

The best service providers for startups - rwebb
http://blog.robwebb2k.com/2008/03/31/my-picks-the-best-service-providers-for-startups/

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spencerfry
Decent list. I'd include:

Google's GrandCentral (for phone #) 37Signals' Campfire (for chatting... in
office or not) ThePlanet (dedicated servers)

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rshao
I'd put SoftLayer on par with ThePlanet. It was founded by former ThePlanet
execs and I've had a great experience with them.

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dmpayton
Does anyone else have experience with BrainTree? They look good and seem to
offer a very robust API (which would make -my- life a heckuva lot easier), but
my boss is still leaning towards PayPal due to brand/stability.

Also, they talk a lot about "up-front pricing," yet I can't seem to find any
information about pricing and fee's on their website. What gives?

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winintl
@dmpayton - I work for Braintree and the company does not publish prices
because they depend a lot on many variables including the business type,
credit card volume, type of credit cards that are most commonly accepted (e.g.
debit, credit, rewards, business to business, international, etc.) and other
variables. There is no one size fits all pricing model that applies to all
businesses.

Braintree practices full disclosure pricing with no hidden fees which is rare
in this industry. Here's a blog post that describe where credit card fees come
from if you're interested in learning more:
[http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/where-do-
credi...](http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/blog/where-do-credit-card-
fees-come-from-cc/)

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murrayh
If that were the reason, couldn't you simply publish a web form where we can
enter in all those variables and get an idea of the price? I suspect that you
would already be using such a tool internally.

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rw
Mediatemple -- the author of this piece says "no, bad!" I've heard very good
things from others about MT. Is there a consensus here on the quality/price
ratio of (mt)'s services?

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rwebb
thanks for the responses. i put up a long one 2x earlier but the site was all
jacked up. in short i think ringcental has more corporate type options than
GC, i haven't been psyched with 37 signals stuff (although it looks sweet!)
but will check out campfire as well as theplanet (and lots of people psyched
on slicehost - i'll check that too).

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spencerfry
I like Campfire a lot, because it's simple and gets the job done. I can't
recommend Basecamp and other 37Signals products, because they've just never
been right for me and I don't have enough experience with them. ThePlanet, on
the other hand, has been my dedicated server host since 2004 and has always
been superb.

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tonystubblebine
I'll vouch for Campfire also. It's relatively easy to hook notifications into
it so that commits, test failures, and bug reports show up. In my last two
companies we've ended up with then dynamic of "if it doesn't notify campfire,
it didn't happen."

I use Highrise also for CRM. If it's just one or two of you then it's probably
the only CRM out there that's simple enough to get into your workflow. If
you're managing a salesforce then you probably want something different. But
for just remembering who my clients are and when I need to contact them, it's
amazing.

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mhidalgo
I'd also include slicehost for hosting...cheap, great documentation , and you
can install many linux distros

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utnick
we use GoToMeeting at work for giving demos and telecons

