
Show HN: Pingpoint – Business logic alerts to the right person at the right time - shaharsol
https://pingpoint.io/
======
alekratz
I'm... still confused as to what this is. It sends emails, based on events?
The FAQ link at the bottom leads to nowhere, there's no explicit "Pingpoint is
an API that does XYZ", and nothing beyond the front-page multipage. Your
website has virtually unlimited space - you should use it to explain what I'm
actually looking at.

~~~
shaharsol
I agree the home page is still a bit sketchy. Sign up though and you land on a
more detailed page explaining the API usage.

------
csmattryder
$5/mo for an out-of-my-control ActionMailer setup? And I'd be limited to 100
events/mo?

I mean, we're doing this already for registration on our platform and it took
me 45 minutes to setup in Rails for a range of events, and I can style the
output to send to the human C-levels.

Not sure what this will accomplish, hopefully you can fill me in on the value
prop.

~~~
shaharsol
Whats the added value of sendgrid over gmail api? of zencoder over ffmpeg? you
can do everything on your own, of course. All depends on your abilities and
resources. This is something I found myself doing in many apps, and thought to
spin it off to a separate and independent service for the joy of others. It
can save them from [usually] ugly coding, it adds a central and single place
of mngmt for all this notification management, both for events and for
recipients. IMO its useful and worth it but I'm of course totally biased.

~~~
LyndsySimon
I think the value you provide isn't the notification, but the surrounding
data.

Consider that my app may not have deep integration into Facebook, or Twitter,
or whatever. I just have a simple signup page that accepts the user's name,
email, and a password. Where your app could shine is if I could send the
information I _do_ have on the user to your API endpoint, and it takes care of
going out and figuring out who this person is.

"Hey, the email address this person used to sign up for your service is also
tied to a Twitter account with 1.5m followers" or "A person with the same name
as this user is a tech writer for Gizmodo" are things that could be very
important, but that most individual devs or small shops aren't going to have
the resources to discover for all of their users.

~~~
shaharsol
This sounds great, thanks for the idea. It's like adding rapportive to it.

------
mtmail
Looking at the documentation I would have to figure out who a VIP is. Then
call an API method. The service converts the payload I send into an email. The
example in the documentation looks at the last name of the user ("Zuckerberg")
only. I don't think the service solves the use-case described in the title.

~~~
shaharsol
I admit the title is a little scoopy but it needs to grab attention. As for
identifying celebrity signups, if they sign up via facebook for instance, you
can quickly count their followers count for instance and alert if it's >X.

------
asadlionpk
I am not sure who will use this but I solve this problem for myself by sending
alerts to slack. It's just a simple POST request with my event/message, I
don't think it can get simpler than that.

------
angryasian
I think your biggest issue is the documentation. I can barely tell what it is
based on some of the comments here sounds like it does something completely
different.

edit: I see you have to sign up first. Come on dude. Just show the
documentation.

------
paulogr
I'm curious if you already got some subscribers for you service. Did you?

~~~
shaharsol
paid subscribers? honestly not yet. Just have a few trials out of some tiny
marketing efforts, nothing serious. If this goes to HN front page though then
we can consider this launch.

------
kapauldo
Is this a zapier for developers? Not sure what it is.

------
chadwilken
The title feels very clickbatey. I did overlook the Show HN part but thought
it was going to be an interesting article, not an event system for emails.

~~~
sctb
Yes, we've updated the title to a representative phrase from the linked page.

