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Nik Spyratos
@nikspyratos
Glad to see I'm not the only one!
I didn't mention that I couldn't even make any sense of their API docs in the first place!
What I was trying to get hold of them for was actually trying to make sense of the multiple differing doc pages for some of the subscription features. Nothing makes sense with them.
Chargebee tech & support sucks, that's indisputable. It was a nice product back in 2015 - now they raised lot of money, are trying to go upmarket and the usual shittification began.
Nah, not intending to productize this or do it with randoms.
It's just something I've discussed with some friends who are makers in the same circles, who I'd trust to do this with. So I wanted to put forward the idea here and see if anyone else is also doing that :)
I'm working with Laravel here, which is very batteries-included with this sort of thing.
For the SQLite DB setup, my init script does a touch database/db_name.sqlite and then the DB migrations I've written (laravel.com/docs/11.x/migrati…) can be run on this DB.
So easy ^^
I had to laugh at your comment @carolinus because I think I knew 5 words in Nik's comment and understood nothing. 😆
There are regular people and then there are coders/developers.
What do you mean with model here?
The project is setup as a github repo template, plus some basic bash scripts for setting up some common items.
I mean how do you create your database? I assume you have a json stored somewhere?
I'm working with Laravel here, which is very batteries-included with this sort of thing.
For the SQLite DB setup, my init script does a touch database/db_name.sqlite and then the DB migrations I've written (laravel.com/docs/11.x/migrati…) can be run on this DB.
So easy ^^
I had to laugh at your comment @carolinus because I think I knew 5 words in Nik's comment and understood nothing. 😆
There are regular people and then there are coders/developers.
Some features I worked on for #toyboxforlaravel (similar project) before reducing its scope also were:
- Documentation generation
- User feedback/testimonials & roadmap management (data model for these overlaps a lot so I lumped it all together)
- Database backup initiation/download (very easy to do with SQLite, with other DBs less so)
Also useful might be some basic application health metrics (depends on if this is intended to be hosted on a VPS or with serverless).
Some of your ideas sounds like very great!
How do you manage your model for a new installation? copy paste?
What do you mean with model here?
The project is setup as a github repo template, plus some basic bash scripts for setting up some common items.
I mean how do you create your database? I assume you have a json stored somewhere?
I'm working with Laravel here, which is very batteries-included with this sort of thing.
For the SQLite DB setup, my init script does a touch database/db_name.sqlite and then the DB migrations I've written (laravel.com/docs/11.x/migrati…) can be run on this DB.
So easy ^^
I had to laugh at your comment @carolinus because I think I knew 5 words in Nik's comment and understood nothing. 😆
There are regular people and then there are coders/developers.
My 2c: Dealing with Chargebee support is awful. I chased them for months for some client work and got zero response. Based on that, I don't recommend them for anyone.
We've never had to transfer accounts, but also had our fair share of issues with Chargebee. For a bigger and complicated project (a marketplace with a mix of one-time and subscription payments with a variety of add-ons and German billing systems) they were willing to improve and change some of their APIs.
During the work with their dev team, we noticed multiple bugs in the APIs, pre-existing or freshly introduced ones, failure to notice API changes of third-parties they relied on and failure to deliver on-time and what was discussed.
The end result was APIs that 20 seconds to calculate prices, webhooks that took multiple minutes to arrive, changed behaviour of production APIs without publishing a new version and the shutdown of their Stripe bank transfer integration, since they realised they cannot support it any more.
After this experience, we decided, it would not be wise to be a long-term client of them.
The amount of frustration experienced and time lost because of them, probably doesn't fit in one post :)
Glad to see I'm not the only one!
I didn't mention that I couldn't even make any sense of their API docs in the first place!
What I was trying to get hold of them for was actually trying to make sense of the multiple differing doc pages for some of the subscription features. Nothing makes sense with them.
Chargebee tech & support sucks, that's indisputable. It was a nice product back in 2015 - now they raised lot of money, are trying to go upmarket and the usual shittification began.
Agree with Ben. The only thing I'll add is that if your revenue isn't super consistent, but at least one month will cover your yearly tax & company admin costs, then it will still make sense to do so.
IMO the main reason it would make sense not to is if you aren't yet making any money and your country has some form of sole-proprietor structure available to you (dunno if that's a thing in Canada) where it's more optimal to stick to that for a while.
Thanks!
I'm biased having worked with it for most of my career, but I genuinely believe Laravel is top tier for product development speed right now, beyond meta-frameworks for frontend like Next/Nuxt. There are some areas where it's even ahead of Rails, which is the real OG here.
Just the first-party ecosystem alone is insane value!
Is there anything about your work that is immensely better specifically from using a macbook? Are the tools for your work better, or does it have hardware features you need that other makers don't?
Consider if you want a macbook just because of the brand image of indie hackers who use them?
If you don't need the portability, then even a custom built desktop will be far cheaper and much more powerful for your work.
Personally, I bought a second hand 8GB M1 last year. I specifically needed the CPU power coupled with the immense battery life, since I'm in South Africa and it's cheaper to buy the laptop than big backup batteries for our constant power cuts. Conveniently a lot of Laravel tooling is super nice on macOS, but that wasn't the first reason I bought the machine for.