
Show HN: API Bootstrap – A better way to build your API - roelbondoc
https://apibootstrap.com
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staticelf
The landing page doesn't provide any information what so ever about what your
service solves. Only a madman would go further.

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pc86
Only a madman would start a 30-day trial without entering any financial
information?

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noer
Signing up for a free trial requires some bit of commitment. A couple of
sentences isn't enough for most people to commit to a new product.

If you think about the customer journey as Research-Evaluate-Purchase, the 30
day free trial is the Evaluate stage. There isn't enough information (or any
specifics) on the landing page to do any meaningful amount of research.

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muninn_
Plus, then I have to give you fake name, fake email, fake number, etc... and
it's like why bother... Moving on.

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skamoen
I'm not sure what it is you're actually selling. More documentation or
practical examples would be great. I'm not willing to create an account / sign
in to find out stuff like that.

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roelbondoc
Agreed. I'll put some more work into the marketing site to explain how it
works.

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throwaway2016a
The page doesn't really show me enough to know if I want to buy.

At the very least I'd need a comparison with a more mature system like
[https://www.mulesoft.com/](https://www.mulesoft.com/)

What is the documentation in for example? RAML? Swagger? HTML?

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losingthefight
Could you provide a demo of some sort on the landing page? I have been writing
APIs for over a decade and still have no idea what benefit this provides. Who
does it compete with? What differs it from a starter/seed project? Do I still
write code or is it a visual interface? What sort of redundancy and
reliability does it have, especially since I haven't heard of the project or
company before?

$20/month is a bit much for a side project. For a real world project, the
price is peanuts if the benefits are there, but the lack of explanation makes
it a non-starter for many companies, I would imagine.

Luckily, most of that seems to be marketing and documentation, which shouldn't
be too difficult to update, if the product is working correctly at least.

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joenot443
It's a great idea, but as other have noted, the landing page definitely needs
either a lot more information or at least a couple examples of what kind of
service you're actually providing.

Are you actually hosting the API I'd be building? Or just generating
boilerplate code for it? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding :)

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jcadam
I'm wondering what all the upvotes are about? I've seen fairly decent "Show
HN" submissions languish down in the 0-1 range while this one (which is being
universally panned) is up to 17.

The "It's so bad it's good" effect?

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sanderjd
I clicked on it because I immediately thought, "oh that sounds useful". Most
"Show HN"s don't immediately trigger that response in me. So I suspect the
upvotes are because the idea resonates, even if the landing page needs
improvement.

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aaossa
Hi, I'm getting "502 Bad Gateway" :( Seems interesting, so I hope you could
fix it soon to let us see your webpage :)

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roelbondoc
Sorry about that. It's fixed now, any feedback would be appreciated.

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cdevs
I agree with complaints the landing page is extremely lacking in getting me to
move forward and sign up for something I need to see more info about.

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mring33621
I signed up w/ my github creds and made a small "hello world" GET endpoint.
Here's my comments & questions so far:

1) allow non-json responses 2) why would I do pass-thru? for metrics? 3) add
test data generation features for mock responses 4) add at least limited
scripting features for both pass-thru and mock

Looks like a good start to me and I was not particularly bothered by the
current sign up.

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roelbondoc
Hello all. I just want to say thanks for everyone's feedback. It is very much
appreciated. I apologize if I don't have the chance right now to respond to
everyone individually but I plan to at some point. Just want to let you all
know I'm reading the feedback and will hopefully make this product better.
Thanks.

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noer
I don't understand what exactly this is? Is it just starter scaffolding in the
vein of create-react-app or one of those hackathon starters?

I'd put some time into showing some examples of what exactly the service is
and how it works. What problem does it solve specifically?

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brandonhsiao
I signed up and played with the app. I think this would be better implemented
as a library or wrapper on top of one. The "code using a mouse" idea has been
tried and almost every time the verdict is: code is the preferred interface
for programmers.

That said, clearly standardization is coming to the world of APIs, and code
reuse/generation along with it. Have you looked at Django REST framework? They
have a pretty good approach. [http://www.django-rest-
framework.org/](http://www.django-rest-framework.org/)

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haburka
This seems way too cheap for what it's offering! If you're saving developer
time and effort then you should be charging 100/mo at least.

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dfgonzalez
Agree that more info is needed to proceed, but lovely theme though! Is this a
bootstrap theme or something made from scratch?

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mgberlin
Signed in. Built a fake endpoint. Not sure what this is useful for.

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adamc
Making me sign in before you tell me anything is a non-starter.

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giancarlostoro
What's worse is you are not guaranteed to get any useful information after
registering. I suspect it's just a lack of information.

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blikdak
bad gateway, is this for building write-only apis?

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roelbondoc
Thanks!, should be fixed now.

It's targeted for any REST/Json based api. (reading or writing)

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567bfwhjb
502 Bad Gateway

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roelbondoc
Thanks for the report, should be fixed now.

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waibelp
502 Bad Gateway

nginx/1.13.3

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roelbondoc
My apologies, should be fixed now.

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waibelp
Thank you for fixing this. I would like to see whats possible with your
product. Maybe some screenshots + some text or maybe a video?

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roelbondoc
That is a good point. I will spend some time on the landing page to
communicate how it works.

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orarbel1
The irony

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roelbondoc
I "hope" it will be better, its working now!

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throwme_1980
Oh god, this is awful, enjoy the 15 mins of fame because most likely this is
the last time this website will enjoy such a spike in traffic

