3 ms·

We originally piloted using Nylas's APIs in our product about a year and a half ago. In that timespan, their pricing has changed significantly about 4 times and

We originally piloted using Nylas's APIs in our product about a year and a half ago. In that timespan, their pricing has changed significantly about 4 times and they do not seem like they have a particularly good grasp on their business model. They also, despite advertising 10 free test accounts, arbitrarily delete said accounts and then when you ask to get them reactivated you get connected with a sales rep. Their API sync-engine [0] either hasn't been updated since March, or hasn't been kept open source--neither of which is a great sign. We're currently using the open source Nylas sync engine in production as we were uncomfortable trusting an important feature of our product in a company that doesn't seem to have a firm idea of what they want to do. But with the seemingly abandoned open source project, we are now working on building out our own syncing applications to ditch it altogether. I would strongly caution anyone considering using the sync APIs to think about what they are getting into and the switching costs. [0] https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine

bengotow 9y ago
This sounds bad, but I'd suggest an alternate interpretation: 1. Company invests heavily in engineering and builds a sync engine. Progress is visible on GitHub and rapid. 2. Company launches and repeatedly adjusts pricing and business models. Drives everybody crazy BUT: 3. Company finds it's value prop and customer base and the changes stop. Entire company shifts to building a sales team and keeping the wheels on the bus while they make their first customers happy. 4. Engineers switch from working on the core sync codebase to surrounding services, infrastructure, and scale.* * Last week's developer dashboard announcement: https://www.nylas.com/blog/announcing-the-nylas-dashboard-2.0 https://www.nylas.com/blog/announcing-the-nylas-dashboard-2.... And somewhere along the road: Company realizes customers that are willing to go through the hassle of provisioning, deploying, and maintaining their own version of the open source sync engine are not the customers to focus on. ;-)
- sachinag 9y ago
  Ben's got this exactly right.
- 0x00000 9y ago
  Perhaps customers wouldn't be willing to go through the hassle of provisioning, deploying, and maintaining their own version of the open source sync engine if they had more confidence that Nylas is someone they would trust to do it. Doing all those things is a pain in the ass. I would LOVE for us to pay someone to do it, but we've completely lost confidence that you are those people.

bengotow 9y ago

This sounds bad, but I'd suggest an alternate interpretation: 1. Company invests heavily in engineering and builds a sync engine. Progress is visible on GitHub and rapid. 2. Company launches and repeatedly adjusts pricing and business models. Drives everybody crazy BUT: 3. Company finds it's value prop and customer base and the changes stop. Entire company shifts to building a sales team and keeping the wheels on the bus while they make their first customers happy. 4. Engineers switch from working on the core sync codebase to surrounding services, infrastructure, and scale.* * Last week's developer dashboard announcement: https://www.nylas.com/blog/announcing-the-nylas-dashboard-2.0 https://www.nylas.com/blog/announcing-the-nylas-dashboard-2.... And somewhere along the road: Company realizes customers that are willing to go through the hassle of provisioning, deploying, and maintaining their own version of the open source sync engine are not the customers to focus on. ;-)

sachinag 9y ago
Ben's got this exactly right.
0x00000 9y ago
Perhaps customers wouldn't be willing to go through the hassle of provisioning, deploying, and maintaining their own version of the open source sync engine if they had more confidence that Nylas is someone they would trust to do it. Doing all those things is a pain in the ass. I would LOVE for us to pay someone to do it, but we've completely lost confidence that you are those people.