
Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition - sharjeel
Few years ago, Joshua Schachter started this thread on HN for discussing hosted useful services: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1769910<p>The contribution in thread introduced many interesting SaaS services which can immensely help in deploying services as well as development.<p>It's been three years since then. What do we have today?
======
cmadan
Here is what we use

1\. BitBucket (<http://www.bitbucket.org>) - Source code hosting

2\. Google Docs (<http://drive.google.com>) - Team Collaboration

3\. BitBucket Issues (<http://www.bitbucket.org>) - Team Collaboration

4\. Heroku (<http://www.heroku.com>) - PaaS/sysadmin replacement

5\. Hirefire (<http://www.hirefireapp.com>) - Scale up/down dynos on Heroku
based on traffic

6\. Mongolab (<http://www.mongolab.com>) - Database-aaS

7\. Pusher (<http://www.pusherapp.com>) - WebSockets-aaS

8\. Filepicker (<http://www.filepicker.io>) - Uploading files to the
application

9\. Mailgun (<http://www.mailgun.com>) - Send & Receive Mails

10\. PaperTrail (<http://www.papertrail.com>) - Error Logging (Rails)

11\. Errorception (<http://www.errorception.com>) - Error Logging (JS)

12\. Desk.com (Knowledge Base + Customer Support)

~~~
siddhant
PaperTrail URL should be <https://papertrailapp.com/> :)

------
sergiotapia
I STRONGLY recommend Asana: <http://www.asana.com>

It's like using a smart piece of paper that just gets out of your way and
let's you create, assign, toggle, set dates, etc really intuitively.

I'm a freelancer - and for my usage I typically have a Workspace called
Freelance Projects. In that workspace I have many projects, each for each
freelance gig I land. I then invite my client (YOU CAN INVITE UP TO 30 PEOPLE
PER PROJECT FOR FREE HOLY BALLS) and collaborate intuitively from there.

He/she can upload photoshop files, images, text files, edit desriptions and I
can comment on them and we go back and forth. Better than email. I used to
procrastinate a lot. It was my achille's heel; but since Asana I enjoy working
because there's something deeply psychological in ticking things off and
seeing them grayed out.If you haven't checked it out.

There's also Trello but I kind of dislike it when there are more than 5 items
in a list. It gets unwiedly.

~~~
reddit_clone
Very interesting. How is it pronounced? Asana like in Yoga?

~~~
mhartl
The company pronounces it _as-AH-nuh_ rather than _AS-uh-nuh_.

------
bearwithclaws
I use these for Hacker Monthly (<http://hackermonthly.com>):

SendGrid (<http://sendgrid.com>) - transactional emails (sending digital
issues to subscribers).

MailChimp (<http://mailchimp.com>) - newsletter.

Linode (<http://linode.com>) - VPS hosting.

Harvest (<http://getharvest.com>) - invoicing (for corporate customers +
advertisers).

FetchApp (<http://fetchapp.com>) - digital delivery (for single issue
purchase). Previously used E-Junkie.

PayPal - payment gateway (sadly, one of the only choice for Malaysian).

Gumroad (<http://gumroad.com>) - I use this as a 'PayPal alternative' for
customers who wish to pay directly with their credit card (and refuse to have
anything to do with PayPal).

Pivotal Tracker (<http://pivotaltracker.com>) - project management for HM's
backend app

ODesk (<http://odesk.com>) - finding and managing my remote team (currently in
the size of 4).

~~~
petercooper
What sort of things do you have the folks on ODesk doing? Support,
editorial..?

------
bfirsh
Here are a few that we use.

Airbrake (<http://airbrake.io/>) - Exception logging.

Campfire (<http://campfirenow.com/>) - Chat.

Librato (<https://metrics.librato.com/>) - Hosted graphing.

Mixpanel (<http://mixpanel.com/>) - Analytics, people tracking.

Pagerduty (<http://www.pagerduty.com/>) - Monitoring alerts.

Sendgrid (<http://sendgrid.com/>) - Sending emails.

Sprintly (<https://sprint.ly/>) - Project management.

Tarsnap (<http://www.tarsnap.com/>) - Offsite backups.

As well as all the obvious ones - GitHub, Google Apps, Dropbox, etc.

------
rschmitty
I still find the Atlassian OnDemand suite to be the most complete thing for
teams after we out grew BaseCamp/GitHub:
<http://www.atlassian.com/software/ondemand/overview/>

BitBucket: just like github (git, wiki, issues, pull requests etc) only priced
that makes sense for private repos. We just use it for git however because...

JIRA: Way better issues/bugs/feature tickets, built in optional time tracking.
Good support for Agile teams with GreenHopper

Confluence: A real wiki

Bamboo: continuous integration/deployment. When you commit to git with a JIRA
ticket number and a build fails its easier for everyone (non-technical people)
to see what is causing the failed build

The other big plus is user management to all of the above, you can create
client accounts if needed and they can create/close tickets or work on wiki
with you.

HipChat is nice because your non technical people participate easier, irc
previously had just been developers

You can probably get all of these things free individually but its worth the
small $ to have them all work together seamlessly, plus 1 account vs many is
always a big plus for adoption

\--------------

SplunkStorm: <https://www.splunkstorm.com/> log practically anything server
related and put it into dashboards/timelines. Alerts in the works

------
endtwist
Harvest ( <http://getharvest.com> ) - Time tracking and invoicing for
freelance work

SendGrid ( <http://sendgrid.com> ) - API for sending and tracking email

Lighthouse ( <http://lighthouseapp.com> ) - Issue tracking for teams

Trello ( <http://trello.com> ) - Task tracking, lists

Stripe ( <http://stripe.com> ) - Fast, easy payment processing

BundleScout ( <http://bundlescout.com> ) - Third-party library update tracking
(shameless plug, but I use BundleScout at BundleScout)

~~~
potomak
Tomatoes (<http://tomato.es>) - Time tracker and pomodoro timer

------
garrettdimon
I've been assembling a list of these lately for a book that I'm working on.
(<http://startingandsustaining.com>) Some of the categories are fairly loose
as some apps don't fit nicely into categorical buckets, but hopefully this is
a helpful list.

\--Browser/Email Testing

BrowserStack (<http://www.browserstack.com>)

Litmus (<http://litmus.com>)

\--Bug/Issue Tracking

BugHerd (<http://bugherd.com>)

Lighthouse (<http://lighthouseapp.com>)

Sifter (<http://sifterapp.com>) (Disclaimer: I built this.)

\--Planning & Project Management

Sprintly (<http://sprint.ly>)

Podio (<https://podio.com>)

Flow (<http://www.getflow.com>)

Interstate (<http://interstateapp.com>)

Basecamp (<http://basecamp.com>)

Apollo (<http://www.apollohq.com>)

Pivotal (<http://www.pivotaltracker.com>)

Asana (<http://www.asana.com>)

Trello (<https://trello.com>)

Blossom (<https://www.blossom.io>)

Trajectory (<https://www.apptrajectory.com>)

\--Business & Traffic Analytics

KissMetrics (<http://kissmetrics.com>)

MixPanel (<http://mixpanel.com>)

DigMyData (<http://digmydata.com>)

\--Continuous Integration / Code Quality

Travis (<https://travis-ci.org>)

Circle (<http://circleci.com>)

CodeClimate (<http://codeclimate.com>)

Sempaphore (<https://semaphoreapp.com>)

\--Dashboards

Ducksboard (<http://ducksboard.com>)

Geckoboard (<http://www.geckoboard.com>)

Instrumental (<https://instrumentalapp.com>)

\--Error/Exception Handling

Sentry (<https://getsentry.com>)

Coalmine (<https://www.getcoalmine.com>)

HoneyBadger (<https://www.honeybadger.io>)

BugSnag (<https://bugsnag.com>)

Raygun (<http://raygun.io>)

\--Log Monitoring

Loggly (<http://loggly.com>)

Papertrail (<https://papertrailapp.com>)

LogEntries (<https://logentries.com>)

\--Billing & Payment Processing

Braintree (<https://www.braintreepayments.com>)

Stripe (<http://stripe.com>)

Pin (<http://pin.net.au>)

PayMill (<http://paymill.com>)

Recurly (<http://recurly.com>)

Chargify (<http://chargify.com>)

Spreedly (<http://spreedly.com>)

Spreedly Core (<https://core.spreedly.com>)

\--Support/Help Desks

Desk (<http://desk.com>)

HelpScout (<http://helpscout.net>)

ZenDesk (<http://zendesk.com>)

Groove (<http://groovehq.com>)

Intercom (<http://intercom.io>)

Tender (<http://tenderapp.com>)

\--Transactional Email

Postmark (<https://postmarkapp.com>)

Mandril (<http://mandrill.com>)

MailGun (<http://www.mailgun.com>)

SendGrid (<http://sendgrid.com>)

CloudSMTP (<http://www.cloudsmtp.com>)

CritSend (<http://www.critsend.com>)

Postage (<http://postageapp.com>)

\--Email Collection/Landing Page Apps

Launchrock (<http://launchrock.com>)

Unbounce (<http://unbounce.com>)

KickoffLabs (<http://www.kickofflabs.com>)

Launch Effect (<http://launcheffectapp.com>)

Prefinery (<https://www.prefinery.com>)

LaunchGator (<http://launch.deskgator.com>)

~~~
netshade
Awesome, great to see Instrumental (<https://instrumentalapp.com/>) in your
list. I'm one of the folks working on it, would love to hear your thoughts on
us.

Some quick reviews of some of the products listed:

* Lighthouse (<http://lighthouseapp.com>) - Bug Tracker - good for keeping track of simple stuff last I used it (~2 years ago), but Github Issues obviated its use for me.

* Pivotal (<http://www.pivotaltracker.com/>) - Project Management - great tool, not trivial to keep well managed tho. Easy to let your project get out of hand with tons of tickets, requires some discipline in its use.

* Trello (<https://trello.com/>) - Project Management - simple, fast. Really great for keeping tasks focused on a small team, I'm not sure how it would suit a larger team though.

* Airbrake (<http://airbrake.io/>) - Error Handling - You didn't have this in your list, but it deserved a mention. It's okay for server side error handling, its client side stuff leaves something to be desired though. More often than not their hosted JS lags on load, causes your page load times to go up as well. Doesn't currently offer a supported hosted version.

* Stripe - (<https://stripe.com/>) - Billing & Payment Processing - Does just about everything right imo. Great documentation, great interface, website is well engineered. Analytics / reporting would be awesome tho.

* Intercom - (<http://intercom.io/>) - Support/Help Desks - I seriously love Intercom. For managing a team of people doing outreach to users, it is awesome. I view it as a fantastic tool for triaging retention.

* Uservoice - (<http://uservoice.com/>) - Support/Help Desks - You didn't mention them either, but I thought I'd add. They are pretty great, even for small companies. I think their sweet spot is a larger support team tho. Great interface.

~~~
st0p
Pivotal: Horrible, abysmal tool. Hate it with a passion. No clear overview at
all, UI is full of shiny colors but is messy as hell. I'm really glad we've
switched to Jira[1] after fighting with pivotal for a couple of months. YMMV
ofcourse :)

[1] <http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview>

~~~
jerryr
Pivotal is an agile planning tool; JIRA is an issue tracking and classical
project management tool. While each can be coerced to the other's function,
it's really comparing apples and oranges. I'll admit that JIRA and Pivotal
continue to muddy the differentiation with afterthought additions like JIRA's
Greenhopper and Pivotal's time tracking. But JIRA is a good tool for issue
tracking and Pivotal is a good tool for agile planning. If you're trying to
use either tool for the other's purpose, you'll hate it.

~~~
ajross
I still can't read "tool for agile planning" without crying inside my head. We
really need "tools" to "implement" "processes" in the spirit of a 6-line
manifesto, do we? Sigh.

~~~
jerryr
Aww. Don't cry. It's not a process tool. It's a prioritized to-do list that
can track your velocity. Despite being opinionated, it doesn't enforce a
process. Though you'll find that if you don't embrace those 6 lines, you'll
quickly make a mess inside Pivotal and it will happily let you do so.

------
seldo
This is our current list; I'm ignoring ones we've stopped using or haven't
really started using properly yet.

Github - obviously

AWS - obviously

Ylastic - easier AWS management

Sendgrid - mail delivery

Stripe - payment processing

Pingdom - external uptime tracking

PagerDuty - ops alerting and scheduling

Xero - accounting

JIRA - task management (the hosted version at Atlassian)

Desk - support tickets

Crashplan - personal machine backups

Google Docs/Mail - everything else

Others have been mentioning Fabric, Puppet, Graphite, Nagios -- we use these
but they're not hosted services, so not sure they fit.

~~~
guelo
I don't think Github is an "obviously" unless you have an open source project.
It's really not that hard to set up a git ssh server

~~~
simonw
The GitHub web interface is SO much better than running your own repository.
Pull requests are awesome for code reviews, the code browsing interface is
best of breed, and if you use their issue tracker and/or wiki everything links
together fantastically well.

~~~
Silhouette
_The GitHub web interface is SO much better than running your own repository._

And all you have to do is trust probably your second most valuable asset to an
external service outside your organisation... What could possibly go wrong?

~~~
gatherknwldg
Your cash is a valuable asset to your startup, too, but people don't store
that in-house.

Who do you trust more, github or Wall Street?

------
Flavius
Moqups (<https://www.moqups.com/>) - Wireframing tool

Sendgrid (<http://sendgrid.com/>) - Sending emails

Braintree (<https://www.braintreepayments.com/>) - Payments

Deployd (<http://www.deployd.com/>) - Quickly design and build APIs

Github (<https://github.com/>) - Project hosting and issue tracker

~~~
gadr90
Oh my god, Deployd is incredible! How come it's not in the front HN page
forever?

Seriously now, this is pratically open source Parse!

~~~
methehack
I agree -- wow! Seems like it also competes with firebase. And it seems like
it would also be useful in some cases where you'd otherwise use meteor or
derby.

------
codemoran
What we use at graphdat.

Source code: <http://www.github.com> We could host our own server, but github
is really convenient and our SDKs are open source so its easier.

Workflow & Issues: <http://huboard.com/> Given we use github, huboard makes it
easy to mange the issues

Build: <http://jenkins-ci.org/> and <https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano>
Such a nice setup, we host our own jenkins server, I have seen some links
above to Travis, might give that a spin.

Tickets & Wiki: <http://www.uservoice.com> Its a love/hate relationship with
uservoice. They make some things easy, others are so arcane. I'm adding in a
wiki article right now with some images in it. But uservoice doesn't let you
host an image, so I put it into an S3 bucket, add the link to uservoice and
there is a security error. I go back to the bucket, reset the security
settings and uservoice is caching the image error and wont let me add the
images, so I need to edit the source. So hard for something so simple.

Team Communication: <https://www.flowdock.com/> We were using Campfire, but we
like flowdock much better. Threaded conversations are still tough, I actually
miss Google Wave. We had 1 wave a day, it starts to grow on you.

Log Aggregation: <http://graylog2.org/> Very cool once you get it all working
together

Server Metrics and Application Analytics: <http://www.graphdat.com> We dog
food our own product, so it's our servers on the homepage..

Some other notable candidates:

'your personal website': <http://backstit.ch/> handy to monitor a couple of
feeds

'tech news aggregator': <http://skimfeed.com/> nice way to skim some news

~~~
jwarzech
Awesome to hear that your using backstitch! (I'm one of the Co-Founders). If
you get a chance I would love to talk with you about how your using it and
what you would like to see from the service. Please feel free to ping me at
jordan [AT] backstit.ch

------
smadam9
Graylog2 (<http://graylog2.org/>) - Log management & analytics in browser

Torch (for hosted Graylog <https://www.torch.sh/>)

------
jasonhanley
I've found that <http://www.bestvendor.com/> and <http://alternativeto.net/>
are nice sites to figure out tool stacks.

BestVendor even lets you put together your own customized lists:
[http://www.bestvendor.com/lists/tool-stack-for-pmrobot-a-
mob...](http://www.bestvendor.com/lists/tool-stack-for-pmrobot-a-mobile-
optimized-project-management-web-app)

------
borski
Hipchat (<http://hipchat.com>) - team collaboration

Stripe (<http://stripe.com>) - payments

Mandrill (<http://mandrill.com>) - email

Tinfoil Security (<http://tinfoilsecurity.com>) - web security

Help Scout (<http://helpscout.net>) - help desk / customer support

------
csomar
I'm not sure about the current trends, but here is my list for 2012-2013

\- Github (<http://github.com>) for Open Source and private source code
control.

\- Bitbucket (<http://bitbucket.org>) mostly private source code management.

\- Linode (<http://linode.com>) Where I run my virtual servers.

\- Trello (<http://trello.com>) Manages all my projects

\- Basecamp (<http://basecamp.com>) some clients still use it.

\- Google Analytics (<http://google.com/analytics>) Sticking with Google.

\- Freshbooks (<http://freshbooks.com>) For invoicing matters.

\- ahref (<http://ahrefs.com>) Tracking my backlinks.

\- Skype (<http://skype.com>) P2P calls and VoIP.

\- Google App (<http://google.com/a>) Planning to move this year, still on the
free plan.

\- Gmail (<http://gmail.com>) still no plans to move yet!

------
asenna
I was just doing some research on this recently and found this amazing article
by Vccafe - <http://www.vccafe.com/startup-resources/>

The links are all in the article.

------
llimllib
The only ones my company uses that haven't yet been mentioned are Google
Hangout and GoToMeeting. We use both because Hangouts have given us issues on
some networks.

Also, our chatbot is critical to the way we work and lives on hipchat (but has
adapters for campfire and jabber): <https://github.com/markolson/linkbot>

------
veesahni
Trello ( <http://trello.com> ) - task tracking

Clicky ( <http://clicky.com> ) - lightweight visitor analytics

Pingdom ( <http://pingdom.com> ) - monitoring

AWS ( <http://aws.amazon.com> ) - infrastructure

Stripe ( <http://stripe.com> ) - payments

Mailgun ( <http://mailgun.com> ) - transactional email

Postmark ( <http://postmarkapp.com> ) - more transactional email

Mailchimp ( <http://mailchimp.com> ) - non-transactional email

SupportFu ( <http://www.supportfu.com> ) - lightweight customer service

------
8ig8
FreshBooks (<http://www.freshbooks.com>) is fantastic for invoicing. That's
the primary reason we use it, but it also tracks time, expenses and is moving
towards a full accounting offering.

------
smagch
Why no one mentioned about Zapier?

<https://zapier.com/>

~~~
spo81rty
We use Zapier at Stackify and love it. 2 thumbs up

------
DanielRibeiro
Steven Blank seems to be keeping a pretty nice list up to date:
<http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/>

~~~
sblank
Updated <http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/> to include
link to this page and most of these tools

------
vccafe
Vendorstack created an info graphic of the top startups for startups tools, I
spiced it a bit more and posted a super tools list on VC Cafe link:
[http://www.vccafe.com/2013/01/24/startups-startups-
top-b2b-t...](http://www.vccafe.com/2013/01/24/startups-startups-
top-b2b-tools-startups/)

------
minhajuddin
Timelogger (<https://github.com/minhajuddin/timelogger>). A command line tool
which allows you to maintain a log of your time spent on various
activities/projects/tasks, with decent reporting.

------
sgt
It certainly seems that these startups have the potential of jointly keeping
themselves alive.

------
St-Clock
In terms of SaaS, we use:

    
    
        github (code review is the killer feature)
        campfire
        jira + greenhopper (no killer feature :-( )
        notableapp (so-so interactions with our designers)
        balsamiq (quick & easy mockups)
        crashplan (easy and cross-platform backups)
        google apps
        google analytics (we have a crazy setup)
    

I am currently looking into splunkstorm for our log analysis. We are using
monit and mmonit (on premise) for alterting and monitoring.

For my open source projects, I use:

    
    
      github
      travis-ci
      sourceforge (for the mailing list. any suggestions for alternatives?)

------
pwman
<https://LastPass.com>

<http://Gotomeeting.com>

<http://Drive.google.com>

------
Johnyma22
Travis (<http://travis-ci.org>) Github Bitbucket Etherpad
(<http://etherpad.org>)

------
camz
Stripe ( <http://stripe.com> )- Payment processing

Sendgrid ( <http://sendgrid.com> )- Sending emails

Autotax ( <http://autotax.me> )- Automated 1099 & sales tax filing

Trello ( <http://trello.com> ) - Trask tracking

New Relic ( <http://newrelic.com> ) - Server/app monitoring

------
JangoSteve
Because you specifically are asking about "services", this is may be slightly
off-topic, but I'd be interested in seeing a thread about open-source
alternatives as well. When we were first starting out, we used a lot of these
services and they were absolutely instrumental to get us going, allowing us to
focus on what mattered at the time.

But the more we developed our rhythm and workflow, the more we started
constantly running up against small idiosyncrasies with each service that we
were powerless to fix (we always submitted feedback, sometimes they'd
implement our idea, sometimes they wouldn't). Maybe this app had an awesome
interface, but their status labels were odd given the usual workflow. Maybe
this other app was perfect in every way but had no API to allow us to tie it
into the rest of our process.

Anyway, we started switching from services to open-source products, which
really allowed us to take our process to the next level and optimize
everything specifically for our flow.

For example ( _italics are open-source_ ):

\---------------------

Project Management:

Email => Basecamp => Pivotal => _Redmine_ (and tried Asana but went back to
Redmine)

\---------------------

Issue Tracking:

Email => Github Issues => _Redmine_

\---------------------

Continuous Integration:

 _CruiseControl_ => _Integrity_ => TDDium (<https://www.tddium.com>) /
Semaphore (<https://semaphoreapp.com>)

\---------------------

Error/Exception Tracking:

ExceptionNotifier => Airbrake => _Errbit_

\---------------------

Time Tracking & Invoicing:

Harvest => Cashboard (<http://www.cashboardapp.com>)

\---------------------

Group Chat:

Campfire => [currently looking into] _Kandan_

\---------------------

Code Collaboration:

 _Self-hosted SVN_ => Unfuddle => Github

\---------------------

Design Collaboration:

Pixelapse => ConceptShare

\---------------------

You'll notice the only non-open-source services we still use are Github,
Cashboard, TDDium/Semaphore, and ConceptShare. For the open-source services,
we're able to host most of them on Heroku and rarely ever have to worry about
maintaining them, other than security patches and whatnot. And we've been able
to do some pretty cool things internally as far as connecting the different
apps, since we have control over the APIs and underlying code, allowing us to
add and change as needed.

You'll also notice that for CI, we actually went in the opposite direction
from open-source to service-based. I have an entire writeup (not yet
published) on why I actually found CI to work best for us as a 3rd-party
service.

~~~
casca
Any reason you chose RedMine over ChiliProject
(<https://www.chiliproject.org/>)?

Also, I'd support any effort to collate good self-hosted options for startups.

~~~
JangoSteve
No particular reason. I just didn't see anything compelling that chiliproject
offered over redmine and redmine had greater adoption.

------
karanbhangui
Surprised no one has mentioned Vagrant [1]. By far the best addition to my
tool-set this year.

[1] <http://www.vagrantup.com/>

------
todsul
Vero (<http://getvero.com>) - email A/B testing & re-marketing

Trello (<http://trello.com>) - task/project/team management

Stripe (<http://stripe.com>) - credit card payment processing

Helpscout (<http://helpscout.net>) - email support system

Plus the usual suspects: AWS, GitHub, Mailgun...

------
olegp
getsentry.com - error logging

clicky.com - real time analytics

irccloud.com - IRC in the browser

sendgrid.com - API for sending e-mail

~~~
vacipr
Is irccloud actually sending invites ? I've seen some users on hn complain
about this.How long did it take before you received yours ?

~~~
olegp
I received my invite from somebody else using the service.

~~~
infinitone
Hey, can you invite me please? Thanks!

------
philjackson
It's mine but hopefully ApiAxle is useful to API developers:
<http://apiaxle.com>

------
lucidquiet
There's also this newer Planning and Project Management tool, that was just
released: <https://zingproject.com/> \-- not the best name but none ever are.
The interesting thing about this is that it's built around a streaming so that
you can see everyone else's edits as they occur.

------
yonasb
Awesome post. I've listed out my "Cloudstack" on Leanstack at
<http://alpha.leanstack.io/users/yonasb>. Just launched the alpha would love
some feedback from you guys, just ping me at yonas@leanstack.io if you're
interested or sign up on the site. Thanks!

------
disclosure
Accept Bitcoin as payment: <http://www.weusecoins.com/>

------
amarsahinovic
<http://piwik.org/> Open source alternative to Google Analytics

------
jonsherrard
The only to-do list you'll ever need: <http://workflowy.com>

------
somlor
Paydirt (<https://paydirtapp.com>) - Time tracking and invoicing.

SerpBook (<http://serpbook.com>) - Search engine rank tracker.

Mortar (<http://mortardata.com>) - Hadoop-aaS.

------
shirkey
Passpack (<http://www.passpack.com>) for centralized password sharing among
remote team members. Previously using Keepass, which is great but difficult to
sync. Yes, passwords in the cloud -- I never thought I'd do it either.

------
Bharath1234
\--Helpdesk Freshdesk (<http://www.freshdesk.com>)

------
delirious
This list was pretty helpful.

[http://www.meetup.com/SF-Growth-
Hackers/pages/Growth_Hacking...](http://www.meetup.com/SF-Growth-
Hackers/pages/Growth_Hacking_Tools/)

The SF growth hackers talk about the tools a lot in their meetup if anyone is
interested in learning more about them.

------
instakill
Airbrake (<http://www.airbrake.io>)

Jenkins

New Relic (<http://www.newrelic.com>)

Jira (<http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/overview>)

------
nanch
I made <http://tarbackup.com> for encrypted off-site backups using existing
open-source tools.

I hope it will make it to your list of "recommended services" by the end of
2013.

------
josscrowcroft
[Plug:]

Open Exchange Rates (<https://openexchangerates.org>) – free or very cheap
currency conversion data JSON API. Built by a developer for other developers.
:o)

~~~
jtheory
This is useful - how are most places using it?

I'd suggest making a drop-in script or two something like the extensions
Stripe has been adding on a bit at a time, to make it easy to use this for in-
page on-the-fly currency conversion...

That is, select your currency from the dropdown, and all prices elsewhere on
the page will display in the local currency selected.

------
alexmic
These are tools (not just SaaS services) I've used in the past as part of a
team or on my own projects.

\-------------

Collaboration

\-------------

1\. Yammer (<https://www.yammer.com/>)

2\. Basecamp (<http://basecamp.com>)

3\. Limechat for IRC client (<http://limechat.net/mac/>)

4\. Flowdock (<http://flowdock.com>)

5\. Asana (<http://asana.com>)

6\. Trello (<http://trello.com>)

\----------

Deployment

\----------

1\. Chef (<http://www.opscode.com/chef/>)

2\. Fabric (<http://fabfile.org>)

\----------

CI

\----------

1\. Jenkins (<http://jenkins-ci.org>)

\-----

Email

\-----

1\. Sendgrid (<http://sendgrid.com>)

2\. AWS SES (<http://aws.amazon.com/ses/>)

3\. Gmail (<http://gmail.com>)

4\. MailChimp (<http://mailchimp.com>)

5\. Campaign Monitor (<http://www.campaignmonitor.com/>)

6\. Fractal (<https://www.getfractal.com/>)

\--------------------

Monitoring & Logging

\--------------------

1\. Graylog2 (<http://graylog2.org/>)

2\. Statsd (<https://github.com/etsy/statsd/>)

3\. Graphite (<http://graphite.wikidot.com/>)

4\. Geckoboard (<http://www.geckoboard.com/>)

5\. PaperTrail (<https://papertrailapp.com/>)

6\. Pingdom (<https://www.pingdom.com/>)

\---------

Analytics

\---------

1\. Mixpanel (<http://mixpanel.com>)

2\. Segment.io (<http://segment.io>)

3\. Google Analytics (<http://www.google.com/analytics/>)

\--------------

Issue Tracking

\--------------

1\. Github Issues (<http://github.com>)

2\. Lighthouse (<http://lighthouseapp.com/>)

\------

Others

\------

1\. Silverback (<http://silverbackapp.com/>)

2\. Wufoo (<http://www.wufoo.com/>)

------
olegp
I'm actually working on a web app directory as part of <https://starthq.com>
\- sign up to receive a reminder when it launches next week.

------
reledi
I have a gist that I update frequently
<https://gist.github.com/dideler/1718200>. It needs some cleaning up though.

------
sharjeel
Here is mine:

Twilio (www.twilio.com) - Communicate with your users over SMS and Voice

Stripe (www.stripe.com) - Payments processing simplified

BugHerd (www.bugherd.com) - WYSIWYG bug reporting

Discourse (www.discourse.org) - Upcoming discussion board

------
damon_c
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned WePay for payment processing. Their api is
excellent and they fill some specific needs that I haven't seen addressed
anywhere else.

------
stevecash
Ok guys! Now take a look at these smart *aaS (SaaS, PaaS,...):
<http://welovesaas.com/appdirectory/>

------
bradezone
Pagoda Box: <https://pagodabox.com/>

A Heroku-esque deployment app specially tuned to PHP apps. Full of useful
options. I love it.

------
n9com
1\. JIRA (Issue Tracking) 2\. BitBucket (Source code hosting) 3\. Desk
(Customer Support) 4\. MailChimp (Newsletter / Email marketing) 5\. ServInt
(Web hosting)

~~~
fideloper
I'm glad to see ServInt on your list - we've happily used them for something
like 7 years. Awesome host.

------
bconway
Already some pretty extensive lists here, but no mention yet of LeanKit:
<http://leankit.com/>

I've found it to be excellent.

------
tomdidom
Tom's Planner <http://www.tomsplanner.com> for the Planning & Project
Management category

------
wslh
I wonder why nobody is talking about OTRS: <http://www.otrs.com> as an
excellent ticketing system.

------
philippeback
hipchat - IM

parse.com - API integration

symbaloo.com - entry points collection

teamviewer - screen share

------
preinheimer
Where's it Up - <http://wheresitup.com/> (Global ping/dns/traceroute tools)

------
rafadhs
I assembled my 150+ lists list at www.tuneyourstartup.com Will add the ones
suggested here. Thanks for sharing, everyone.

~~~
rafadhs
Ops. Here is the link: <http://www.tuneyourstartup.com> Let me know what you
guys think. And please add tools if you can´t find that one you love.

------
pkrefta
OT - Maybe should we also add native apps ?

~~~
sharjeel
I think you can get a lot of information from UsesThis
(<http://usesthis.com/>)

------
halayli
<http://webmon.com> external website & network monitoring

------
jbobes
Cloudiff Server monitoring / Cloud management

<http://cloudiff.com/demo>

------
spo81rty
Hosted TFS Stackify - app ops Twilio sms SendGrid email Chargify - billing
software Pusher - web sockets

------
mgkimsal
Browser testing: <http://saucelabs.com>

------
ataleb52
There is far too much awesomeness on this thread...thank you for asking this
question!

------
leadsrain
LeadsRain (<http://leadsrain.com>)

------
sidcool
I am impressed with how frequently Asana, Trello and Stripe have featured
there.

------
maximveksler
Excellent post. Y HN CAN HAZ NO BOOKMARKs?

------
dalacv
is there anything in here that is a landing page builder + recurring payment
collection?

------
trendspotter
Before I found this overview and your comments here today, I started two other
similar overviews. One on Quora and the other on Bestvendor. Here they are:

[http://www.quora.com/Startups/What-are-some-notable-
startups...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/What-are-some-notable-startups-for-
startups)

<http://www.bestvendor.com/lists/startup-tools-for-startups>

Here is a copy of my older post on Quora, please take a look at my newer
BestVendor list (see link above) as well:

\- _SETUP_

<http://www.getdash.com/> (currently down or pivot)

\- _Claim your brand name_

claim.io

Trademarkia

\- _Workspace and office space_

Loosecubes

LiquidSpace

42Floors

\- _MANAGEMENT_

\- _Business Analytics_

Geckoboard

Chartio

\- _Cloud Aggregation and Unified Activity Streams_

Hojoki

Flowdock

Zapier

Otixo

Cloudbot

Refinder

dispatch.io

busyflow.com

300.mg

cloudsnap.com

manybots.com

tractionstream.com

clutchapp.com

jaconda.im

\- _Business Intelligence_

GoodData

\- _Contractor Management_

oDesk

Elance

\- _Communication_

Yammer

Salesforce Chatter

Socialcast

\- _Coordination, Collaboration_

Zoho

Podio

Asana

Trello

Basecamp

Huddle

Planbox

Teambox

Dropbox

\- _Resource-Planning_

Erply

\- _Human Resources (HR)_

Workday (software)

\- _Social CRM_

NimbleCRM

capsulecrm.com

Batchbook

\- _Cloud integration_

SnapLogic

\- _Expenses_

Expensify

\- _Invoicing_

Tradeshift

FreshBooks

\- _Time Tracking_

getharvest.com

toggl.com

\- _Customer Support_

Assistly

Zendesk

Olark

SnapEngage

\- _Feedback_

UserVoice

Get Satisfaction

Intercom

\- _Content Management_

Acquia (Drupal)

\- _Wiki_

MindTouch

\- _BACKEND_

Cloud Hosting

Heroku

Engine Yard

\- _Database_

Cloudera

\- _Virtualization_ Skytap

\- _Storage_

Pure Storage

\- _Mobile Backend_

Urban Airship

Parse

\- _WebSockets_

Pusher

\- _Cloud Telephony, SMS_

Twilio

Tropo

\- _Payments, Billing_

Stripe

Recurly

Zuora

Spreedly

Chargify

\- _Code repository_

GitHub

Beanstalk

\- _API Management_

Mashery

Apigee

\- _DEVELOPMENT_

 _iOS Testing_

TestFlight

\- _Issue Tracking_

Pivotal Tracker

Sifter

lighthouseapp

\- _Monitoring_

New Relic

Airbrake (iOS Bug tracking)

Crittercism (iOS Bug tracking)

\- _DESIGN_

Mockups/Wireframes/Workflows

Balsamiq

InVisionApp

Mockingbird

Axure RP

Mockflow

OmniGraffle

Mockup Builder

HotGloo

\- _MARKETING_

\- _Email_

MailChimp

SendGrid

Mailjet

\- _Social Media_

Buddy Media

Sprout Social

\- _Beta Invite / Landing Page Management_

LaunchRock

Prefinery

KickoffLabs

\- _Pre-Launch_

UsabilityHub

\- _Video_

Vimeo

Ooyala

\- _Analytics_

Chartbeat

Mixpanel

Optimizely

App Annie

Distimo

\- _Infographics_

Visual.ly

------
snambi
Nice list

------
amac
AWS

Google Apps

Google Analytics

Blogger

MailChimp

Drupal

Desk

Facebook

Twitter

GitHub

Worldpay

------
thoughtcriminal
Jumping in to make one recommendation: Hitsniffer, real-time analytics:
<http://hitsniffer.com>

I've used them for several years now and they are awesome.

