
Ask HN: What software do you use for your startup? - olalonde
I'll start with mine (feel free to add categories):<p>- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition<p>- Hosting: Slicehost<p>- Invoicing: Freshbooks<p>- Analytics: Google Analytics<p>- Project management: Ta-da list (seriously)<p>- File-sharing: Dropbox<p>- Version control: Git<p>- Backups: rsync + home server<p>- Instant messaging: Skype
======
archgrove
Wow. All these startups, making potentially game changing software, all
sending their private data and communications around via an uncontrollable 3rd
party e-mail system managed by the admins of an company known for its
aggressive consumption of startups.

Call me paranoid, but though Google's public motto may be "Do no evil" they're
like every company and are after profit at the end of the day. Are you
encrypting your e-mails? Is running your own mail server _that_ hard, or does
Google Apps offer _that much_ benefit? Would you host your e-mail with
Microsoft? Oracle? What really make's Google _that different_?

I am genuinely curious - Google seems to be treated by large portions of the
startup community as if it were some charitable organisation, working for the
benefit of man-kind in an open and free manner. Sure, they've done great
things - Search, G-Mail, Android and loads of open source work. But they're
still a company beholden to their shareholders, selling adverts based on mass
data collection. At the end of the day, in my eyes, they're not fundamentally
different from Apple, Microsoft or any other hugely funded mega-corp. I
wouldn't store my secret sauces with those companies and their ever evolving
market plans and TOSs. Am I overly cautious?

~~~
kleinsch
While it's possible Google might snoop on their competitors email to figure
out their strategy, I'd think the possible consequences if they got caught
would be too significant for any possible benefit. With regard to the guy that
got fired for looking at other people's messages, one rogue engineer messing
with a couple people is very different than a deliberate corporate strategy of
espionage. If Google got caught doing that, they'd never be able to pursue
government or enterprise contracts again.

~~~
archgrove
I agree, and I very much doubt they'd ever do something like this. My argument
is just one of prudence - if you wouldn't leave your business plans and
private data lying around in a competitors house, why would you risk even the
10^-7% chance that doing so with Google would damage you when running your own
e-mail server (or, if you don't want the maintenance, encrypting e-mail
through G-mail) is relatively trivial?

Looking back in time and given what's happened, would Google the Startup have
been wise hosting their e-mail on Hotmail?

------
Stronico
I feel so conventional!

Windows Server 2008, Sql Server IIS Visual Studio Quickbooks & Indinero
Authorize.net Google Apps for mail

~~~
Zak
I'm inclined to say the MS stack is fairly unconventional for startups these
days. One decent heuristic for whether a decision is conventional is whether
your peers are likely to ask "why did you do that?". If a startup's stack is
Rails on EC2, few in the startup world would bother to question it.

So, why did you do that?

~~~
mgkimsal
I'm going to guess that that's what the person/team had experience with
already.

I've not known many people who were already technical developers who started a
venture and swapped over to entirely 'new to them' tech just because it's what
some other people were using.

Go with what you know and have mastery of already - you've got enough going
against you starting a new venture already - don't add to it by trying to
learn something like django or rails just because someone on HN or TC used it
too.

That said, using 'unconventional' tech _may_ make it harder to find more devs
in the future if they're needed. Or... it may mean that you're simply pulling
from a different pool. If you're one of 15 rails-based ventures someone is
looking to join, you won't stand out as much as the one Perl-based operation.

------
spitfire
We've all read about what startups use for hosting, analytics, and version
control before. What do you use for accounting? hiring (resume database)?
Shipping? etc?

I know the big names like git get glory for this crowd, but there's a lot more
to running a business than git and web hosting.

EDIT: Erm. I guess this means your company needs revenue. That takes care of a
lot of them...

------
base
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps

\- Hosting: Amazon

\- Invoicing: InvoiceExpress

\- Analytics: Google Analytics & MixPanel

\- Project management: Goplan & Google spreadsheets

\- File-sharing: Dropbox & E-mail

\- Version control: Mercurial

\- Backups: scripts with S3

\- Instant messaging: Skype & Gtalk

------
PawelDecowski
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: Linode, Slicehost

\- Invoicing: Crunch (<http://www.crunch.co.uk/>)

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Project management: Pivotal Tracker (<http://pivotaltracker.com/>)

\- File-sharing: Dropbox

\- Version control: SVN, Mercurial

\- Backups: rsync

\- Instant messaging: Skype

~~~
olalonde
Why go with both Linode and Slicehost? I was under the impression that they
were pretty much interchangeable...

~~~
jefe78
I wouldn't go that far. I've found Slicehost has some major deficiencies
compared to Linode. i/o being the major one.

------
pistoriusp
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: Webfaction

\- Invoicing: Billable (<http://billable.co.za>)

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Project management: Basecamp

\- File-sharing: Dropbox

\- Version control: Git

\- Backups: Github + Webfaction git repos

\- Instant messaging: Google + iChat

------
tworats
\- Email/Cal/Docs: Google

\- Hosting: our own servers at colo + EC2

\- Expense tracking/management: Xpenser ( <http://xpenser.com/> )

\- Invoicing: Billing Manager (
[https://billingmanager.intuit.com/billing/free-online-
invoic...](https://billingmanager.intuit.com/billing/free-online-
invoicing.url) )

\- Version control: git

\- File sharing: Dropbox

\- Analytics: google

\- Todo: <http://wisetodo.com/> (invite only ATM)

\- IDE: mostly Eclipse+Pydev+Aptana

\- Screensharing: Adobe Connect

------
kleinsch
I'm in the process of releasing a game for iOS:

\- Email/Cal/Docs - Google Apps

\- Hosting - AWS

\- Accounting - Quickbooks

\- Source Control - Github

\- Issue Tracking - Jira

\- IDE - XCode

\- Libraries - ZLib, LibPNG, Lua, Bullet Physics, Wild Magic Geometry Tools

------
SupremumLimit
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: Heroku

\- IDE: RubyMine

\- Accounting: Xero

\- Analytics: Google Analytics, MixPanel

\- To do list/notes: Workflowy

\- Version control: Git

\- Backups: SpiderOak (because they store encrypted data)

~~~
dy
I'm really loving Workflowy. Next killer feature: sharing sublists with
someone else. That would be the killer todo list app!

~~~
SupremumLimit
I would actually like to see the ability to have simple documents as leaf
nodes. Sometimes bullet point lists aren't quite enough.

~~~
dy
Embrace constraints :)

I have linked to another page or perhaps to an Evernote document which is what
I used to use for todolists (but their formatting was painful occasionally).

Agreed though, that if they're going to allow notes, the notes should be more
full-featured.

------
michaelbuckbee
For flickscanapp.com + thesocialcollective.com

\- Email: Multiple accts forwarded to private Gmail

\- Bulk Email Send: AuthSMTP (we setup a small server to act as a central SMTP
relay to AuthSMTP to save on costs).

\- Hosting: Rackspace Cloud + CloudKick. DB Backups pushed to S3. File uploads
within apps direct to S3

\- Analytics: Google, ChartBeat

\- Project Mgmt: Basecamp

\- File-Sharing: Dropbox kinda. We use Google Docs so much that everything
pretty much lives there.

\- Local Backups: Arq (git style backups for OS X that uses S3)

\- Instant Messaging: Skype, heavy users of the video conferencing (my co-
founder is on the opposite coast) and screen sharing features.

\- Media Monitoring: Watchlister.com (my own project), TweetDeck, Google
Alerts

\- Code: XCode, TextMate

\- Version Control: SVN + Versions, Git (but how I wish there was a Version of
Versions with Git support).

\- Production: Rails, Mysql, Memcached, Mongo, Nginx

\- Blog: Wordpress

~~~
alopes
\- Version Control: SVN + Versions, Git (but how I wish there was a Version of
Versions with Git support).

Time to test: git-tower.com

------
brackin
Google Apps Standard Media Temple (Don't know if i'd recommend it though).
Project Management: Skype + Email, may use 37 signals soon File Sharing -
Cloud App Instant Messaging: Skype Analytics: GoSquared Twitter: CoTweet

------
btnpushnmunky
Does anyone NOT use Google for email anymore?

~~~
Dobbs
For personal stuff I use postfix and imap on a personal sever. The company I
work for is sortof a startup and we used zimbra (I don't recommend)

I prefer desktop mail clients to web ones. I also dislike handing all of my
mail to another company.

------
jefe78
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: Linode(much better than Slicehost) & EC2/S3

\- Invoicing: Freshbooks

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Project management: Nothing

\- File-sharing: Dropbox

\- Version control: Git

\- Backups: Its our business, so our own redundant servers(not Linode or AWS)

\- Instant messaging: Skype

------
js4all
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: Strato, EC2

\- Monitoring: Cloudkick, Stashboard

\- Invoicing: N/A

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Project management: toodledo, orgmode

\- File-sharing: Google Storage

\- Version control: SVN, Git

\- Backups: Google Storage, S3

\- Instant messaging: Etherpad

\- Production platform: AppJet, Node, CouchDB, Eucalyptus

------
mrfabbri
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: DreamHost

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Project management: Email (lots of), Google Spreadsheets

\- File-sharing: WebDAV, Dropbox

\- Version control: Mercurial

\- Backups: rsync

\- Istant messaging: GTalk, Skype

------
cloudsafe
Our list:

[http://blog-en.cloudsafe.com/post/1115843272/web-startup-too...](http://blog-
en.cloudsafe.com/post/1115843272/web-startup-tools)

~~~
michaelbuckbee
That's an interesting list, if for no other reason that I hadn't considered
the differing needs of Euro vs US startups.

------
harryh
foursquare:

\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps

\- Hosting: Amazon EC2

\- Bug database: FogBugz

\- File-sharing: Dropbox

\- Version control: Git

\- Continuous Integration: Hudson

\- Code Review: Review Board

\- IM: GChat + Campfire

------
drKarl
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: Linode

\- Invoicing: Zoho invoice

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Project management: GQueues/Yast

\- File-sharing: Dropbox/OpenVPN

\- Version control: Git

\- Backups: Crash Plan

\- Instant messaging: Skype/GTalk

~~~
olalonde
I'd be curious to know how OpenVPN helps with file-sharing. Is it to secure a
non secure file sharing protocol such as FTP?

~~~
drKarl
We share folders between remote Linux, Windows and MacOs machines. Like you
can do with Dropbox but without the size limits. With OpenVPN we can see our
computers as if they were in the same local network even if they are remote.

------
amilasampath
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Gmail, Google Calendar/Docs

\- Hosting: Slicehost

\- Invoicing: CurdBee (<http://curdbee.com>)

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Project management: Ta-da list

\- File-sharing: Dropbox (<http://dropbox.com/>)

\- Version control: Git (<http://git-scm.com/>)

\- Backups: offsite-backups

\- Instant messaging: Google chat

------
kalvin
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: Amazon EC2

\- Invoicing: Freshbooks

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Project management: JIRA, Rypple

\- Scrum: Greenhopper

\- File-sharing: Dropbox

\- Version control: Git

\- Code Review: Review Board

\- IM: GChat + Yammer

------
laktek
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Gmail, Google Calendar/Docs

\- Hosting: Slicehost

\- Invoicing: CurdBee (<http://curdbee.com>)

\- Analytics: Clicky (<http://getclicky.com>), Google Analytics

\- Project management: ActiveCollab

\- File-sharing: Dropbox

\- Version control: Git

\- Backups: TimeMachine with TimeCapsule & custom offsite-backups

\- Instant messaging: Adium

------
adamcharnock
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: Amazon EC2 / Linode

\- Invoicing: Xero (& Recurly)

\- Analytics: Google Analytics, Woopra, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics

\- Project management: <http://PlayNice.ly> (our app)

\- File-sharing: Dropbox

\- Version control: Git(hub)

\- Backups: Github/Dropbox/Time machine

\- Instant messaging: Skype/Yammer

Other stuff:

\- Billing: Recurly

\- IDE: TextMate

\- Dev other: VMWare for local Ubuntu dev environments

------
joelhaasnoot
\- E-mail/calendar: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: Oxilion (local hosting provider)

\- Invoicing: Excel

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Project management: Excel

\- File-sharing/docs: Dropbox

\- Version control: Git: Codaset (previously Beanstalk)

\- Backups: Amazon S3

\- Instant messaging: Gtalk included in Google Apps for Domains

------
jmonegro
\- Email/Docs: Google

\- Hosting: Heroku

\- Analytics: GA

\- Project Management: Pivotal Tracker

\- Chat: Campfire

\- File Sharing: Dropbox

\- Version Control: Git

\- File storage: s3

\- Backups: S3+Dropbox

\- Coding: TextMate

\- Internet: Google Chrome

\- Programming: Ruby

------
selectnull
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps standard edition

\- Hosting: Rackspace cloud

\- Project management & invoicing: our own app (which is what the startup is
about)

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Version control: Mercurial

\- Backups: rsync

\- Instant messaging: Skype, GTalk

------
x0t
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Google Apps

\- Hosting: Linode

\- Invoicing: Google Docs, Billings Pro

\- Project management: Pivotal Tracker, Basecamp

\- File-sharing: Dropbox, UbuntuOne

\- Version control: Git (via Github)

\- Instant messaging: Skype, AIM, GTalk/XMPP

------
kongqiu
Email: Gmail

Hosting: Media Temple and Dreamhost

Analytics: Google Analytics

CRM: Highrise

File-sharing: Dropbox

CMS (I'm not a programmer, but I'm learning Rails): Drupal

Monitoring: Pingdom

(ParkGrades.com plus some related stealth sites)

------
norbu09
at iWantMyName we use:

\- email/calendar/docs: google

\- hosting: slicehost, rackspace cloud, cloudprovider, dedicated servers

\- accounting: xero

\- analytics: google

\- project management/ bug tracking: redmine

\- file sharing: dropbox

\- version control: git

\- IM: jabber

\- stack: perl, CouchDB, RabbitMQ

changes in the last year or so:

mail -> google (from zimbra)

hosting -> +rackspace

accounting -> xero (from home grown)

file shareing -> dropbox (from VPN/own server)

stack -> -PostgreSQL

for my personal projects i also use:

time tracking: minutedock + xero (-> from freshbooks)

------
basicxman
Well, \- Vim \- Google Analytics \- Dropbox \- Git \- Linux \- Google Docs \-
Skype

Not a cent paid, not a single complaint.

~~~
x0t
Are you using Git locally or are you paying for private repos somewhere (via
hosted server or Github)?

~~~
basicxman
Locally.

------
haploid
\- E-mail/calendar/docs: Exchange/MS Office

\- Hosting: Limestone Networks, AWS EC2, Joyent

\- Invoicing: N/A

\- Analytics: Google Analytics

\- Project management: Internal App

\- File-sharing: Shared SMB Volume + VPN

\- Version control: SVN and Git

\- Backups: Tarsnap and rsync.net

\- IM: Wildfire XMPP

Other Stuff:

\- Development: IntelliJ IDEA, vim

\- CDN: AWS Cloudfront

\- Production Platform: Jetty, Wicket, Sun JDK, Ubuntu, PostgreSQL

