Hacker News Reader

Comment by anuaitt | Hacker News Reader

yes it is sad, I have worked days and nights for this and I am not being able to reach more users because of the quota on the apps.

View on HN

I notice you're syncing tasks every minute. Perhaps a short-term workaround is to sync every 2 or every 5 minutes while you wait for the quota to increase?

That can be done but it will affect user experience right ? Better will be if I stop further registrations for the app.

An alternative: For non-premium users sync every 5 minutes.

For premium users sync every minute.

Use Indian payment gateways if possible, though Paypal works fine too.

This is exactly what you should do. Your users will understand -- that's why so many have supported you on the googlegroup. Charge $3/mo and you won't hear any complaints (and if you do, you can point to your googlegroup).

This is by far your easiest and clearest path to monetization, at least that I can see. And it seems you're long overdue for monetization.

Thanks hrjet, that is a great idea. But again I will have to struggle about the payment gateways. Thanks to HN guys for helping me out.

Can you adjust the sync rate depending on the time of day where your users live? There are probably certain times of the day when people update their tasks less frequently.

I'm not sure if it works with the Google API's but usually e.g. with the GitHub API you can send the ETag in your GET request header and if nothing changed (304) it does not count to the quota. It wouldn't solve all the problems but could at least help to stay inside the quota.

I am already doing that, because of that only I am able to survive 2000 users. I want to expand and publicize my app and give users an excellent experience.

What is the current quota? Where is it documented?

5000 queries a day

https://developers.google.com/google-apps/tasks/pricing

Current quota is 1m requests/day and that is enough to handle just 2000 users/day, because I sync gmail tasks every minute.

I know it sucks, but in the meantime have you considered slowing those sync tasks down if the user's "last activity" timestamp is older than a few minutes? You might even be able to make it sync faster for active users with the extra overhead afforded there.

Logins, refreshes, clicks, new things synced, etc... can all update the last activity timestamp.

Is it possible to pay Google and receive a higher quota?

There is a communication gap between them and the developers, the problem is there is no real person to talk and sort things out.

Email me. I know someone who might be able to help you.

Hello @eitally, I am not able to get your email from Hacker News, please send a test email to me at anurag.ait@gmail.com. Thanks for helping out

The sad fact that you, a random HN commentor, likely has a better means to contact Google than their official Dev channels, perfectly illustrates the OP's point.

Kudos for assisting, its just frustrating to realize its needed.

I'm a DevRel person working for Google's Apps APIs, please contact me.

Hello @thejbf, I am not able to get your email from Hacker News, please send a test email to me at anurag.ait@gmail.com. Thanks for helping out

Try googling for the Hacker News usernames of these people who're trying to help you. Very likely you'll find them on Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

E: If you haven't already done this, of course.

Yes I did that, had a hard luck finding the email.

You're incredible guys. Why wouldn't you reach out to him first? Guy spend two years f with you and now he also have to screen your blog for your email too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com