7 ms·

Next-generation Deploy Previews, plus Netlify acquires FeaturePeek (YC S19)

142 points by csmajorfive 5y ago

quaffapint 5y ago
A year or so ago I was working on a similar product as FeaturePeek - a platform agnostic deploy preview and collaboration tool. I decided not enough people would want that outside of their hosting platform and shelved it. Clearly I was wrong and clearly why you should talk to more potential customers before you make decisions. Congrats to Netlify and FeaturePeek.
- pistoriusp 5y ago
  To be fair to yourself this is probably a lot more than a year's work, but also... just because it exists doesn't mean that another shouldn't version shouldn't exist either!
- mynegation 5y ago
  Given that this is an acquisition of a 2yo startup by a hosting platform company, looks like you were right on the money.
- glenngillen 5y ago
  Unless you have inside information on the terms of the acquisition, I wouldn't beat yourself up about what might have been. There's a very broad spectrum of options here between "we like the team and have agreed to put them on payroll because it's cheaper and faster than using recruiters" to "F$%@ you money for the founders". We've no way to know which it is.
kevincox 5y ago
GitLab has a similar feature: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/review_apps/#visual-reviews https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/review_apps/#visual-reviews It does require a bit more work to set up (which is unfortunate, since they already use the URL could they use that to map back to the PR?) but seems basically the same if not quite as polished.
- kenrose 5y ago
  > but seems basically the same if not quite as polished. That describes many of GitLab's features.
- sytse 5y ago
  We're exploring how to reduce or remove this set up work with https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/35322 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/35322
esilverman 5y ago
Eric here from FeaturePeek, we are thrilled to be part of Netlify!
- elitan 5y ago
  Congratulations! Good work!
  - esilverman 5y ago
    thank you!
  - schnebbau 5y ago
    What are you congratulating?
- ridruejo 5y ago
  Congratulations! Exciting news :)
- swyx 5y ago
  question if you will entertain it - what was your original YC pitch like? i'd love to see the evolution of this idea :)
bigyikes 5y ago
We have a deploy preview system at work and it is so valuable. I see less value in the collaboration tools built on top of these previews, but it’s cool nonetheless.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  The first time I saw CloudFlare Pages do a preview it was a little magical. Really impressive stuff.
pistoriusp 5y ago
This is awesome! I love that everyone can now give feedback. Developers, designers, people who write copy, etc. And that the feedback is piped into a single source of truth: GitHub (of course, if you use GitHub). It's so easy to loose track of these things when they're not near the code.
kennyIO 5y ago
I can think of 101 ways this can help large teams become more productive
tin7in 5y ago
This replaces a multi-step manual process that we've been doing in our team. Well done!
simonw 5y ago
I'm still optimistic for Python Netlify functions: https://answers.netlify.com/t/python-lambda-functions/3423/15 https://answers.netlify.com/t/python-lambda-functions/3423/1... If they were JavaSript only I wouldn't hold much hope, but they've been both JavaScript and Go for ages now - and I would expect Python to have a much larger user-base than Go for this.
at-fates-hands 5y ago
Collaborative Deploy Previews are fully enabled on every Netlify account today! Anyone with a Netlify account can use the reviewer tool. This is why I love Netlify. They put together an incredibly powerful tool, and then released it to ALL of their customers. No, not a "Hey, we created this really cool tool! And for only an extra $3.99/mo you can utilize it!" I have several accounts, both free and paid and all of them have the Deploy Preview feature available. There's so many things Netlify could've monetized and they haven't. They truly are a customer centric company - which is rare these days.
ccheney 5y ago
For preview URLs how are y'all handling SSO? No SSO provider supports wildcard redirect URIs. Looking for ideas...
- fishtoaster 5y ago
  Auth0 does, thankfully! I set my redirect uri to `https://deploy-preview-*--my-cool-netlify-app-staging.netlify.app/post-auth https://deploy-preview-*--my-cool-netlify-app-staging.netlif...` just the other day. :) They have a few rather specific rules about it, but it works for deploy previews anyway: https://auth0.com/docs/applications/wildcards-for-subdomains https://auth0.com/docs/applications/wildcards-for-subdomains
  - nrmitchi 5y ago
    Auth0 does, but IIRC it does not support multiple or not-last wildcards. Ie “app.*.preview.<domain>” does not work. If your application itself has subdomains, Auth0 doesn’t solve this easily
- MapleWalnut 5y ago
  I ran into this issue when setting up UI previews for a GitHub OAuth app. My solution is to have a single callback server that looks in the OAuth state to determine where to redirect. This isn't secure, so when building the UI, I sign the UI's preview URL with a secret and send that in the OAuth state. The callback server checks the signature and redirects that way. It's hacky and I wouldn't trust it for a production app, but for a test environment it seems okay.
  - ccheney 5y ago
    Excellent idea, thanks!
Rodeoclash 5y ago
If anyone is interested in a (semi!) working version of feature previews that is open source, I threw together https://gitlab.com/Rodeoclash/StageHand https://gitlab.com/Rodeoclash/StageHand It takes a branch in GitHub and use a config file to bootstrap the application inside a K8's cluster using a "docker in docker" model. If you could describe your infrastructure as a docker-compose.yml then you can launch it as a preview. I'm not really a marketing person so it never went any further than a proof of concept. However, if someone is interested in working with it then I'm happy to support getting it running.
HatchedLake721 5y ago
> About five years ago, Netlify pioneered the concept of Deploy Previews. Doesn’t Heroku’s “Review Apps” predates this? https://blog.heroku.com/heroku_review_apps_beta https://blog.heroku.com/heroku_review_apps_beta (funnily enough, it’s been exactly 6 years ago today based on the beta’s blog post above)
- ljm 5y ago
  I remember using ephemeral Heroku deploys in the dev pipeline well before I knew Netlify was a thing. That was pretty much the last major innovation I saw from Heroku, before Salesforce decided they'd grown fat enough to milk. But...there were also pipelines. A deploy preview is essentially a staging or pre-prod environment. Or going from draft to published.
- glenngillen 5y ago
  They were in fairly wide "unofficial" customer usage for a year before that too I think. source: my last day at Heroku was a year prior to that post, and I recall using them.
- nrmitchi 5y ago
  There was a company called Runnable that had a product offering, but if I recall correctly was acquired by MuleSoft and shut down. Their first round was in 2012, and even though I believe they had a different product originally, their preview environment offering predated Heroku’s.
- p0deje 5y ago
  I think even Heroku is not the first company offering this to public. There was an app called Teatro.io which did the same in 2014. It's down now, but I've found https://web.archive.org/web/20140614011544/http://teatro.io/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140614011544/http://teatro.io/.
armincerf 5y ago
This looks great and all but the new drawer icon covers up a key button on our app.. ironically the person who noticed took a regular screenshot and shared it in slack

142 points by csmajorfive 5y ago

A year or so ago I was working on a similar product as FeaturePeek - a platform agnostic deploy preview and collaboration tool. I decided not enough people would want that outside of their hosting platform and shelved it. Clearly I was wrong and clearly why you should talk to more potential customers before you make decisions. Congrats to Netlify and FeaturePeek.

pistoriusp 5y ago
To be fair to yourself this is probably a lot more than a year's work, but also... just because it exists doesn't mean that another shouldn't version shouldn't exist either!
mynegation 5y ago
Given that this is an acquisition of a 2yo startup by a hosting platform company, looks like you were right on the money.
glenngillen 5y ago
Unless you have inside information on the terms of the acquisition, I wouldn't beat yourself up about what might have been. There's a very broad spectrum of options here between "we like the team and have agreed to put them on payroll because it's cheaper and faster than using recruiters" to "F$%@ you money for the founders". We've no way to know which it is.

kevincox 5y ago

GitLab has a similar feature: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/review_apps/#visual-reviews https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/review_apps/#visual-reviews It does require a bit more work to set up (which is unfortunate, since they already use the URL could they use that to map back to the PR?) but seems basically the same if not quite as polished.

kenrose 5y ago
> but seems basically the same if not quite as polished. That describes many of GitLab's features.
sytse 5y ago
We're exploring how to reduce or remove this set up work with https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/35322 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/35322

esilverman 5y ago

Eric here from FeaturePeek, we are thrilled to be part of Netlify!

elitan 5y ago
Congratulations! Good work!
- esilverman 5y ago
  thank you!
- schnebbau 5y ago
  What are you congratulating?
ridruejo 5y ago
Congratulations! Exciting news :)
swyx 5y ago
question if you will entertain it - what was your original YC pitch like? i'd love to see the evolution of this idea :)

bigyikes 5y ago

We have a deploy preview system at work and it is so valuable. I see less value in the collaboration tools built on top of these previews, but it’s cool nonetheless.

robertlagrant 5y ago
The first time I saw CloudFlare Pages do a preview it was a little magical. Really impressive stuff.

pistoriusp 5y ago

This is awesome! I love that everyone can now give feedback. Developers, designers, people who write copy, etc. And that the feedback is piped into a single source of truth: GitHub (of course, if you use GitHub). It's so easy to loose track of these things when they're not near the code.

kennyIO 5y ago

I can think of 101 ways this can help large teams become more productive

tin7in 5y ago

This replaces a multi-step manual process that we've been doing in our team. Well done!

simonw 5y ago

I'm still optimistic for Python Netlify functions: https://answers.netlify.com/t/python-lambda-functions/3423/15 https://answers.netlify.com/t/python-lambda-functions/3423/1... If they were JavaSript only I wouldn't hold much hope, but they've been both JavaScript and Go for ages now - and I would expect Python to have a much larger user-base than Go for this.

at-fates-hands 5y ago

Collaborative Deploy Previews are fully enabled on every Netlify account today! Anyone with a Netlify account can use the reviewer tool. This is why I love Netlify. They put together an incredibly powerful tool, and then released it to ALL of their customers. No, not a "Hey, we created this really cool tool! And for only an extra $3.99/mo you can utilize it!" I have several accounts, both free and paid and all of them have the Deploy Preview feature available. There's so many things Netlify could've monetized and they haven't. They truly are a customer centric company - which is rare these days.

ccheney 5y ago

For preview URLs how are y'all handling SSO? No SSO provider supports wildcard redirect URIs. Looking for ideas...

fishtoaster 5y ago
Auth0 does, thankfully! I set my redirect uri to `https://deploy-preview-*--my-cool-netlify-app-staging.netlify.app/post-auth https://deploy-preview-*--my-cool-netlify-app-staging.netlif...` just the other day. :) They have a few rather specific rules about it, but it works for deploy previews anyway: https://auth0.com/docs/applications/wildcards-for-subdomains https://auth0.com/docs/applications/wildcards-for-subdomains
- nrmitchi 5y ago
  Auth0 does, but IIRC it does not support multiple or not-last wildcards. Ie “app.*.preview.<domain>” does not work. If your application itself has subdomains, Auth0 doesn’t solve this easily
MapleWalnut 5y ago
I ran into this issue when setting up UI previews for a GitHub OAuth app. My solution is to have a single callback server that looks in the OAuth state to determine where to redirect. This isn't secure, so when building the UI, I sign the UI's preview URL with a secret and send that in the OAuth state. The callback server checks the signature and redirects that way. It's hacky and I wouldn't trust it for a production app, but for a test environment it seems okay.
- ccheney 5y ago
  Excellent idea, thanks!

Rodeoclash 5y ago

If anyone is interested in a (semi!) working version of feature previews that is open source, I threw together https://gitlab.com/Rodeoclash/StageHand https://gitlab.com/Rodeoclash/StageHand It takes a branch in GitHub and use a config file to bootstrap the application inside a K8's cluster using a "docker in docker" model. If you could describe your infrastructure as a docker-compose.yml then you can launch it as a preview. I'm not really a marketing person so it never went any further than a proof of concept. However, if someone is interested in working with it then I'm happy to support getting it running.

HatchedLake721 5y ago

> About five years ago, Netlify pioneered the concept of Deploy Previews. Doesn’t Heroku’s “Review Apps” predates this? https://blog.heroku.com/heroku_review_apps_beta https://blog.heroku.com/heroku_review_apps_beta (funnily enough, it’s been exactly 6 years ago today based on the beta’s blog post above)

ljm 5y ago
I remember using ephemeral Heroku deploys in the dev pipeline well before I knew Netlify was a thing. That was pretty much the last major innovation I saw from Heroku, before Salesforce decided they'd grown fat enough to milk. But...there were also pipelines. A deploy preview is essentially a staging or pre-prod environment. Or going from draft to published.
glenngillen 5y ago
They were in fairly wide "unofficial" customer usage for a year before that too I think. source: my last day at Heroku was a year prior to that post, and I recall using them.
nrmitchi 5y ago
There was a company called Runnable that had a product offering, but if I recall correctly was acquired by MuleSoft and shut down. Their first round was in 2012, and even though I believe they had a different product originally, their preview environment offering predated Heroku’s.
p0deje 5y ago
I think even Heroku is not the first company offering this to public. There was an app called Teatro.io which did the same in 2014. It's down now, but I've found https://web.archive.org/web/20140614011544/http://teatro.io/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140614011544/http://teatro.io/.

armincerf 5y ago

This looks great and all but the new drawer icon covers up a key button on our app.. ironically the person who noticed took a regular screenshot and shared it in slack