Vercel is fairly clear about where it runs your code - depending on the type of page/deployment its going to be either S3, Lambda, or a cloudflare edge worker. There is a ton of logic behind how deployments work but the general benefit of using a service like Vercel is basically exactly as described above -- you push your code and it just works and you don't worry about it.
This is an attractive prospect for a lot of folks who want to spend their time making their apps better and not building/monitoring infrastructure. However, there are some folks who really like to build and maintain their own infra and in that case a service like Vercel might not be the best fit.
It’s not worth $10/mo. I wouldn’t even pay $5/mo. Usually, it generates code with incorrect logic what is sometimes hard to notice.
It’s also awful that they took free code (open-source), and now they want money for it. Make it open-source and free to use…
Some say it’s great for repetitive tasks, but if you write repetitive code (tests also) maybe you should look for other solutions than “auto-generating” unmaintainable code.
I also worked with people from Schwarz and some smaller company who manages some business data. It's going to be a disaster. I'm not even surprised that you need to 'Get in touch'. They do pretty many things manually and simply wrong. Client is processing large Excel file for 4 days? Somebody simply kills the job and the whole process starts again. Big words, cheap execution.
I’m running a super simple translation management system where people can manage, host, auto-translate their translation files. How I supposed to run my app without subscriptions?
In last 30 days, I transferred over 280 GB of translation data from my service to end-users around the word. Should I tell DeepL, Google and AWS that they should offer me their services for free or what?
EDIT:
I apologize if this sounds too passive-aggressive, but I'm tired of hearing that subscriptions are bad. Thanks to subscription model, we can have many smaller service providers who simply have fun from working on something (like me). If you think that giving someone $5/mo for a cool app is too much, then okay. You don't have to do it, no deal. ¯\_(ツ)\_/¯
PS Great example of solo-developer is the InkDrop creator. He is working on this note-taking app since ~2016. https://www.inkdrop.app
To my mind, paying for an ongoing service (e.g. translation, or video streaming, or Strava, or whatever) is a reasonable use case for a subscription – if that’s something that suits your end user. (it could also be paid for by individual small payments – or tokens – as suggested elsewhere.)
I think the frustration is predominately in companies shifting payment for a piece of software from a single payment to a subscription, which over the previous typical lifespan of a single software purchase then costs significantly more. Sure, they bolt on superfluous ‘cloud solutions’, but fundamentally it just feels like an MBA somewhere figured out that they can make more money with a repeating subscription than a single one-off payment – and now they’ve all jumped into it.
Of course, it also has the benefit of protecting better against piracy – though I suspect this isn’t the primary driver for the change.
I absolutely see your point. So here is a suggestion that might make it less annoying for users. I don't know if it will help you but for some businesses it should be a great idea (and I will prefer those who follow this model):
Use tokens instead of subscriptions.
Even if I end up paying the same on average this feels a whole lot better.
There are just too many services out there that wants me to subscribe, and everytime it feels like they are trying to fleece me.
I am old enough to understand that not everything can be free (even if many of my most used tools are), but in way to many cases the thinking seems to be to get me to try a subscription and hope that I forget it.
(I've never ever had anyone pop a notification to tell me that I haven't used my subscription lately, maybe I'd like to puse it? If that was the norm I'd maybe be less annoyed at subscriptions.)
I’d bet that you are the exception that prefers token or metered pricing.
Almost every time I’ve seen someone try that pricing model customers end up hating it and want a flat fee subscription.
I do think making it easy to pause and restart subscriptions is an underused model but would also bet lots of price smart SaaS companies have looked at that.
I'm not against subscriptions per se. I subscribe to a number of things.
It just happens to be abused badly, from subscriptions for things that never need to update (I'd almost bet a dollar there is or has been a flashlight app with a subscription somewhere), to subscriptions for things you use a week and then are finished with to a certain alarm clock app that both charges multiple dollars a month and then has the guts to try to track me on top of that.
I'm not OP, but I use https://translationhut.com to manage my translations and it works really well. It can also automatically translate the assets for you, although I don't use that myself.
(Full disclosure: I know the guy that makes that service, but am not involved with that project)
Nice landing page - clean design and clear layout. I also like that you include a brief blurb about you and why you created it right on the homepage. So many software companies these days hide who is behind it and/or don’t have an “about us” page, which makes it hard to “invest” in the product as a potential customer…
I wanted to gather cool and unpopular places from a neighborhood, like old castles. I started this project in 2015 and I’m still maintaining it, and from time to time I’m doing fixes.
What I learned?
Technical: SPA got terrible SEO, only a few crawlers executes JS on page to actually read data from the page (or at least show the place image instead the app image from og:image) I tried many times to add some pre-rendering and make it hybrid, but I failed. Eventually, I converted app to NextJS and I added dynamic og:images (using my other project: https://bannerly.io) and number of impressions and clicks increased mostly thanks to sharing places by people on social media. I also plan to use no-code automation tool (probably https://integromat.com it’s cheaper than Zapier and probably more powerful) to post places to Instagram every day.
There is no money/revenue in this project but I like to play around with it anyway. It would be cool earn at least for maintenance costs on it but I don’t have any idea. I was thinking about selling tickets online for places where the tickets are required but no one is interested in this idea.
Non-technical: There is a very small subset of people who would like to use travel apps. It’s easier to use Google or local guides to find great destinations.
“Also, we can't be sure about whole scenario. There're reports that indicates this RCE is still possible in 2.15+ RCs builds, so there is a chance there are also other gateways to achieve the same effect.”
