

HackerEngine: A payment-ready Rails app with Bootstrap, Stripe, and KISSmetrics - r00k
http://www.hackerengine.com

======
bcardarella
This is a flat-out rip off. All three of those tools can plug into any Rails
app pretty easily:

Bootstrap: <https://github.com/seyhunak/twitter-bootstrap-rails>

Stripe: <http://railscasts.com/episodes/288-billing-with-stripe>

KISSmetrics: <http://support.kissmetrics.com/apis/ruby-specific>

If you can't manage to set these things up on your own save your money because
you shouldn't be bothering to build a Rails app in the first place.

~~~
_pius
_This is a flat-out rip off. All three of those tools can plug into any Rails
app pretty easily ..._

It's true that these are all relatively easy to integrate, but why hate on
fellow hackers for packaging and selling their solution?

If you really want to make the point that it's a ripoff, do the work to
replicate it as a boilerplate project and release it for free.

~~~
sha90
Yea, why hate on people who take advantage of and mislead uninformed newcomers
to the Rails community by selling them existing free software that is trivial
to set up, all the while passing it off as their own?

Maybe because some people believe in honest businesses, and not ripping off
end users for a quick buck. I say mislead and rip of, because the site is
presented as if the work done is novel, when it is not. Why is it that links
to the libraries used are conveniently omitted? Shouldn't Bootstrap, Stripe,
and KISSmetrics' codebases be linked somewhere so that users can see what it
is they are getting, if they want to do it themselves?

That said, I think I will take you up on that replicating challenge. You are
certainly right that someone should undercut the market before they make any
undeserved money off the work of others.

~~~
_pius
First, let me say that I know nothing about the authors. I'm just arguing the
principle here.

 _Yea, why hate on people who take advantage of and mislead uninformed
newcomers to the Rails community by selling them existing free software that
is trivial to set up, all the while passing it off as their own?_

Hmm ... I didn't get the impression that they had written Bootstrap, Stripe,
or Kissmetrics. Clearly what they're selling is a tested Rails app that
integrates the Stripe and Kissmetrics API libraries and provides a baseline UI
based off Bootstrap.

 _Maybe because some people believe in honest businesses, and not ripping off
end users for a quick buck._

That's where this gets destructive. Just because it's not worth the price to
you doesn't mean that these people are running a dishonest, rip-off business.
You ought not attack people's ethics because you don't like the value
proposition of their business.

Moreover, your argument is predicated on the idea that time is worth nothing.
Back in my consulting days, even if the integration of all of these things at
production quality would take only one billable hour (which, incidentally, it
wouldn't), the $149 would save me money.

Maybe you're a faster developer than I am or maybe you just don't bill enough.
Either way, just because the price isn't justified for you, doesn't mean it
couldn't be a lifesaver for someone else. Certainly doesn't mean the business
is dishonest.

 _That said, I think I will take you up on that replicating challenge._

Awesome.

------
adrianpike
\- What's the licensing look like? Can I buy it once & use it on every
project?

\- When you say "a UI", what are we talking about above & beyond what
Bootstrap gives me?

\- Since it's a stock app, and not an engine/gem, how am I going to easily
merge back in your bugfixes?

\- Is this just for a one-time purchase? What kind of support do you have for
recurring billing?

Looking at what you've laid out so far, I'd probably be billing ~2-3 hours for
it, so the pricing sorta lines up there, assuming it supports multiple
recurring subscription plans, gives me a decent reporting interface, coupon
codes, all the nice things that Stripe gives for me out of the box.

As somebody who's built this a number of times before for clients, both before
& after the Stripe era, there was definitely a recoil when I saw the price.

Part of my recoil can probably be attributed to having inherited a
RailsKitted-project in the past.

~~~
r00k
Thanks for your questions!

You can buy it once and use it as many times as you like.

"UI" refers to a landing page and checkout form that we pre-built and include
with the app. We didn't do a good job of making that clear, and that's
something we want to improve on the sales pages.

Your question about bugfixes is an excellent one. Eventually, we'll be moving
this to an engine/gem, but for now you'd have to make manual changes. This is
far from ideal, so we're planning on fixing it.

This is just for one time purchases. We'd like to add support for recurring
billing at some point, but it's not planned for the immediate future.

Thanks for your feedback on the price. As this is at MVP stage right now,
everything can possibly change, including that.

------
aeontech
I'm rather curious as to what the "comprehensive test suite" includes. If I
were to write something like this, it seems like it would take nothing more
than installing the various gems on a basic rails app, and adding a little
glue code to integrate bootstrap. Or am I missing something?

~~~
r00k
Good question.

I've got good coverage with unit tests and cucumber features.

The tests do things like bang on the credit card form in a bunch of ways and
make sure things work correctly. The integration tests actually hit Stripe's
test servers to ensure that payment processing is working correctly.

------
outside1234
add Devise and i'll give you $4.99 for the whole thing.

~~~
webbruce
Yeah, add Devise and I'll buy it actually

------
r00k
Hey all, I'm one of the authors of HackerEngine. I'm happy to answer any
questions you have and would love your feedback.

Thanks!

~~~
nhebb
FYI, I'm getting a security warning:

"This is probably not the site you are looking for! You attempted to reach
www.hackerengine.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying
itself as *.heroku.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server
or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to
get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of
www.hackerengine.com. You should not proceed."

~~~
mhartl
I'm getting one, too:

    
    
        This Connection is Untrusted
    
        You have asked Firefox to connect securely to www.hackerengine.com, but we
        can't confirm that your connection is secure.

