

Hands-on AngularJS with Backlift part 2: Wiring up a back-end API - colevscode
https://blog.backlift.com/entry/angular-tut2

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randall
I love the idea of this for prototyping, but what happens after you're done
prototyping? Do they expect you to just use their backend forever?

I feel like most folks outgrow a service like this at some point... is that ok
with you, Cole? Or do you aim to grow with folks? And is there a pricing model
in mind?

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colevscode
Hi Randall. Thanks for the question. I get asked this a lot. For others that
have been waiting to learn more about our future plans before committing to
Backlift, thanks for your patience.

We do want developers to stay with us beyond the prototyping phase. I started
off building Backlift Data to handle real world application needs like auth,
access controls, validation and security. Now that it's in the wild I
regularly get requests for features, and we're working quickly to implement
those features and expand the circle of applications that Backlift supports.
We're lucky that other services like Parse and Kinvey have paved the way,
demonstrating that you can ship real products, and build a business, using a
BAAS.

But our goal is not to be another Parse. Backlift Data is just one part of
Backlift. We see Backlift as a deployment platform primarily, and our goal is
to make building client-side apps easier and faster for the majority of
developers. And by majority I mean consultants, designers, marketers and
students that know HTML, CSS and some Javascript.

Here are some things we're doing to achieve that goal:

1) Limiting the scope of the platform. We don't want your front-end code to be
backlift code. You should be able to move off backlift, and onto your own
backend by changing a few API URLs. This is hard to do in practice, and many
of our performance and workflow features (like our {{$variant}} tag and
{{$prefetch}} tag, which we'll announce soon) are backlift specific. But
Backlift should not be required for the core functionality of your app.

2) Making migration easier. We currently allow data export and we do want to
provide app export functionality so that developers can move onto a different
host. Right now we're still working out the best way to accomplish this.

3) Making integration easier. We're working on APIs that will let you tie in
other data services easily, such as a proxy API that eliminates much of the
pain of CORS and connects your front-end logic to external APIs.

4) Making sharing easier. Right now you can embed a button that will let
others launch a new backlift app, based on your template, with a click. We
intend to expand on this feature to make it easier to upload and share code,
and even make your templates available for a fee.

As for pricing, I hear you. Here's our current plan, but please bear with us
because pricing is likely to change. First off, anyone can currently create
unlimited free apps on Backlift with temporary randomized URLs. Those URLs are
renewable every 14 days. We think this is a good way to offer a sandbox for
developers that want to try out different libraries and learn. We also think
this provides sufficient obscurity so that backlift apps can be developed in
private. When a developer is ready to launch an app publicly, we think there
should be an affordable plan, priced to compete with shared hosting options
currently on the market. On the other hand if a developer is building several
apps, or needs to scale up, we believe they should move to a business plan. So
just to put some numbers in here, we're thinking less than $30 per month for
the personal tier and closer to $200 per month for the business tier, but
again, the specifics will change.

I hope this answers some of your questions. Happy to answer more here or at
cole at backlift.com.

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chaddeshon
I was about to signup, but I saw that you don't support custom domains yet.
Any idea when that is coming?

~~~
colevscode
We do currently support custom domains. What did you see that makes you think
otherwise?

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chaddeshon
Sweet.

"In the future backlift will support custom URLs using your own domain."
<http://backlift.github.io/docs/all.html>

also: <https://github.com/backlift/docs/issues/6>

