
Online services our startup subscribes to - epi0Bauqu
http://ye.gg/subscribe2
======
edash
Here are some things we use at <http://realhq.com> — those also mentioned in
the article are in _italics_ :

HOSTING

Rails Hosting: EngineYard

LAMP Hosting: HostGator

File Hosting: _AWS_

Video Hosting: Wistia

Code Hosting: _GitHub_

COLLABORATION

Email/Calendar/Docs: _Google Apps_

Project Management: Basecamp

Group Chat: Campfire

Wiki: Backpack

COMMUNICATION

Email Deliverability: SendGrid

Phone Magic: Twilio

Phone System: OpenVBX

MONITORING

Error Monitoring: Airbrake

App Monitoring: New Relic

Server Monitoring: Pingdom

ACCOUNTING

Receipts: Shoeboxed

Income: Freshbooks

Accounting: Outright

OTHER

Web Fonts: fonts.com

Web Fonts: Typekit

eSignatures: DocuSign

Forms: Wufoo

Advertising: Google AdWords

Our favorite products are probably Outright (dead simple), Twilio (enables
tons of phone system magic), and AdWords (flexible, powerful, profitable). The
two products we're actively working to replace are Backpack (with Workflowy or
something similar) and Shoeboxed (we have yet to find an alternative). And
we've outgrown Wufoo, but owe them much more than we've ever paid them in
monthly charges.

~~~
8ig8
Thanks for the great list. I took a look at Outright. The service may be
useful, but this bugs me...

> You can use your FREE account forever - No trial or expiration date. Paid
> accounts are just $9.95 per month. See details when you log in.

I know there's a catch, but I'm forced to create an account to find out about
it. I'm either gonna use dummy info or just leave since I don't want another
account until I understand what I'm signing up for.

I realize this is a tactic for getting me to try the service, but I don't like
it. I ended up just leaving.

------
spatten
Here's what we use at <http://leanpub.com>

* Servers: AWS

* Code Hosting: GitHub

* Mail Sending: Postmark (<http://postmarkapp.com>)

* Monitoring: Scout (<http://scoutapp.com/>)

* Sharing files with our authors: Dropbox

* Error notification: AirBrake (<https://airbrakeapp.com/>)

* File Hosting: S3

* Mail: Google Apps

* Cartoon Animal Videos: Xtranormal (<http://www.xtranormal.com/>)

* Payments: PayPal

* Project Planning / Todos: Pivotal Tracker

------
TWSS
Because the list is so long, and a bunch of the cons mention cost, I'm going
to flog my friend's company, Cloudability (<http://cloudability.com>). They
help you track and control your cloud spending and they're an AWS solutions
provider.

There are only three of us at Stayhound (<http://stayhound.com>), so our list
is pretty short:

Mockflow for creating and sharing flows and wireframes

MailChimp

Google docs & calendar

Gmail IM

Google+ hangouts for team video conferencing

Trello for task management

Capsule CMS

Github

Google AppEngine

And we're in the process of considering a move to AWS.

~~~
marquis
Cloudability looks fantastic. How are they planning on charging? It looks
completely free right now.

------
dignan
I was curious about ServerDensity. Does anyone have experience with them? How
easy is it to automate for deployment? Does it compare favorably with Munin
and/or nagios?

~~~
sdcooke
I'm not sure about the automation of creating servers in the web interface (it
gives you a key that you have to put in the configuration file) - installing
the service is easy though through a package manager.

The two things I think are great about ServerDensity over Munin (haven't used
nagios) are the snapshots (you click on a point in the graph and it shows you
the processes running, server load, network etc at that time) and the alerting
(email, Android, iPhone push) which is great. Even custom plugins are easy to
write/install and stick alerts on.

~~~
dignan
Awesome. Thanks for the heads up, especially about snapshots.

Signed up for the trial, and it looks like their auto-deploy script links are
broken (support.serverdensity.com 502's). I'd like to see if there's a way to
generate keys somehow, because it looks like it requires a unique per-server
key. I suspect that is what their auto-deploy script does.

~~~
dmytton
We're using Assistly for our support site and they've had a number of outages
in the last few days.

Auto deployment is something we're working on improving but right now you can
use auto copy[1], which bases new instance detection on the hostname, our auto
deploy script[2] or our API[3] to add devices automatically.

[1]
[http://support.serverdensity.com/customer/portal/articles/72...](http://support.serverdensity.com/customer/portal/articles/72261-auto-
copy)

[2]
[http://support.serverdensity.com/customer/portal/articles/72...](http://support.serverdensity.com/customer/portal/articles/72262-deploy-
script)

[3] <http://developer.serverdensity.com/docs>

------
petercooper
Just want to mention this because I never see it in lists like these, yet
everyone I've recommended it to has been blown away.

Talkerapp: <http://talkerapp.com/> \- It's a free Web chat system (with a paid
level for extra logging and file transfers). I believe it's open source too. I
use it for some of my online courses and haven't had another Web chat system
come close (although stylistically it's a bit like Campfire).

------
robjohnson
Thanks for posting the list - more startups should do this.

~~~
joeyespo
Agreed. This is very useful.

I wonder if a startup version of usesthis.com would be a useful place to
collect or reference posts like this.

~~~
xpose2000
Brilliant idea. Perhaps I might pursue this.

~~~
mikeleeorg
Now that I think about it, I've used usesthis.com for this very purpose - to
get some anecdotal "votes" for particular categories of services. If this was
listed out in an easier-to-read fashion, I personally would love that.

------
xpose2000
Awesome thread. I recently made a post about startup costs and what services I
use. I even provide a cost breakdown for each one, bringing my grand total
monthly bill to $295.

Hopefully its useful to some. [http://x-pose.org/2011/10/the-cost-of-running-
a-boot-strappe...](http://x-pose.org/2011/10/the-cost-of-running-a-boot-
strapped-startup/)

------
pamelafox
I notice a lot of those tools are for group collaboration -- I know there are
many advantages to having a co-founder, but one of the advantages of being a
single founder (AKA a developer working on an app they wish existed) is that I
only have to collaborate with myself. Simplifies the toolkit quite a bit.

Here's what I'm using for <http://everyday.io> \--

Backend: App Engine / Python / Flask

Frontend: Bootstrap / jQuery / PhoneGap / HighCharts / Many microlibs

APIs: SendGrid, Facebook, SimpleGeo

Analytics: Woopra

Code hosting: Github + Dropbox (just in case!)

Email/Docs: Google Apps

Task tracking: Stickies + GDocs + Things (Haven't quite decided on one
strategy yet.)

I've started blogging about tips I learn while using these technologies here,
since some of them are kind of new and the knowledge base needs to be built
up: <http://www.everyday.im/learning>

I remember seeing a grid of what YC companies used, atleast in terms of the
backend. That was pretty interesting.

------
jcoder
Regarding EchoSign, can you explain the complaint that you cannot control the
signing date? If that means what I take it to mean, OF COURSE YOU CAN'T. It
would be antithetical to the idea of reliable electronic signatures to allow a
party to evidence that they entered an agreement at any time other than the
actual agreement date.

------
cheez
Am I the only one who went through the "hate" to find out if there is
something substantial worth considering? :)

~~~
mikeleeorg
Hehe I did the same thing. Hopefully, the services themselves did too, so they
can consider revising their priority lists ;)

~~~
cheez
I have a feeling we'd get along ;-)

~~~
mikeleeorg
I love hearing complaints, because they often mask an opportunity ;)

------
tedroden
Do you guys use a project management package? Basecamp, asana, pivotal etc?

(We don't use them either (yet), just wondering what you do instead?)

~~~
epi0Bauqu
We use Asana and are happy with it. It's free so I didn't include it (but
maybe I should have).

~~~
tedroden
I keep hearing asana... I like the keyboard shortcuts, so I'll probably go
that way. Thanks!

