My Startup - A node.js cloud hosting platform | Hacker News Reader

My Startup - A node.js cloud hosting platform

nodejscloud.com

70 points619Cloud33 comments

Your writing takes all the sex out of it-that doesn't give me a lot of confidence in your product. Heroku's copy is balls to the wall, yours is putting me to sleep. I'll give you a critique based on my own prejudices, for whatever it's worth:

Typos: "severs"; "your" should be "you're". Also, you have your own capitalization scheme for "Node.js Camp", perhaps for emphasis? "Meet up" is two words, not one.

Tone/confidence: Heroku's top billing is "rock-solid ruby platform". Yours is "a node.js cloud hosting platform". Heroku characterizes itself reassuringly as well as describing itself mechanically. "node.js cloud hosting platform" is a dead fish of a phrase.

"COMING SOON!" When-ish? Why shouldn't I just bounce off your page?

"Provision servers; build node.js apps; deploy!" Deathly boring copy. You can always tell when someone isn't smiling with their whole face, and the exclamation mark at the end is a fake smile. Compare the confidence of Sinatra's copy to the vague, insincerely jaunty feel of yours ("put this in your pipe/and smoke it". http://www.sinatrarb.com/

What is "provision servers"? Is it like dynos or EC2 instances? I don't understand what your technology is, and whether you're building a truly rich app platform like Heroku or just a thin layer of UI on top of EC2. Heroku really sells me on how cool their engineering is. Do you not talk about it because you have nothing cool to talk about? If you do, you should really start talking about what you're building.

"We provide simple, scalable, and powerful node.js hosting for node.js developers in the cloud." A vague, limp snoozefest.

"Developers should focus on hacking cool node.js applications, let us handle hosting, deployment, and scaling." This is insincere and it reads wrong. You sound like you're out of touch, trying to appeal to the cool kids with stilted language.

"Dedicated Cloud Servers": so is this actually an application platform? It doesn't sound like it.

"Git + SVN Integration": your target market probably isn't using svn.

Thanks for pointing out the typos, fixed em up. Also, thanks for the feedback, you certainly have spot on comments. Writing marketing/copy text, is an art form, which I have not yet perfected, but still a work in progress.

You might look into getting a more brandable domain name as well. I registered trynode.com a couple weeks ago, for instance. There are plenty of strong names out there.

nodedemo.com, nodejump.com, nodegem.com, noderun.com -- all available.

Wow, I don't know how to say this other than that I disagree with almost every single thing you said. You're really advocating that he emulate the hubris, overzealous, wannabe cool tone of "put this in your pipe/and smoke it"?

Building a product like this doesn't mean cargo-culting the culture of other successful products in the space. It means building a solid technical foundation, a considerable amount of devops, an incessant focus on ease of deployment, and a few early success stories.

For what it's worth, I actually agree with him. His edits actually entice me to give two shits about what the product potentially offers me.

You do understand how marketing works, right? Nobody ever said it's pretty.

While I agree with the most of what you say, I don't think that "node.js cloud hosting platform" is that wrong. In fact, when I opened the page, it didn't take me a second before I understood what it was about.

Now, to OP, I would also suggest to change the "dedicated servers" icon. Who exactly in your target sees a laptop when thinking about servers in a cloud ? It doesn't make things clear to me.

About the design, I think it lacks of whitespace in the middle (perhaps you were trying to create a cloud shape). Apart from that, I like the color scheme and the typography on the page.

The concept of "node.js cloud hosting platform" is already conveyed by the company name, domain name, and logo, so the tagline should say something else—that's why I compared it to Heroku. Heroku's name and domain don't tell you what you're getting, and yet their tagline doesn't just describe itself, it also characterizes itself. It's not just a "ruby platform". It's "rock-solid". They're not just offering to handle your deployment and scaling. They're saying you can deploy and scale "with confidence".

I wish you the best of luck, I think the success of Heroku certainly indicates something similar is needed for node.js (although perhaps they will do something there soon anyway..).

My main concern is your name. Heroku can move towards node.js because their name doesn't tie them to any single technology. You might want to change your name so you can consider other technologies.

It's a nice page design and all, but on top of the solutions provided by Heroku and Joyent, there already exists NodeJitsu, which seems pretty solid. Are you offering anything different here? Seems like a bit of "me too" syndrome.

http://nodejitsu.com/

I hate to be a buzzkill but none of these seem to have launched yet, are you in nodejitsu's private beta?

I bet we're going to see a bunch of "Heroku for X" now that they've set a precedent. I'm not sure that's a bad thing; it's a great idea.

Does this mean you'll be doing an offer HN? ;) We've been getting spoiled lately. I definitely want to give you a guys a try, see how you stack up against Joyent's node hosting.

Yeap, we will have a private beta with HN peps getting priority.

My first thought was 'Looks nice, sounds dull' You need to make your service sound like it stands out from nodejitsu or heroku, even if you already have a more comprehensive service, it doesn't sound like you do. Crank the hype up to 11.

Aside from that its great to see another node.js hosting related startup on the scene, I hope to give you a try sometime in the future.

I wonder if a concern they had was Heroku already moving in the direction of node.js support.

Funny you should ask, this was actually a question that Robert Morris asked on my YC application. I don't view Heroku as a competitor. In fact, I believe they announced that they abandoned their node.js experimental hosting.

However, Joyent really has a leg up on node.js hosting, and seeing as they employ Ryan Dahl and just basically bought node.js, it could be difficult to gain market share, but I believe there is room for others to play.

Actually, Heroku has 1,000 people running node.js apps on their platform. The first phase of the experiment is over, but they're releasing the new version of it next year apparently.

http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2010/9/20/an_update_on_herok...

I stand corrected, but still feel Joyent is the major player at the table with four aces as of now. Plus, it will be interesting to see what salesforce.com does with the direction of Heroku.

If by denied you mean rejected, then good on you for getting on with it anyway.

fwiw, I love your landing page design.

Like the landing page - but you've got a typo!

Under the Dedicated Cloud Servers headline: "Scale severs up and down on the fly!" Should of course be "servers", not "severs."

Good luck with the new endeavor!

Is it scary to think that Heroku is aiming at Node.js? I'm not sure if I'd be scared or if it'd convince me I'm going in the right direction.

Do you think the fact that you proposed a cloud hosting platform was part of the reason for rejection?

By the way, the landing page design looks great!

I signed up, I look forward to giving your service a try in the future!

Why do you think you got rejected? It seems like a really good idea.

Doesn't it seem a bit "me too"ish? Seems like a super crowded market with extremely capable competitors. Heroku was able to sneak in since they were the first company to offer a service like this for rails. With Joyent's amazing no.de platform, I can't imagine any business deciding to base their infrastructure on a tool that a couple developers just started and doesn't yet have stable funding or a proven business.

Just my 2 cents. The landing page looks great. Hope they can pull through.

Not an RoR user but wasn't Engine Yard there before Heroku? I am assuming Engine Yard and Heroku offer something similar. I might be wrong.

EngineYard was doing uber expensive fully managed rails hosting at the time Heroku go started. Wasn't till over a year after Heroku launched that EY launched their alternative (Solo->Cloud->??). Pretty good tools, but fairly different than Heroku. They focus on managing EC2 instances instead of Heroku's "Dynos" (small abstracted chunks of easily scalable server resources).

To me EY seems like a much better version of Linode + install scripts that are targeted to Ruby users. Heroku seems to me more like Google's AppEngine, except much more expensive and without the autoscaling.

Isn't it a little strange selling a company for $212M that is essentially just reselling EC2 with a better UI? Maybe it's just me..

Not to mention the completely open source alternatives like http://getbeehive.com (which has been adapted to use Node.js already).

But on the other hand, Heroku doesn't solve every problem - here's hoping there is more room in the market!

Besides, one could argue that Google, Heroku, etc also sounded 'me-too'-ish.

Your submit form doesn't seem to work in Firefox 4.

Goodluck Justin

Pricing?

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