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My biggest concern is being dependent on these systems, the systems changing, and it breaking the process. I have the mentality of self hosting and diy, cheap,

My biggest concern is being dependent on these systems, the systems changing, and it breaking the process. I have the mentality of self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. Most these services have a learning curve anyway. Are the services really worth it?

balls187 7y ago
> Are the services really worth it? Yes. > self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. What is the cost to get something that has a better uptime than the SLA's of the services you are replacing? Focus on getting to paying customers. After that, you'll see where your time is better off spent. Example: I just signed up for a trial for Stripe Sigma. I was going to build my own basic BI using their API. Instead it costs my business ~$10/mo at our size. Now I can spend what would have been time to build, test, deploy that service, to instead just answer the business questions I had.
- lunchables 7y ago
  Well, you could also be outsourcing your "build, test, deploy" to someone else and save even more time!
  - balls187 7y ago
    Actually, it would take me more time to write the spec, than it would be to just sign up for sigma.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  The problem is no using a service and having it briefly be unavailable. The problem is that you use a service, get reliant on it, and then they 10x their price, remove key features, and then go out of business.
  - stevenwliao 7y ago
    At that point, if you then build your own, you're still ahead.
pembrook 7y ago
The mentality of DIY and self hosting is the default for most hackers, and in my opinion its the number 1 thing holding back most engineers who build businesses. I have a buddy who’s an amazing engineer, he takes pride in doing everything himself and spent years building a platform from the ground up. Elegant, fully automated, built in his favorite languages and frameworks. 3 years in it makes 50k a year. I have another buddy who is non-technical, 2 years ago he built an ugly, janky platform off Wordpress and some plugins in a month. He does nothing himself, outsources everything. His business does $4mil a year.
- webmobdev 7y ago
  One is an engineer, the other is a businessman (salesman and fund raiser).
  - dwild 7y ago
    One is someone that over engineer, the other know where to put time and money to maximize returns.
  - taytus 7y ago
    Both are imaginary thou.
- akamia 7y ago
  One of the problems that a lot of engineers have is failing to recognize that their time has a cost. Spending 4 extra hours of your own time setting up a mail server that will cost you $5/month to run instead of paying $10 per month for Office 365 or some other service is not really saving you money because that initial 4 hours of labor is time you could've spent doing other things for the business. It's not free time. I find it really helps to put a dollar value on an hour of my time. In that context, if 1 hour of my time is worth $75 and I've spent 4 hours setting up this mail server, I've spent $300 on my labor in addition to the $60/year for the cost of the server. Obviously this doesn't work in all cases but it really helps me determine when it's worth it for me to spend my time doing something and when it's better to outsource it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
three_seagrass 7y ago
It's the perennial Build vs. Buy debate. The tradeoff of buying is that yes, you are at the will of the service provider, but the alternative is taking on all the technical debt of building your own services. For most, $N/month is cheaper than putting the maintenance hours in, even if it means needing to find another service provider if one is changing.

balls187 7y ago

> Are the services really worth it? Yes. > self hosting and diy, cheap, better understanding, and imo more reliable. What is the cost to get something that has a better uptime than the SLA's of the services you are replacing? Focus on getting to paying customers. After that, you'll see where your time is better off spent. Example: I just signed up for a trial for Stripe Sigma. I was going to build my own basic BI using their API. Instead it costs my business ~$10/mo at our size. Now I can spend what would have been time to build, test, deploy that service, to instead just answer the business questions I had.

lunchables 7y ago
Well, you could also be outsourcing your "build, test, deploy" to someone else and save even more time!
- balls187 7y ago
  Actually, it would take me more time to write the spec, than it would be to just sign up for sigma.
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
The problem is no using a service and having it briefly be unavailable. The problem is that you use a service, get reliant on it, and then they 10x their price, remove key features, and then go out of business.
- stevenwliao 7y ago
  At that point, if you then build your own, you're still ahead.

pembrook 7y ago

The mentality of DIY and self hosting is the default for most hackers, and in my opinion its the number 1 thing holding back most engineers who build businesses. I have a buddy who’s an amazing engineer, he takes pride in doing everything himself and spent years building a platform from the ground up. Elegant, fully automated, built in his favorite languages and frameworks. 3 years in it makes 50k a year. I have another buddy who is non-technical, 2 years ago he built an ugly, janky platform off Wordpress and some plugins in a month. He does nothing himself, outsources everything. His business does $4mil a year.

webmobdev 7y ago
One is an engineer, the other is a businessman (salesman and fund raiser).
- dwild 7y ago
  One is someone that over engineer, the other know where to put time and money to maximize returns.
- taytus 7y ago
  Both are imaginary thou.
akamia 7y ago
One of the problems that a lot of engineers have is failing to recognize that their time has a cost. Spending 4 extra hours of your own time setting up a mail server that will cost you $5/month to run instead of paying $10 per month for Office 365 or some other service is not really saving you money because that initial 4 hours of labor is time you could've spent doing other things for the business. It's not free time. I find it really helps to put a dollar value on an hour of my time. In that context, if 1 hour of my time is worth $75 and I've spent 4 hours setting up this mail server, I've spent $300 on my labor in addition to the $60/year for the cost of the server. Obviously this doesn't work in all cases but it really helps me determine when it's worth it for me to spend my time doing something and when it's better to outsource it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

three_seagrass 7y ago

It's the perennial Build vs. Buy debate. The tradeoff of buying is that yes, you are at the will of the service provider, but the alternative is taking on all the technical debt of building your own services. For most, $N/month is cheaper than putting the maintenance hours in, even if it means needing to find another service provider if one is changing.