HackerEngine: A payment-ready Rails app with Bootstrap, Stripe, and KISSmetrics | Hacker News Reader

HackerEngine: A payment-ready Rails app with Bootstrap, Stripe, and KISSmetrics

hackerengine.com

28 pointsr00k20 comments

This is a flat-out rip off. All three of those tools can plug into any Rails app pretty easily:

Bootstrap: https://github.com/seyhunak/twitter-bootstrap-rails

Stripe: http://railscasts.com/episodes/288-billing-with-stripe

KISSmetrics: http://support.kissmetrics.com/apis/ruby-specific

If you can't manage to set these things up on your own save your money because you shouldn't be bothering to build a Rails app in the first place.

This is a flat-out rip off. All three of those tools can plug into any Rails app pretty easily ...

It's true that these are all relatively easy to integrate, but why hate on fellow hackers for packaging and selling their solution?

If you really want to make the point that it's a ripoff, do the work to replicate it as a boilerplate project and release it for free.

This a little unfinished but I have a python alternative to this that is Open Source. Velocity Bootstrap is the name, here is the location - https://github.com/robee/velocity-boilerplate-public

Yea, why hate on people who take advantage of and mislead uninformed newcomers to the Rails community by selling them existing free software that is trivial to set up, all the while passing it off as their own?

Maybe because some people believe in honest businesses, and not ripping off end users for a quick buck. I say mislead and rip of, because the site is presented as if the work done is novel, when it is not. Why is it that links to the libraries used are conveniently omitted? Shouldn't Bootstrap, Stripe, and KISSmetrics' codebases be linked somewhere so that users can see what it is they are getting, if they want to do it themselves?

That said, I think I will take you up on that replicating challenge. You are certainly right that someone should undercut the market before they make any undeserved money off the work of others.

First, let me say that I know nothing about the authors. I'm just arguing the principle here.

Hmm ... I didn't get the impression that they had written Bootstrap, Stripe, or Kissmetrics. Clearly what they're selling is a tested Rails app that integrates the Stripe and Kissmetrics API libraries and provides a baseline UI based off Bootstrap.

Maybe because some people believe in honest businesses, and not ripping off end users for a quick buck.

That's where this gets destructive. Just because it's not worth the price to you doesn't mean that these people are running a dishonest, rip-off business. You ought not attack people's ethics because you don't like the value proposition of their business.

Moreover, your argument is predicated on the idea that time is worth nothing. Back in my consulting days, even if the integration of all of these things at production quality would take only one billable hour (which, incidentally, it wouldn't), the $149 would save me money.

Maybe you're a faster developer than I am or maybe you just don't bill enough. Either way, just because the price isn't justified for you, doesn't mean it couldn't be a lifesaver for someone else. Certainly doesn't mean the business is dishonest.

That said, I think I will take you up on that replicating challenge.

Awesome.

I've used Rails for almost 5 years. I've implemented Stripe, KISSmetrics, and Bootstrap each on at least two different projects.

Even with my experience, I'd estimate that using a pre-packaged app like this would save me at least 3 hours of (relatively mundane) work. It's worth every penny.

I could easily see this taking a day or two for someone with less experience.

- What's the licensing look like? Can I buy it once & use it on every project?

- When you say "a UI", what are we talking about above & beyond what Bootstrap gives me?

- Since it's a stock app, and not an engine/gem, how am I going to easily merge back in your bugfixes?

- Is this just for a one-time purchase? What kind of support do you have for recurring billing?

Looking at what you've laid out so far, I'd probably be billing ~2-3 hours for it, so the pricing sorta lines up there, assuming it supports multiple recurring subscription plans, gives me a decent reporting interface, coupon codes, all the nice things that Stripe gives for me out of the box.

As somebody who's built this a number of times before for clients, both before & after the Stripe era, there was definitely a recoil when I saw the price.

Part of my recoil can probably be attributed to having inherited a RailsKitted-project in the past.

Thanks for your questions!

You can buy it once and use it as many times as you like.

"UI" refers to a landing page and checkout form that we pre-built and include with the app. We didn't do a good job of making that clear, and that's something we want to improve on the sales pages.

Your question about bugfixes is an excellent one. Eventually, we'll be moving this to an engine/gem, but for now you'd have to make manual changes. This is far from ideal, so we're planning on fixing it.

This is just for one time purchases. We'd like to add support for recurring billing at some point, but it's not planned for the immediate future.

Thanks for your feedback on the price. As this is at MVP stage right now, everything can possibly change, including that.

I'm rather curious as to what the "comprehensive test suite" includes. If I were to write something like this, it seems like it would take nothing more than installing the various gems on a basic rails app, and adding a little glue code to integrate bootstrap. Or am I missing something?

Good question.

I've got good coverage with unit tests and cucumber features.

The tests do things like bang on the credit card form in a bunch of ways and make sure things work correctly. The integration tests actually hit Stripe's test servers to ensure that payment processing is working correctly.

add Devise and i'll give you $4.99 for the whole thing.

Yeah, add Devise and I'll buy it actually

Hey all, I'm one of the authors of HackerEngine. I'm happy to answer any questions you have and would love your feedback.

Thanks!

Shouldn't this page be on SSL, in compliance with Stripe's rules?

http://www.hackerengine.com/orders/new

Yes, it should be. It's at the very top of our list to fix this, but we're hoping to collect feedback while we undergo the certificate approval process.

totally agree. here's an actual 3.2 rails app on heroku SSL ($100/mo) rack with SSL certificate ($350/yr), Stripe and KissMetrics (no need for Bootstrap) — http://d.pr/B1Vr

FYI, I'm getting a security warning:

"This is probably not the site you are looking for! You attempted to reach www.hackerengine.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as *.heroku.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of www.hackerengine.com. You should not proceed."

I'm getting one, too:

    This Connection is Untrusted

    You have asked Firefox to connect securely to www.hackerengine.com, but we
    can't confirm that your connection is secure.

i believe that might be the piggyback SSL add-on for heroku. with an improper SSL certificate implementation, that's bound to happen in 50%-75% of browsers

Sorry about that, and thanks for letting me know. I messed up our SSL settings at 3AM. New personal rule: no mucking about with crucial settings when exhausted.

It's fixed now.

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