

Ask HN: Review my startup, WebServius - eugeneos

See http://www.webservius.com<p>I'm currently positioning it as an API management product (and it certainly does that), but think about it from a different perspective: It allows you to monetize any useful software component as an API in the cloud. For example.: Suppose you came up with an interesting image processing algorithm - you just host it somewhere as an API, hook it up to WebServius, set the pricing through our control panel (e.g. $0.01 per image), and you instantly have a potential revenue stream - no need to worry about user signup process, billing, etc. That's why I thought it would be interesting to the HN community - people with lots of great ideas looking for ways to monetize :) Any feedback would be much appreciated.<p>Thanks,<p>-- Eugene
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vyrotek
The site looks nice, the idea sounds great. At first I thought this would be a
great service to integrate into our service but there are a few blockers.

If we charge our customers for other things besides the API access then this
will require our customers to manage their account and payments on our site as
well as yours. Unless you have an API to manage your API manager?

Response time is also another concern as sync already mentioned.

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eugeneos
Thanks. We're certainly thinking about the more complex scenarios you
mentioned (where users pay both for API access and other things on the same
site) and will likely add some features to support this (e.g. an API to
WebServius itself as you suggested), but these features are probably at least
a few months away.

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sync
The site looks nice. Logo, however, could use some work.

I also wonder about speed. Having the developer connect to you guys, which in
turn connects to us, just seems like it would be super slow. And API's are
generally all about speeeed.

~~~
eugeneos
Thanks. We will likely change the logo at some point.

The speed issue with the extra network hop (on the order of magnitude of 100ms
right now in the US) may indeed be an issue for some cases, and we will
probably add a "non-proxied" mode in the future to handle such scenarios
(though the integration will necessarily be a bit more difficult from the API
provider point of view in this case).

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yan
Clickable: <http://www.webservius.com>

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jfarmer
<http://mashery.com> ?

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eugeneos
Yes, they're definitely a competitor, but with important differences. As far
as I know, they're more about full-featured "API portals" (usually for complex
yet free APIs). WebServius is more about enabling very quick experimentation
with simple and lightweight "software components in the cloud" (with a focus
on direct per-API-call monetization).

Practical differences: \- WebServius has instant integration (connecting an
API to us is literally just typing in a URL) \- WebServius is free for low-
traffic free APIs \- We have per-call API billing through PayPal built in (as
far as I know, Mashery doesn't, though I may not have all the facts on them of
course)

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clippi
Thanks Jesse for mentioning us (note: I work for Mashery). I'll leave the rest
of this thread alone, but to add specifically to the pieces about Mashery...

Mashery has really big clients and really small clients. We built our solution
on AWS very shortly after it launched and know "the cloud", really really
well. We have clients with APIs that exist on EC2 or in their own cage. Some
clients are beta programs, some crank hundreds of millions of calls through
us. Working with us isn't so much about size, but what value you'd get based
on your need.

We don't just provide a Portal. But yes, we do provide a full solution for
managing API's: portal, developer management, limiting, caching,
authentication, analytics. Things we think are important for people managing
API's, big or small, science project or commercial.

Integration with Mashery can also literally be typing in a URL - but usually
you need more if you want to expose an API, especially if you want it to be
commercial.

We have clients that run commercial API programs. There aren't too many big
examples out there where people are charging per call and needing a toll booth
as it were. The day will come though so I'd agree.

