

Rocket Launch Numbers – Bridge (YC W11) Signs Up 1,000 Developers in First Day - vitus
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/05/rocket-launch-numbers-startup-signs-up-1000-developers-in-first-day/

======
jiggity
Before Bridge, your two options were:

1\. Pay per message at Pusher/UrbanAirship to use their internal systems
optimized for messaging.

2\. Do it for free writing your own messaging stack using some combination of
Node.js / Socket.io / RabbitMQ / ZeroMQ / etc.

.

I liken it either getting fully a written TCP/IP socket client and paying per
connection (crazy!) or writing in your own bitstream and ensuring protocol
compliance (also crazy! -- easy to get wrong, takes globs of time away from
the actual app you want to write).

Using the base level protocol with RabbitMQ / ZeroMQ requires a great deal of
design to even achieve something barely production-ready. What the folks here
did was use their expert industry messaging knowledge and wrote a messaging
protocol that takes care of all edge cases, protocol peculiarities,
performance refinements.

The result is a beautifully crafted work of art that provides hyper efficient
messaging.

.

The part that sold me completely was the fact that these guys don't charge per
message. Better than that, YOU get to control your own server. You handle
uptimes, downtimes, and all things that come with owning your server. You
don't get locked in.

The tradeoff of complexity + price + handholding goes as follows:

\- Pusher / UrbanAirship (Charge per message)

\- Bridge (Charge per core you run)

\- Write your own Node.js / Socket.io / RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ system (Free)

.

I've been using Bridge's predecessor (Nowjs) for about 9 months now and I can
unabashedly say I love Darshan and his team. Countless times they gave me
invaluable advice for setting up a real time messaging system and ways to
optimize it.

If you decide to use Bridge, rest assured, you will be in good hands.

.

TLDR: This new service is _magic_. If you don't want to be charged per message
and want full control over your messaging node, Bridge is at the cutting edge
of cost structure + technology.

------
iag
Wow that is impressive numbers.

One thing to note:

"Bridge’s deepest competition will come from the legacy giants when Bridge
starts working with large enterprise operations."

Yep, if you want to pick a fight, pick a fight with the biggest one guy in the
room. Best of luck to this team!

------
zaptheimpaler
I've been messing around with this since it was posted on HN about a week ago,
its awesome! I'd love to hear any cool ideas about what I should make using
this.

------
wilsoniya
Looks like a great service.

I think i found an error in your example at
<https://www.getbridge.com/learn/examples>

see: <http://i.imgur.com/vYUyL.png>

------
soccerdave
Where is the pricing?

~~~
dshankar
Sorry about that. I'll update the website with pricing information soon.
Basically, we have two components: Bridge and Bridge Cloud. Bridge is the
actual downloadable Bridge server, and Bridge Cloud is simply the Bridge
server running on a few cloud instances.

You can get started with both for free[1]. The benefit of Bridge Cloud is that
you don't have to operate the actual Bridge server. This is great for people
testing Bridge or startups that want to focus on their product. The downside
is the latency of a cloud hosted Bridge server. Each message travels to our
cloud first before going to your servers/clients. This is fine for most use
cases - there's a startup that built a synchronous realtime mobile multiplayer
game over 3G internet and there are no lag problems. The pricing for Bridge
Cloud is to simply cover the cost of hardware and running the service.

The primary deployment model is the Bridge server itself. You can download a
free version and run it on one server rate limited to 40k msg/min. That's a
huge amount of messaging for free. As you grow, we'd like to provide
commercial support and charge on a per-core basis.

Most startups and developers can use Bridge without paying a single dime.
Large organizations whose only other alternative is to pay millions of dollars
for bloated enterprise software from the 80s or hire an in-house team of
messaging experts will find it cheaper and better to pay for Bridge.

------
mrchess
How does Bridge compare to Meteor?

