Show HN: API Bootstrap – A better way to build your API | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: API Bootstrap – A better way to build your API

apibootstrap.com

37 pointsroelbondoc38 comments

The landing page doesn't provide any information what so ever about what your service solves. Only a madman would go further.

Only a madman would start a 30-day trial without entering any financial information?

Signing up for a free trial requires some bit of commitment. A couple of sentences isn't enough for most people to commit to a new product.

If you think about the customer journey as Research-Evaluate-Purchase, the 30 day free trial is the Evaluate stage. There isn't enough information (or any specifics) on the landing page to do any meaningful amount of research.

Plus, then I have to give you fake name, fake email, fake number, etc... and it's like why bother... Moving on.

It's still API data that may be sensitive.

There is negative value in signing up for free trials for things I don't understand on the extreme off-chance I might find them useful.

agreed. looked at the front page. looks kinda bad. nothing to click on besides sign up? im out.

I'm not sure what it is you're actually selling. More documentation or practical examples would be great. I'm not willing to create an account / sign in to find out stuff like that.

Agreed. I'll put some more work into the marketing site to explain how it works.

The page doesn't really show me enough to know if I want to buy.

At the very least I'd need a comparison with a more mature system like https://www.mulesoft.com/

What is the documentation in for example? RAML? Swagger? HTML?

Could you provide a demo of some sort on the landing page? I have been writing APIs for over a decade and still have no idea what benefit this provides. Who does it compete with? What differs it from a starter/seed project? Do I still write code or is it a visual interface? What sort of redundancy and reliability does it have, especially since I haven't heard of the project or company before?

$20/month is a bit much for a side project. For a real world project, the price is peanuts if the benefits are there, but the lack of explanation makes it a non-starter for many companies, I would imagine.

Luckily, most of that seems to be marketing and documentation, which shouldn't be too difficult to update, if the product is working correctly at least.

It's a great idea, but as other have noted, the landing page definitely needs either a lot more information or at least a couple examples of what kind of service you're actually providing.

Are you actually hosting the API I'd be building? Or just generating boilerplate code for it? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding :)

I'm wondering what all the upvotes are about? I've seen fairly decent "Show HN" submissions languish down in the 0-1 range while this one (which is being universally panned) is up to 17.

The "It's so bad it's good" effect?

I clicked on it because I immediately thought, "oh that sounds useful". Most "Show HN"s don't immediately trigger that response in me. So I suspect the upvotes are because the idea resonates, even if the landing page needs improvement.

I'm assuming it's the Reddit effect. People read headlines, upvote, and move along without ever clicking the link.

Hi, I'm getting "502 Bad Gateway" :( Seems interesting, so I hope you could fix it soon to let us see your webpage :)

Sorry about that. It's fixed now, any feedback would be appreciated.

I agree with complaints the landing page is extremely lacking in getting me to move forward and sign up for something I need to see more info about.

I signed up w/ my github creds and made a small "hello world" GET endpoint. Here's my comments & questions so far:

1) allow non-json responses 2) why would I do pass-thru? for metrics? 3) add test data generation features for mock responses 4) add at least limited scripting features for both pass-thru and mock

Looks like a good start to me and I was not particularly bothered by the current sign up.

Hello all. I just want to say thanks for everyone's feedback. It is very much appreciated. I apologize if I don't have the chance right now to respond to everyone individually but I plan to at some point. Just want to let you all know I'm reading the feedback and will hopefully make this product better. Thanks.

I don't understand what exactly this is? Is it just starter scaffolding in the vein of create-react-app or one of those hackathon starters?

I'd put some time into showing some examples of what exactly the service is and how it works. What problem does it solve specifically?

I signed up and played with the app. I think this would be better implemented as a library or wrapper on top of one. The "code using a mouse" idea has been tried and almost every time the verdict is: code is the preferred interface for programmers.

That said, clearly standardization is coming to the world of APIs, and code reuse/generation along with it. Have you looked at Django REST framework? They have a pretty good approach. http://www.django-rest-framework.org/

This seems way too cheap for what it's offering! If you're saving developer time and effort then you should be charging 100/mo at least.

Agree that more info is needed to proceed, but lovely theme though! Is this a bootstrap theme or something made from scratch?

Signed in. Built a fake endpoint. Not sure what this is useful for.

Making me sign in before you tell me anything is a non-starter.

What's worse is you are not guaranteed to get any useful information after registering. I suspect it's just a lack of information.

bad gateway, is this for building write-only apis?

Thanks!, should be fixed now.

It's targeted for any REST/Json based api. (reading or writing)

502 Bad Gateway

Thanks for the report, should be fixed now.

502 Bad Gateway

nginx/1.13.3

My apologies, should be fixed now.

Thank you for fixing this. I would like to see whats possible with your product. Maybe some screenshots + some text or maybe a video?

That is a good point. I will spend some time on the landing page to communicate how it works.

The irony

I "hope" it will be better, its working now!

Oh god, this is awful, enjoy the 15 mins of fame because most likely this is the last time this website will enjoy such a spike in traffic

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