ux/ui
| _pdp_ wrote:
| There is nothing about security - a goto platform of sorts.
| dsr_ wrote:
| The article says they value convenience over security.
| croes wrote:
| So they value profit over their customers
| dsr_ wrote:
| There are individual cases where this is the right move.
| E.g. your main business is consulting services, and you
| choose a quick-and-dirty service to host a marketing
| website with no form input and no production content.
| Convenience of, say, WordPress might trump a static site
| generator.
| fny wrote:
| What are you looking for with regards to security?
| 2c2c2c wrote:
| expensify -> brex
|
| sendgrid -> mailgun
|
| travis -> probably anything else
| smt88 wrote:
| > _expensify - > brex_
|
| Brex is a shitty company that doesn't want your business[1]
| unless you're a VC money pit.
|
| 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/brex-drops-small-business-
| cu...
| yucky wrote:
| As someone who moved from Mandrill to Sendgrid, and not exactly
| satisfied...can you tell me what Mailgun does better?
| juanse wrote:
| Deliverability is not one of its strengh. Considering a
| change right now.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Travis CI and Solarwinds on the list eh...
| arvindamirtaa wrote:
| As far as the Get Things Done aspect goes, I'd happy replace
| Github + Github Actions + Travis/other CI/CD tools with Gitlab.
| It really does all that, and the CI/CD tool is >>> Github
| Actions.
| avowud wrote:
| Could you explain more on that thought?
| efrecon wrote:
| They mentioned GH actions also. So maybe they switched?
| petrzjunior wrote:
| I'm a daily user of Papertrail. It's starting to grow too
| expensive for our team ($100/16 GB). Still I haven't found an
| alternative with instant text search and infinite scroll. The
| ability to quickly scroll through the logs has proven to be
| crucial to debugging critical problems. I'm having a hard time
| filtering through JSON logs in Grafana/Elastic search/cloud-
| native log engine.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Hard agree. I really don't think TravisCI is very good or
| reliable.
| seneca wrote:
| Yeah, basically came to say this. While I appreciate the
| effort, I think this list is way off.
| scott_w wrote:
| They started in 2017 when I think Travis was still a viable
| option, especially for those that already knew how to use it.
| Geee wrote:
| I'd recommend HelpScout instead of Intercom for standard customer
| support. It's affordable (pricing per agent) and very high
| quality software without any bullshit. Intercom might have
| additional features, but it's also very expensive.
| rc_mob wrote:
| With all these fees, how tf do you make any profit?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| As soon as your company can afford to hire a single full-time
| employee, most of these fees seem pretty inconsequential. And
| if you haven't hired any employees, you're probably in
| bootstrapping mode, so you're betting on becoming profitable
| before running out of runway.
| MattyMc wrote:
| As someone who operates a small tech company (<5 employees), I
| can't relate to using all these products. However, our needs
| are different than the author's. Given that they're paying
| $800+ USD/month, I suspect their monthly revenue and the time
| saved from these tools justifies their cost.
| paxys wrote:
| If spending like a hundred dollars per month per employee on
| productivity tools is sinking your business then you have much
| bigger problems.
| seydor wrote:
| I wonder if people actually do work other than "using" these
| products all day.
| makk wrote:
| I love seeing pragmatic posts like this. Of course YMMV and
| people have different tastes in tools so take what you like and
| leave the rest. It's fun to see what others are doing and how
| they're thinking about stuff.
| ushakov wrote:
| > we favor cloud-based applications over those that are privately
| deployed or homegrown open-source products
|
| no, thanks
| amyjess wrote:
| The older I get, the more I've slid towards the opinion that
| I'd much rather configure cloud SaaS via terraform than waste
| days of work maintaining a self-hosted application.
| ushakov wrote:
| me too
|
| but for me the SaaS offering has to be either:
|
| a) based on open-source
|
| b) interoperable (S3, MQTT)
|
| otherwise prepare to be screwed over by greedy corporates
| Tehchops wrote:
| Yea reading HN comments gives me the impression most of the
| readership has never had to manage anything of complexity
| beyond their "homelab".
| ozim wrote:
| When I was younger I thought it is cool to be admin and
| have access to stuff, run things on my own being like Neo
| in Matrix.
|
| Then I had admin access to wi-fi router in dorm, it stopped
| being funny when people shitty laptops could not connect
| and they would blame you or for any kind of connection
| issue for that matter :)
|
| Then I had a job with support duty, 1 A.M. calls because
| you need to check logs are not cool.
|
| Now I don't want to have any privileges unless I really
| cannot do my work. If I don't have to run some application
| and someone else is getting called for outage or I can say
| that is our provider can't do much - I am definitely making
| company I work for - pay to another company and stay out of
| equation.
|
| If I run some software for myself by myself I am not going
| to pay for that - but as soon as other people are involved
| I would tell them to go and buy that service. If it is work
| related even more so.
| amerine wrote:
| Up front: I agree with your "no, thanks", but, I do think there
| is a philosophical point the author has to not host software
| themselves, which 86's most OSS.
|
| Not that I agree with their "rules", but I can at least
| understand why they'd choose to not host.
|
| (Fair warning: I host other peoples software (Heroku architect)
| for a living so I'm probably very biased)
| ushakov wrote:
| many open-source vendors offer hosted options or link
| consultancies who will host on your behalf
| whitelake22 wrote:
| Surprised to see Travis CI on that list. Intercom also gets
| fairly expensive.
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| SpacePortKnight wrote:
| Good list. It's a little surprising that Google still can't
| bundle a better chat application in Google Workspace.
| actuator wrote:
| I think it is do with company culture. It is an email and docs
| heavy culture so a lot of collaboration happens on that.
|
| If they were chat heavy like most other organisations seem to
| be, they would put more effort into building features that
| others seem to want.
| ghaff wrote:
| Really? I use Google Chat all the time in Workspace. I admit
| that my needs are pretty undemanding but it does what I want.
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