

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

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.<p>What paid services do you find the most useful in running your startup?
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davidw
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...](http://blog.linode.com/2009/04/03/backup-service-enters-beta/)

~~~
natrius2
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.

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

~~~
lena
So do you (now) have a standard grace period when a credit card payment fails?

~~~
tasaro
Yes, along with a few notifications via e-mail.

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pg
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.

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swombat
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)

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

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

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

~~~
fireteller
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
Pros and cons of FPS?

~~~
fireteller
FPS provides a robust set of interface tools to the amazon payments system. It
enables a number of payment models that other services don't offer such as,
subscription, aggregate (i.e. micropayment), marketplace/3 party (i.e. user to
user transactions with optional commission), and the prices are competitive.
You can even do user to user transfers with no fees. They also offer fraud
protection.

It is not trivial to implement in an application but does seem to be very
concise for the features it provides. The con for this flexibility naturally
is increased complexity. They do offer a 'Simple Pay' solution if you don't
need the extra features, but I've not used that.

During development you can tie you application to the FPS 'sandbox' which
simulates the complete user experience as well as virtual payments and fees so
that you can see exactly how things will work in production from various
points of view with out actually moving money around.

I needed subscriptions, so I could not use the other popular solutions (when
the decision was made), and therefore can't compare. However, I refuse to use
paypal because they put 100% of the risk on the account holder, while at the
same time not disclosing information about the purchaser to allow for fraud
investigation, this is flat out unacceptable.

------
pierrefar
Slicehost, AWS, Pingdom (downtime alerts).

Lots of freebies too, though.

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tdavis
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.

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

------
tonystubblebine
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.

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patio11
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)

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

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

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RobGR
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).

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jaxn
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.

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

------
mjon7
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)

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

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
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.

~~~
davidw
I've regularly criticized git for being good, but overhyped and not quite
ready for prime time.

However, it is _dirt simple_ to set up a git repository for use by a few
people on a box where they have accounts anyway.

    
    
       cd /var/local/
       mkdir myapp
       ... appropriate permissions, add a few files ...
       git init
    

And you're done. Granted, you can do fancier things, but we're talking about
startups with just a few people here, right?

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
In my experience, the setup cost is minimal, but maintenance _always_ takes
longer than I expect. Restarting servers, opening the correct ports, updating
w/ security patches, integrating w/ ticket management, etc.

Just my $0.02

~~~
davidw
* Restarting servers? If you're doing something really basic, it's just sshd.

* Since you connect to the server anyway, that one's open.

* Security patches is a regular apt-get update and not much more.

* Ticket management... ok, that's an extra, but github still doesn't have a ticket tracking system, does it?

~~~
mechanical_fish
One server per box is worth money to achieve. When you have a git server
running on the same box as (say) your web server, you cannot reboot, upgrade,
reinstall, power down, or power up one service without affecting the other.
You can't switch server hostnames or IPs without potentially affecting your
git users. You can't develop on an EC2 instance that you spin up and down as
needed because git needs to be more reliable than that.

I guess it might be okay to run git on my mail server. Except I don't have a
mail server: That's outsourced. ( _Way_ too much trouble to run for oneself.)
All I run for myself is local machines (not about to serve from those -- poor
uptime, firewalls are a pain) and web/database servers, and I don't want the
constraint of even having to _remember_ that git is running on one of them. I
want a git setup that is out of sight, out of mind, and far away from my
bumbling sysadmin (a.k.a. "me").

And we're haggling over the price of _github_ , here. It's dirt cheap.

~~~
davidw
I can see the problem if you're doing everything with EC2.

One point, however:

> You can't switch server hostnames or IPs without potentially affecting your
> git users.

Yes, you can. Computers should have:

* One or more IP addresses.

* A hostname that is attached to that computer, and only that computer, such as thor.example.com

* Hostnames that are attached to services on computers, such as git.example.com, mail.example.com, www.example.com, and so on. You can change these to point where they're needed, so as to not cause any interruptions or problems for your users.

> And we're haggling over the price of github, here. It's dirt cheap.

Sure, but I'm cheap, and for my setup, it's money I can save, and it just
seems weird to pay for something that's so easy to set up.

~~~
bodhi
Say your time is worth $80/hour, and you can get away with the $7/month github
plan. Doing it yourself, if you spend more than ~5 minutes/month on admin,
it's not worth it.

But if it's a labour of love? Priceless...

------
hikari17
I'd add gliffy (for diagrams), balsamiq (for mockups) and onebox (for phone
service) to the list...

------
jawngee
@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

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

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oomkiller
github

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peterarmstrong
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

------
edawerd
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?

~~~
brianlash
GotVMail is a good value.

~~~
edawerd
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

~~~
ecommercematt
Ditto. I'm interested as well. I gather that existing customers can send a
referral code that, when used, gives the referrer and the referee each a $25
credit (which negates the activation fee). Please be in touch if you're
willing/able to refer me. Thanks.

~~~
brianlash
No problem guys... this should work out well for each of us. I'll send an
email with my info.

EDIT: Scratch that. Looks like I'll need your email addresses to refer you.
You'll each get a $25 credit and I'll net $20 total. Not bad.

My address is brian at firstblogmedia dot com. Drop me a line ASAP.

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gills
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).

------
kbrower
linode, AWS(s3,cloudfront), getclicky

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

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

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

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stuff4ben
Unfuddle.com for subversion hosting, wiki, and bug tracking. Will be using AWS
in the near future once some code gets written.

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

We pay for slicehost.

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

------
AndrewWarner
I pay to monitor my credit report.

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lecha
You asked for PAID services, not just any SaaS.

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

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

------
charlesju
Engine Yard, New Relic, GitHub, Lighthouse.

Typical Rails shop stuff, :)

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Mistone
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

------
pmikal
Wordpress, Rackspace, Serverbeach, Onebox, Speakeasy Hosted VOIP

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

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johns
Serverbeach, JungleDisk/S3, MerchantPlus, CampaignMonitor

------
timcederman
Omniture for metrics, ExactTarget for email campaigns.

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zanders
Used to pay for basecamp. Then switched to Dropbox.

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jlees
Slicehost, trying out Basecamp at the moment.

------
ctingom
Freshbooks, Jotform, CampaignMonitor, Paypal

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rishi
GoDaddy, BrainTree Financial, Quickbooks

------
fireteller
Am I the only one here using AWS-FPS?

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

~~~
fireteller
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.

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sgoraya
The Planet, Ringcentral, Google Apps

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mattculbreth
Freshbooks for invoicing, etc.

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endtime
Google Apps, Slicehost

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vivekamn
github.com speedyrails(rails VPS)

