Ask HN: Do you run a SAAS app?
It would be interesting to see how many HN readers develop and run SAAS apps, and whether they are side projects or your primary focus.
And, as this is HN, what tech does your app run on ? We've built LeaseMatrix (http://lease.io/) over the last 18 months. The stack is Linux/Apache/MySQL/Rails along with Bootstrap and Javascript. The app is a web-based alternative to a spreadsheet for commercial lease analysis and comparison. We (obviously) use Bootstrap 2.3 with very little customization, as most of our development focus has been on the backend thus far because it is heavily finance focused with many complexed calculations. We use AWS and Rackspace for hosting. Other apps we use include Stripe (love it), Intercom (love it), Optimizely (love it), Google Maps API, Google Charts API, Feedjit and Wordpress (for blog only). We've played around with integrating KISSMetrics and considered Mixpanel, but our traffic volume is such that Google Analytics + Intercom + Feedjit works well enough for now. I work on a YouTube music player for Chrome as a side-project: http://streamus.com/. It has done reasonably well for itself - 14k users and a 4.8/5 in the store. I think my front-end is pretty standard: jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Transit, qTip2, Backbone, Backbone Marionette, Lo-Dash, Jasmine. Back-end is all Microsoft-land because I was more comfortable building it in C#. NHibernate (ORM), AutoFac (Dependency Injection), AutoMapper (DTO<->Domain object mapper), NUnit (Test). Database is MSSQL. It's hosted by AppHarbor: https://appharbor.com/ I just started to work a bit more on my side project Template2pdf (http://template2pdf.com/). It is an API to enable developers to produce nice PDFs out of templates that their customers can modify on their own. It runs on Debian with ruby/rails, java, postgresql and some system tools. I also do some work on a SAAS to build wireless hotspot systems. I don't own anything of it, but is an interesting field once you hit scalability problems. We use all kinds of technology but the core components would be linux/freebsd, freeradius, postgresql and ruby. The site template is a very bland and looks just like out-of-the-box bootstrap. Also you have a typo above the signup box: > Sign up for a free trail should say "trial" instead of "trail" Typo is fixed.
Yes, my design skills are very limited. In case more people find the service useful I will for sure get somebody to make the page look nicer. Thanks for your comment. I'm just finishing up work on a foreign exchange data platform: The client is JavaScript and SVG. Backend is Nginx, Java, and C++. My primary focus is running these two SAAS apps http://rotaville.com/ - employee scheduling, rosters, rota management http://Big.first.name/ - print awesome name badges for your event These apps are built on a mixture of technologies including Rails, postgresql and backbone.js What is the javascript framework you use for rotaville? Is a single app packaged across iOS, Android and mobile web? It looks pretty good. The Rotaville web interface is mixture of backbone.js models along with my own solution for view routing, view rendering/templating and also keyboard controls. Rotaville mobile is available on the web and also iOS and Android (using phonegap/cordova). The backbone.js models are re-used from the web app. jquery-mobile is used for the view styling and transitions. Sorry, diod not phrase my question right. I meant to ask what is the UI framework you used? The one that creates touch phone like interface and look-n-feel. The UI framework used for our mobile apps is http://jquerymobile.com/ About to launch Nota (http://nota.io/), a feedback/bug tracking tool for web apps.
Code base is mostly front end (Backbone) but some PHP (laravel) on the backend as well as some nodeJS. I run an online appointment scheduling software (http://www.appointmind.com/). The software stack is PHP and MySQL on Ubuntu. I do this alongside my my freelancer job. Do you mind me asking how you market that? I tried something similar in the past and couldn't get consistent sign ups. I do Google Adwords (profitable, but no great volume), SEO, advertorials (profitable, too), guest blog posting (meh), Twitter, APIs (MailChimp, GetResponse), small business coaches, white label solution for partners, partners in general (web directories, homepage builders). Getting sign ups is a very slow process. Can be frustrating from time to time. I run a Saas app called ReportGarden(http://reportgarden.com). It is currently my primary focus. Our stack includes Rails+Postgresql+Delayed jobs+Pusher http://www.SupportFu.com is my primary focus. Backbone, Ruby, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, Redis. Everything lives in EC2 I am working hard to launch www.biz-eye.com, a tool that monitors external factors(Blacklists, PR, MozRank, etc) of a website.