Co-founder here. We have been heads down working Pipedream for the past 9 months and are excited to share our beta with you.
Pipedream is an integration platform built for developers. Develop any workflow, based on any trigger with authentication management built-in and no server or cloud resources to manage.
Workflows are code, which you can run for free.
The beta version includes the ability to:
- Run any Node code, or use pre-built actions
- Trigger workflows via HTTP, Cron, integrated apps or email
- Create, share, and fork workflows from the community and
- Send data to S3, Snowflake, email, SSE, and more.
Coming soon — Develop locally and deploy workflows via CLI, SDK, and more.
We think there’s a lot we can improve and are eager for feedback so please send us your ideas and opinions. Also, if you want a specific app or API fully integrated, let us know.
We believe anyone should be able to run simple, low-volume workflows at no cost, sharing their workflows with the public so everyone benefits from the work of others. We also want to foster a positive community where people feel good about sharing their work and where everyone can learn from one another.
In the future, we may offer features available on paid tiers which would be logical enterprise features such as single sign on (SSO), team collaboration and higher SLAs and throughput.
So basically, people are going to build on top of your service and if yall don't figure out a revenue model, you'll need to close down shop, leaving people scrambling to migrate somewhere else...
No thanks, I've been there before. You'd be better off just charging from the get-go. Otherwise, this should be 100% open source.
From your past experience, do you have anything constructive to tell this new team on how they can attempt to build a business without knowing the future that would make you more comfortable using it?
I ask because I see a lot of these dismissive comments on HN which end with "open source it" - and that doesn't seem like a super constructive piece of advice to a new startup team.
FWIW, at my current company, an analytics company, about five years ago, we made it clear that no matter what data we collected, if you leave the service or we shut down, we will get you all that data to take with you in a very reasonable format.
It's always risky to invest in a new service, but sometimes risks bring great rewards, and I think it's helpful if you're giving input, to try to make it constructive.
Build a cost model.
Set prices that would make them profitable based on that model.
Offer the service at that price.
See if people are willing to pay for it.
Verify that costs and profitability match the model.
If the model turns out to be inaccurate:
A) Change the architecture to reduce costs to the point where it becomes profitable at an attractive price point for customers, or
B) Move on to the next idea.
It's not that complex, and more startups should be more realistic about profitability.
I feel like there's too much focus on the price here, and the thing I am concerned with is that the original comment was about how services shut down and they didn't want to invest in the unknown. Paying for that seems doubly risky to me.
That said, I get your point that if you can create a model that gives you a good sense of future profitability, you are in a better position not to die as a company.
Start charging immediately, and put up a real pricing page with SLAs. Find out as soon as possible if people will actually value this enough to pay for it.
This provides a signaling of value, creates a real business relationship, and directly contributes to the lifespan of the vendor.
It doesn't have to be right from the get go. Hard is why it should get done.
A free model doesn't really tell their business if there's actually demand and if people actually value it when supply is "infinite" when in reality it isn't.
Guess a high price with some research for similar things and lower it iteratively. Def. see what sticks.
They could go the AWS route, start high and decrease prices.
Also they could combine this with discounts, such as if someone preallocates capacity for X month, they get f(X) % discount.
They should build a core customer base. Solicit feedback about what niche feature they would happily pay for.
For example here's a GitLab issue that I think people would (might?) use: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/15536 (provide a "lock service" or a queue with max concurrency gate and launch pipelines / jobs)
People are often a lot more upset when they pay money and there is no exit plan. Shut downs can be abrupt and chaotic, suggesting they monetize immediately doesn't seem helpful either. If that's the suggestion, I'd ask: how much would you pay and how long do you expect notification in advance of a shut down? Do you expect a refund? Full or partial? Do you expect portability? If so, what kind.
The workflows are Node.js code. If you need to transition away, building an abstraction layer for the stuff they provide that you use shouldn’t be too hard. It would be even cooler if they committed to open sourcing their implementation if they discontinue the service...
Thanks for the response! I wasn't trying to rain on your parade, but having a reasonable revenue model in place does help give some confidence that 1) you're going to be around a while and 2) you're not selling data I don't want you to sell.
Forgive me if this is clean and I haven’t seen it I’m just browsing from a mobile device.
With all workflow type services I’ve encountered I find that the actual underlying workflow can’t be managed under source control as one would do with (hopefully) most if not all application & infrastructure code.
Deploying workflows from source via CLI or your CI/CD pipeline is in the works! We want you to host workflows on Github / Gitlab and be able to deploy them using your standard process.
Feel free to reach out to me directly if you'd like more information and I can let you know when we're testing this.
Speaking of which, it's always overwhelming learning new tools. I know I can benefit from this, but at the same time I'm not sure I can risk trying it out given the time it will take to experiment and learn. I'd be using triggers based off Github commits and merges, but I don't see any specific examples for that and it's not exactly clear how the tutorial on the home page would translate to what I want to do so I currently feel deterred from giving it a whirl. Are there plans to create more tutorials? What kind of (rough) timeline can we expect to see more tutorials?
I completely empathize with the time involved learning new tools. I'm happy to create a tutorial specific to your use case. We've built a few workflows to process Github events and I'd love to show you how this works end-to-end.
Is there anything specific you'd like to do with the commit / merge events, just so I make sure the tutorial targets your use case?
Feel free to reach out directly if you'd like to talk more at dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com.
Thanks for the response and involvement in this thread, it really shows how committed you guys are to providing a great user experience.
The specific use-case I have in mind is that when a commit made I'd want to run various checks on configuration files in the repo to make sure specific conventions are followed and that certain file references exist. Upon a merge I'd like run a build process and send the build files to Heroku, Digital Ocean, or AWS.
The easiest way to run code in response to Github events is using Github's built-in webhooks for a repo. I made a video showing you how to set that up to forward events from your repo (e.g. every time you merge a branch to master), then run code on Pipedream in response:
and press the Fork button in the top right to create a copy of it in your own account. You can modify that copy and run it for free.
The video isn't perfectly polished and I made a few mistakes, but we've built Pipedream to make it easy to debug your workflows, too, so I hope the mistakes help you understand part of its power!
A couple of notes on your specific use case:
* There's no webhook event for new commits. A PR (like I show in the video) or a push might be the best event to listen for. You can then run Node code to list commits associated with that push. See the API docs for commits here: https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/commits/ .
* I wasn't sure specifically what build process you wanted to run, so I end the video reviewing how to add new steps to the workflow and walk through a few options: you can run any Node.js code or any of our pre-built actions. You have access to the /tmp dir on Pipedream and can use a package like child_process [1] to spawn some commands if you need to run anything on the shell. Unfortunately you don't have access to a full shell but let me know if what we provide works or doesn't — we'd love the feedback.
Let me know if that helps or if you have any questions!
You can program Amazon SWF in Python with boto library.
Example: http://boto.cloudhackers.com/en/latest/swf_tut.html
As such you can manage this under source control.
I assume similar projects exist for another cloud providers and languages.
Haha, damn nice job. I actually thought about this 1 yr ago and started working on something very similar, though it was more interactive. Even started an LLC and got a good prototype, but didn't have the time to work on it.
Great work! This is incredibly useful stuff and can't wait to start trying it out
This looks pretty awesome, even at this stage. I’d love the ability to write workflows in other languages (particularly Python), but understand that this seems pretty early-stage at this point and that might already be on the roadmap.
Out of curiosity, are you hiring? I’d be interested in hearing what your longer-term plans are and am looking for something new. This seems right up my alley.
ETA: I see from the article that Python is indeed coming. I’d love to be a part of that!
Just wanted to follow up to let you know we're starting work on Python soon. Feel free to subscribe to the issue here to get notified of our progress: https://github.com/PipedreamHQ/roadmap/issues/1 .
Sounds like a tool for devops. As a developer I would rather do extra work but on a mainstream cloud using a favourite language. Then again I am not in start-ups.
This isn't an answer to how they might monetize this service and quite frankly I've seen the OP/Co-Founder post their "answer" to this question on multiple other comments and it's extremely hand-wavy. I currently have little to no faith that this product isn't going to leave anyone that uses it stranded in a year or so when they have to shutdown due to lack of revenue.
Haggy - we have no plans to charge individual developers for low volume workflows that fit within our defined constraints. Our revenue efforts will be focused on enterprise use cases.
I have no desire to be hand-savvy so please ask whatever questions you have and I will do my best to clarify.
Hi, this is Dylan, another co-founder and engineer. I'm sorry we dropped the ball here. As you can imagine, it's tough to respond to every request and we've been a bit busy since launch, but I apologize we didn't get to yours.
All of us were early employees of BrightRoll [1], an advertising marketplace that handled 10 million requests / second at peak. We've scaled large systems in the past and we've built this system with scale in mind.
Believe it or not, most workflows are extremely low volume. That, in part with the design of the system, allows us to offer the generous free tier.
We're planning to introduce paid tiers soon. You can see my comment on the parent thread that addresses some of the general questions around pricing asked by others in the thread.
This was a very early release of the platform and we hoped offering the product for free would encourage experimentation. To a great degree, we've seen that, so we think it was the right choice.
I really don't like it when new services leave out the pricing and hide it under "contact us".
Testing and trying something new requires time and effort, which is limited, especially for companies that would be interested, if pricing/future isn't crystal clear, why make the effort?
If you do not need enterprise use cases (single sign-on, higher level SLAs, shared authentication, etc) and your scale fits within our defined constraints, then free is the price.
to me that translates as "WARNING! TRAP!" because I may decide I like your thing, and then my users may decide they like _my_ thing, and then suddenly I find out what your price is for my scale and "oh shit! I'm going to go broke OR have to recode everything"
ESPECIALLY since this would become a key part of the infrastructure / how my app gets its stuff done. Replacing your service with a competitor or something homebrew would be a major pain, especially when I find myself unexpectedly popular.
there is NO WAY I would ever use or recommend a service that refuses to tell me what my potential long term costs are up front.
It's too much of a gamble with a business or worse, a hobby project that isn't making me any money to compensate for this unexpected "balloon payment".
Vendors that are aiming at a split workflow, with a free tier and a paid tier usually have some set paid tiers and then a “contact us” for beyond that. For example, Slack gives you prices for the Standard and Support plans, and then lets enterprises contact them for negotiating prices. The problem with Pipedream is that non-enterprise customers will want to use their so-called enterprise plan.
Hi y’all, this is Dylan, a Pipedream engineer and co-founder. We launched today to get early feedback from developers on what we’ve built and we’ve received a lot of thoughtful comments. Thank you to everyone who signed up!
I especially appreciate the discussion around how and why Pipedream is free, and the concerns around the lack of a visible, scalable paid tier. Those concerns are valid and I want to give you a little more insight into our thinking on this and what the future holds.
Workflows created by one developer can be forked, run, and modified by others. We all build a lot of the same integrations across companies and believe if this code is shared and executed on a common platform that’s purpose-built for running these workflows, it’ll save us all a lot of time.
We’ve worked with thousands of alpha users to understand how they’re using the product and considered what features enterprises ultimately will want and need to pay for. These include: higher workflow limits, private workflows and actions, SLAs, premium support, and more. We didn’t launch with that today because we’re focused on getting feedback from individual developers who will be the majority of users moving forward.
Of course, you can’t run a business solely on free workflows. We’ve set some limits on these workflows that help us control excessive use [1]. Our team has a wealth of collective experience scaling software companies on the business and tech side, and we have confidence that we’ll be able to retain a generous free tier while building a sustainable business.
I empathize with the skepticism of Pipedream and of hosted platforms in general, and welcome any more specific questions. We truly love feedback. We’ve implemented some ideas that we believe facilitate the developer experience for building workflows but are looking for y’all to test that, validate or invalidate it, and give us specific thoughts as you have time.
It looks like an interesting alternative to Zapier (or its open source counterpart n8n [1]).
As a potential user, before even trying the tool I'd like to know how are you planning to monetize it. Free sounds awesome, but you'll get to a point where it costs you actual money to keep all this working. I don't want to waste my time creating pipelines in a tool that won't exist in a year or two -or that will become paid and break my existing workflows (or make me expend money unexpectedly)-.
We believe anyone should be able to run simple, low-volume workflows at no cost, sharing their workflows with the public so everyone benefits from the work of others. We also want to foster a positive community where people feel good about sharing their work and where everyone can learn from one another.
In the future, we may offer features available on paid tiers which would be logical enterprise features such as single sign on (SSO), team collaboration and higher SLAs and throughput.
Thanks for your reply! But it doesn't answer my question: I'm worried about how you will sustain your platform in the long run for all those free tier users.
Learning a new tool -even if it's friendly and has a community around it- takes time and effort. We want to know it will be there in the future. That's why I'm interested to know: how are you planning to keep Pipedream alive for, let's say, the next 5 years?
> Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software.
>For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software.
IANAL but sounds like that means if you're building apps for people on the platform, consulting, using it for clients/freelancing, or a hosted platform built on the technology then you're not licensed to do that and will need to get approval.
The “Commons Clause” License Condition they stuck on top of the Apache license: "Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software."
I do not feel that this is the best article to sell me on your product. It compensates for trying to describe a rock solid use case with a lot of links to other things with limited context (that are probably brilliant if you knew that context). If I wanted to watch a 15 minute video I would watch that instead. I feel like your pipedream.com landing page does a better job describing why I want to use your product.
I wish this article was a more digestible single case as an introduction that showed value rather than saying 'you can run anything!!! for free!!!'
Hi, Pipedream founder here. I appreciate the honest feedback.
The post is meant to articulate the depth of our vision for the platform. The hope was the linked workflows provide some inspiration and examples to make Pipedream a little more concrete. I'm glad the homepage resonated with you.
Did you get a chance to sign up and use the tool? We're looking for specific feedback from devs on how we can improve so I'd love if you had any time to build a workflow and share your thoughts.
Hi, Dylan, a co-founder here. It's a great question.
We've found that for integrations or common automations, building on a cloud platform is too low-level. You've got to manage a number of services that aren't core to your use case (e.g. API Gateway, IAM, Cloudwatch Logs, etc.). We operate at a higher level and just give you an execution environment to run Node.js code or stitch together pre-built actions, similar to integration platforms like Zapier.
Of course, Serverless and other frameworks abstract part of the cloud services, but you're still running on that platform, and when you need to troubleshoot or scale the service, it's likely you'll have to peek under the covers. We tried to build a serverless platform from the ground up and provide services like the HTTP server, key-value store, logs, and other services right inside the UI, or accessible in code. There's no other cloud resources to manage or monitor.
This kind of abstraction isn't great for every application, but we think it shines when you're building integrations or data pipelines that aren't part of your core app.
The pre-built actions and built-in OAuth / key-based auth also operate at a higher level than most cloud services. We've tried to provide these in a developer-friendly way, so you have full control over how your workflow runs, but don't have to manage the parts that are tangential to the logic of your app.
As we expose more APIs for building and running workflows, we'd love to support a framework like Serverless.
I'd love if you have time to give Pipedream a try and see how it works for yourself! We're looking for feedback on how we can improve so we'd love more eyes on it.
I haven't used Microsoft Flow in depth so I unfortunately can't comment.
If you've used it and like it, I'd honestly love for you to give Pipedream a try and tell us where we can improve compared to your experience with other tools. We'd love the feedback!
I'm a founder of a startup in the same space, so just wanted to say good luck. I love the name. It's exciting to see so many folks working on making connective developer tooling a better experience.
I had a link originally included in here but -- you guys should enjoy your launch. I understand and have a great deal of empathy for the effort it takes to build and launch something new. Enjoy all of it, and keep up the good work.
Keith, this is Dylan, a co-founder. We've been very impressed with what y'all are building at Standard Library and I agree it's a great time to be working on developer integration tools! Thanks for the note.
The example demo looks very slick! it looks like Zapier but a bit more low level.
Also for anyone interested in running functions but not interested in handling the complexity of aws lambda I'd check Cloudflare workers https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/
Hi, this is Dylan, a co-founder and engineer. I'm sorry we didn't get back to you sooner. It's tough to respond to every single comment on a Hacker News thread and we've been quite busy with launch. Hope you can sympathize.
Your code runs in its own Node execution environment and VM, completely isolated from other users' code.
Happy to answer any other specific questions you have! Feel free to reach me at dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com .
I'd have an easier time evaluating pipedream if I got something other than a blank page when clicking through to the website from my mac running chrome.
Hi David, this is Dylan, a co-founder. I'd love if you had the time to send me a screenshot of what you're seeing, with your Developer Tools Console open in Chrome, if you don't mind. It'd be a huge help!
Hi, this is Dylan, a co-founder. It's a great question. Having built many applications on Lambda this is something I think about a lot :) .
We've found that for integrations or common automations, building on a cloud platform is too low-level. Frequently you're working with more than just a Lambda. You've got to manage a number of services that aren't core to your use case (e.g. API Gateway, IAM, Cloudwatch Logs, etc.). There's a lot of boilerplate config, and many of these services are tangential to the core logic of your app.
We operate at a higher level and just give you an execution environment to run Node.js code or stitch together pre-built actions, similar to integration platforms like Zapier. We manage the HTTP endpoint, function config, and give you built-in observability. We also provide higher-level services, like built-in app integrations and OAuth / API key-based authorization. Building this yourself on AWS can take time.
This kind of abstraction isn't great for every application, but we think it shines when you're building integrations between services.
I'd love if you had time to sign up and see how this works! It's free to use and we'd love the feedback.
Let me know if that answers your questions, or if you have any more!
Your comment has me imagine a more visual, GUI-based editor on top of AWS Lambda (i.e. hooking up all sorts or internal/external events, tying workflows or multiple Lambdas together, still including a small editor for writing JavaScript, etc.)
I mean, you can write code in-line with AWS Lambda but to have an application help setup multiple Lambdas and/or integrate outside APIs would be pretty neat.
Hi, this is Dylan, a co-founder. It's a great question. Having built many applications on Lambda this is something I think about a lot :) .
We've found that for integrations or common automations, building on a cloud platform is too low-level. Frequently you're working with more than just a Lambda. You've got to manage a number of services that aren't core to your use case (e.g. API Gateway, IAM, Cloudwatch Logs, etc.). There's a lot of boilerplate config, and many of these services are tangential to the core logic of your app.
We operate at a higher level and just give you an execution environment to run Node.js code or stitch together pre-built actions, similar to integration platforms like Zapier. We manage the HTTP endpoint, function config, and give you built-in observability. We also provide higher-level services, like built-in app integrations and OAuth / API key-based authorization. Building this yourself on AWS can take time.
This kind of abstraction isn't great for every application, but we think it shines when you're building integrations between services.
Let me know if that answers your questions, or if you have any more!
We believe anyone should be able to run simple, low-volume workflows at no cost, sharing their workflows with the public so everyone benefits from the work of others. We also want to foster a positive community where people feel good about sharing their work and where everyone can learn from one another.
In the future, we may offer features available on paid tiers which would be logical enterprise features such as single sign on (SSO), team collaboration and higher SLAs and throughput.
https://medium.com/@todsacerdoti/introducing-pipedream-bbca9... is an accompanying article. Was originally the submitted URL.
Co-founder here. We have been heads down working Pipedream for the past 9 months and are excited to share our beta with you.
Pipedream is an integration platform built for developers. Develop any workflow, based on any trigger with authentication management built-in and no server or cloud resources to manage.
Workflows are code, which you can run for free.
The beta version includes the ability to:
- Run any Node code, or use pre-built actions
- Trigger workflows via HTTP, Cron, integrated apps or email
- Create, share, and fork workflows from the community and
- Send data to S3, Snowflake, email, SSE, and more.
Coming soon — Develop locally and deploy workflows via CLI, SDK, and more.
We think there’s a lot we can improve and are eager for feedback so please send us your ideas and opinions. Also, if you want a specific app or API fully integrated, let us know.
FYI, your docs don’t display properly in Safari on iPadOS; the content is hidden behind the navigation, which doesn’t seem to be collapsible.
Here’s a screenshot to show what I mean: https://imgur.com/a/d0SjEVt
Reader view exposes the content fine, so that’s a valid workaround for now.
Thanks! Just rolled out a fix for this. Would you mind taking a look again?
Not OP but I just checked - yes it works now on iPadOS (on Safari & Chrome).
Works great now :)
If I can run workflows for free, how are you making money?
We believe anyone should be able to run simple, low-volume workflows at no cost, sharing their workflows with the public so everyone benefits from the work of others. We also want to foster a positive community where people feel good about sharing their work and where everyone can learn from one another. In the future, we may offer features available on paid tiers which would be logical enterprise features such as single sign on (SSO), team collaboration and higher SLAs and throughput.
The constraints are listed in our docs - https://docs.pipedream.com/pricing/
So basically, people are going to build on top of your service and if yall don't figure out a revenue model, you'll need to close down shop, leaving people scrambling to migrate somewhere else...
No thanks, I've been there before. You'd be better off just charging from the get-go. Otherwise, this should be 100% open source.
From your past experience, do you have anything constructive to tell this new team on how they can attempt to build a business without knowing the future that would make you more comfortable using it?
I ask because I see a lot of these dismissive comments on HN which end with "open source it" - and that doesn't seem like a super constructive piece of advice to a new startup team.
FWIW, at my current company, an analytics company, about five years ago, we made it clear that no matter what data we collected, if you leave the service or we shut down, we will get you all that data to take with you in a very reasonable format.
It's always risky to invest in a new service, but sometimes risks bring great rewards, and I think it's helpful if you're giving input, to try to make it constructive.
Build a cost model. Set prices that would make them profitable based on that model. Offer the service at that price. See if people are willing to pay for it. Verify that costs and profitability match the model.
If the model turns out to be inaccurate: A) Change the architecture to reduce costs to the point where it becomes profitable at an attractive price point for customers, or B) Move on to the next idea.
It's not that complex, and more startups should be more realistic about profitability.
I feel like there's too much focus on the price here, and the thing I am concerned with is that the original comment was about how services shut down and they didn't want to invest in the unknown. Paying for that seems doubly risky to me.
That said, I get your point that if you can create a model that gives you a good sense of future profitability, you are in a better position not to die as a company.
I think it's helpful to consider. You'll definitely need the cash to ramp up infrastructure
I think the concerns are related. The likelihood of a company shutting down is greatly affected by its profitability.
Start charging immediately, and put up a real pricing page with SLAs. Find out as soon as possible if people will actually value this enough to pay for it.
This provides a signaling of value, creates a real business relationship, and directly contributes to the lifespan of the vendor.
Not to diminish your point but that’s really hard to get right. Most early stage startups have absolutely no idea what their product is worth.
It doesn't have to be right from the get go. Hard is why it should get done.
A free model doesn't really tell their business if there's actually demand and if people actually value it when supply is "infinite" when in reality it isn't.
Guess a high price with some research for similar things and lower it iteratively. Def. see what sticks.
They could go the AWS route, start high and decrease prices.
Also they could combine this with discounts, such as if someone preallocates capacity for X month, they get f(X) % discount.
They should build a core customer base. Solicit feedback about what niche feature they would happily pay for.
For example here's a GitLab issue that I think people would (might?) use: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/15536 (provide a "lock service" or a queue with max concurrency gate and launch pipelines / jobs)
But that is my point. You won't know until you do it. It's a constant experiment, you just have to start somewhere.
If everyone avoided doing hard things, our world would be a lot worse off.
I think the point is: monitize now to reduce risk
People are often a lot more upset when they pay money and there is no exit plan. Shut downs can be abrupt and chaotic, suggesting they monetize immediately doesn't seem helpful either. If that's the suggestion, I'd ask: how much would you pay and how long do you expect notification in advance of a shut down? Do you expect a refund? Full or partial? Do you expect portability? If so, what kind.
$1/trigger/mo. 30 days. No refund if services were delivered, if I pre-paid then pro-rated refund. No expectation of portability.
I would feel much better paying them money for this than hoping it's free forever.
The workflows are Node.js code. If you need to transition away, building an abstraction layer for the stuff they provide that you use shouldn’t be too hard. It would be even cooler if they committed to open sourcing their implementation if they discontinue the service...
The risk here seems small.
The risk isn't small compared to the value add, especially if all they are doing is providing an abstraction layer that isn't "too hard."
The value seems to be free hosting for the polling and scheduling.
This isn't too different than IFTTT abstraction-wise, and is easily reproducible in AWS using data pipelines and lambdas.
Why take an external dependency if what they are doing is rather simple?
I'd argue you are right about the complexity. The hook of the service seems to be easy integration and lack of infrastructure requirements.
At scale, a freemium model won't work. But it would provide initial traction for small use cases. This can be funded for a while without major rounds.
The advice to monetize now versus building community and getting users / crowd sourcing plugins is solid if the aim isn't to open source it.
Thanks for the response! I wasn't trying to rain on your parade, but having a reasonable revenue model in place does help give some confidence that 1) you're going to be around a while and 2) you're not selling data I don't want you to sell.
Forgive me if this is clean and I haven’t seen it I’m just browsing from a mobile device.
With all workflow type services I’ve encountered I find that the actual underlying workflow can’t be managed under source control as one would do with (hopefully) most if not all application & infrastructure code.
Can I “deploy” workflows from source control?
Hi, Dylan, a co-founder here.
Deploying workflows from source via CLI or your CI/CD pipeline is in the works! We want you to host workflows on Github / Gitlab and be able to deploy them using your standard process.
Feel free to reach out to me directly if you'd like more information and I can let you know when we're testing this.
dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com
Speaking of which, it's always overwhelming learning new tools. I know I can benefit from this, but at the same time I'm not sure I can risk trying it out given the time it will take to experiment and learn. I'd be using triggers based off Github commits and merges, but I don't see any specific examples for that and it's not exactly clear how the tutorial on the home page would translate to what I want to do so I currently feel deterred from giving it a whirl. Are there plans to create more tutorials? What kind of (rough) timeline can we expect to see more tutorials?
BTW, love the name Pipedream!
Thank you!
I completely empathize with the time involved learning new tools. I'm happy to create a tutorial specific to your use case. We've built a few workflows to process Github events and I'd love to show you how this works end-to-end.
Is there anything specific you'd like to do with the commit / merge events, just so I make sure the tutorial targets your use case?
Feel free to reach out directly if you'd like to talk more at dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com.
Thanks for the response and involvement in this thread, it really shows how committed you guys are to providing a great user experience.
The specific use-case I have in mind is that when a commit made I'd want to run various checks on configuration files in the repo to make sure specific conventions are followed and that certain file references exist. Upon a merge I'd like run a build process and send the build files to Heroku, Digital Ocean, or AWS.
The easiest way to run code in response to Github events is using Github's built-in webhooks for a repo. I made a video showing you how to set that up to forward events from your repo (e.g. every time you merge a branch to master), then run code on Pipedream in response:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZGNP1-1vyg&feature=youtu.be
You can load the workflow I created for the video here:
https://pipedream.com/@dylburger/template-workflow-to-proces...
and press the Fork button in the top right to create a copy of it in your own account. You can modify that copy and run it for free.
The video isn't perfectly polished and I made a few mistakes, but we've built Pipedream to make it easy to debug your workflows, too, so I hope the mistakes help you understand part of its power!
A couple of notes on your specific use case:
* There's no webhook event for new commits. A PR (like I show in the video) or a push might be the best event to listen for. You can then run Node code to list commits associated with that push. See the API docs for commits here: https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/commits/ . * I wasn't sure specifically what build process you wanted to run, so I end the video reviewing how to add new steps to the workflow and walk through a few options: you can run any Node.js code or any of our pre-built actions. You have access to the /tmp dir on Pipedream and can use a package like child_process [1] to spawn some commands if you need to run anything on the shell. Unfortunately you don't have access to a full shell but let me know if what we provide works or doesn't — we'd love the feedback.
Let me know if that helps or if you have any questions!
[1] https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/node-js-child-processes-ev...
Got it! I'll aim to get something to you in the next couple of days.
I also think the name is fabulous - quite surprised the domain name was available!
You can program Amazon SWF in Python with boto library. Example: http://boto.cloudhackers.com/en/latest/swf_tut.html As such you can manage this under source control. I assume similar projects exist for another cloud providers and languages.
Haha, damn nice job. I actually thought about this 1 yr ago and started working on something very similar, though it was more interactive. Even started an LLC and got a good prototype, but didn't have the time to work on it.
Great work! This is incredibly useful stuff and can't wait to start trying it out
Thank you so much for the kind words! Let us know if you have any feedback or questions.
This looks pretty awesome, even at this stage. I’d love the ability to write workflows in other languages (particularly Python), but understand that this seems pretty early-stage at this point and that might already be on the roadmap.
Out of curiosity, are you hiring? I’d be interested in hearing what your longer-term plans are and am looking for something new. This seems right up my alley.
ETA: I see from the article that Python is indeed coming. I’d love to be a part of that!
Are you hosting your own serverless or using AWS?
We use AWS as a part of our backend but run our own serverless platform on top of it.
We're planning to share more about our stack in future engineering blogs, so keep an eye out for those!
Hopefully you're not building on top of SWF ;) Otherwise you will be out of money soon...
From the intro article:
(Yes, Python is coming.)
+1
Just wanted to follow up to let you know we're starting work on Python soon. Feel free to subscribe to the issue here to get notified of our progress: https://github.com/PipedreamHQ/roadmap/issues/1 .
Hi, Dylan, a co-founder here.
I'm a Pythonista at heart and we're working on Python support as we speak! We'll let y'all know when we ship that.
Sounds like a tool for devops. As a developer I would rather do extra work but on a mainstream cloud using a favourite language. Then again I am not in start-ups.
I'm not trolling, but what's the difference between Pipedream and Microsoft Flow?
The usual question, how they monetize the service?
It's answered here[1], along with limitations[2]:
- 100kb max body-size.
- Rate-limit at 10 requests per second
- 10 seconds per execution for HTTP triggers, and 30 seconds for cron triggers
- 192 MB of memory for your code and libraries during workflow execution
- 512 MB of disk in the /tmp directory.
[1]https://docs.pipedream.com/pricing/ [2]https://docs.pipedream.com/limits/#limits
This isn't an answer to how they might monetize this service and quite frankly I've seen the OP/Co-Founder post their "answer" to this question on multiple other comments and it's extremely hand-wavy. I currently have little to no faith that this product isn't going to leave anyone that uses it stranded in a year or so when they have to shutdown due to lack of revenue.
Haggy - we have no plans to charge individual developers for low volume workflows that fit within our defined constraints. Our revenue efforts will be focused on enterprise use cases.
I have no desire to be hand-savvy so please ask whatever questions you have and I will do my best to clarify.
How would you envision supporting 10X the usage that you have today 1 year from now if all that usage is falling under your "free" plan constraints?
More throttling?
It's funny because of all the crickets. I asked a question after the OP requested one and I've seen no response in 5 days. :shrug:
Hi, this is Dylan, another co-founder and engineer. I'm sorry we dropped the ball here. As you can imagine, it's tough to respond to every request and we've been a bit busy since launch, but I apologize we didn't get to yours.
All of us were early employees of BrightRoll [1], an advertising marketplace that handled 10 million requests / second at peak. We've scaled large systems in the past and we've built this system with scale in mind.
Believe it or not, most workflows are extremely low volume. That, in part with the design of the system, allows us to offer the generous free tier.
We're planning to introduce paid tiers soon. You can see my comment on the parent thread that addresses some of the general questions around pricing asked by others in the thread.
This was a very early release of the platform and we hoped offering the product for free would encourage experimentation. To a great degree, we've seen that, so we think it was the right choice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrightRoll
I really don't like it when new services leave out the pricing and hide it under "contact us".
Testing and trying something new requires time and effort, which is limited, especially for companies that would be interested, if pricing/future isn't crystal clear, why make the effort?
Pricing is on our home page, above the fold. It says “free.”
You need to address the cost of scalability, free isn't a price and there's clearly a price somewhere along the line.
If you do not need enterprise use cases (single sign-on, higher level SLAs, shared authentication, etc) and your scale fits within our defined constraints, then free is the price.
to me that translates as "WARNING! TRAP!" because I may decide I like your thing, and then my users may decide they like _my_ thing, and then suddenly I find out what your price is for my scale and "oh shit! I'm going to go broke OR have to recode everything"
ESPECIALLY since this would become a key part of the infrastructure / how my app gets its stuff done. Replacing your service with a competitor or something homebrew would be a major pain, especially when I find myself unexpectedly popular.
there is NO WAY I would ever use or recommend a service that refuses to tell me what my potential long term costs are up front.
It's too much of a gamble with a business or worse, a hobby project that isn't making me any money to compensate for this unexpected "balloon payment".
Kind of agree with this. As a business you want to have not only your present costs, but your future costs known. No surprises.
RMS has the solution here: “Free” software. If they shut down you have the source and can self host on aws.
The OP was asking what the price is when they do have an enterprise use case or their scale grows beyond your defined constraints.
Most vendors that aim for enterprise contracts take a "contact us" approach. Contracts can be negotiated. Pricing may vary.
(I am not affiliated with this vendor, I just deal with software vendors a fair bit.)
Vendors that are aiming at a split workflow, with a free tier and a paid tier usually have some set paid tiers and then a “contact us” for beyond that. For example, Slack gives you prices for the Standard and Support plans, and then lets enterprises contact them for negotiating prices. The problem with Pipedream is that non-enterprise customers will want to use their so-called enterprise plan.
Possible alternative for self-hosted applications: https://github.com/huginn/huginn/
Few others:
1. https://www.flogo.io/ (Go)
2. https://n8n.io/ (Recently featured in HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21192132 )
One quick glance on this: this is amazing!
If you want something that works really well with nodejs there is also Node-RED [0].
[0] https://nodered.org/
Hi y’all, this is Dylan, a Pipedream engineer and co-founder. We launched today to get early feedback from developers on what we’ve built and we’ve received a lot of thoughtful comments. Thank you to everyone who signed up!
I especially appreciate the discussion around how and why Pipedream is free, and the concerns around the lack of a visible, scalable paid tier. Those concerns are valid and I want to give you a little more insight into our thinking on this and what the future holds.
Workflows created by one developer can be forked, run, and modified by others. We all build a lot of the same integrations across companies and believe if this code is shared and executed on a common platform that’s purpose-built for running these workflows, it’ll save us all a lot of time.
We’ve worked with thousands of alpha users to understand how they’re using the product and considered what features enterprises ultimately will want and need to pay for. These include: higher workflow limits, private workflows and actions, SLAs, premium support, and more. We didn’t launch with that today because we’re focused on getting feedback from individual developers who will be the majority of users moving forward.
Of course, you can’t run a business solely on free workflows. We’ve set some limits on these workflows that help us control excessive use [1]. Our team has a wealth of collective experience scaling software companies on the business and tech side, and we have confidence that we’ll be able to retain a generous free tier while building a sustainable business.
I empathize with the skepticism of Pipedream and of hosted platforms in general, and welcome any more specific questions. We truly love feedback. We’ve implemented some ideas that we believe facilitate the developer experience for building workflows but are looking for y’all to test that, validate or invalidate it, and give us specific thoughts as you have time.
dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com
[1] https://docs.pipedream.com/limits/
It looks like an interesting alternative to Zapier (or its open source counterpart n8n [1]).
As a potential user, before even trying the tool I'd like to know how are you planning to monetize it. Free sounds awesome, but you'll get to a point where it costs you actual money to keep all this working. I don't want to waste my time creating pipelines in a tool that won't exist in a year or two -or that will become paid and break my existing workflows (or make me expend money unexpectedly)-.
[1]: https://n8n.io/
We believe anyone should be able to run simple, low-volume workflows at no cost, sharing their workflows with the public so everyone benefits from the work of others. We also want to foster a positive community where people feel good about sharing their work and where everyone can learn from one another.
In the future, we may offer features available on paid tiers which would be logical enterprise features such as single sign on (SSO), team collaboration and higher SLAs and throughput.
The constraints are listed in our docs - https://docs.pipedream.com/pricing/
Thanks for your reply! But it doesn't answer my question: I'm worried about how you will sustain your platform in the long run for all those free tier users.
Learning a new tool -even if it's friendly and has a community around it- takes time and effort. We want to know it will be there in the future. That's why I'm interested to know: how are you planning to keep Pipedream alive for, let's say, the next 5 years?
> or its open source counterpart n8n
Unfortunately, n8n is not[1] Open Source, despite claiming to be "Open Source and so free" on their website[2].
1: https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md
2: https://n8n.io/
That's a shame, seems like a great product...
What about the license makes this not open-source?
> Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software.
>For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software.
IANAL but sounds like that means if you're building apps for people on the platform, consulting, using it for clients/freelancing, or a hosted platform built on the technology then you're not licensed to do that and will need to get approval.
The “Commons Clause” License Condition they stuck on top of the Apache license: "Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software."
https://commonsclause.com/
Q: Is this “Open Source”?
A: No.
I do not feel that this is the best article to sell me on your product. It compensates for trying to describe a rock solid use case with a lot of links to other things with limited context (that are probably brilliant if you knew that context). If I wanted to watch a 15 minute video I would watch that instead. I feel like your pipedream.com landing page does a better job describing why I want to use your product.
I wish this article was a more digestible single case as an introduction that showed value rather than saying 'you can run anything!!! for free!!!'
Hi, Pipedream founder here. I appreciate the honest feedback.
The post is meant to articulate the depth of our vision for the platform. The hope was the linked workflows provide some inspiration and examples to make Pipedream a little more concrete. I'm glad the homepage resonated with you.
Did you get a chance to sign up and use the tool? We're looking for specific feedback from devs on how we can improve so I'd love if you had any time to build a workflow and share your thoughts.
It's more standard for a Show HN to link to the home page and then include a link to the article in the thread. We'll put that above.
You're an awesome moderator :D
Awesome, thank you dang!
Why would I use this instead of an option built into a major cloud provider such as AWS, GCP, or Azure?
How do you differentiate yourself. Do you (or will you) support frameworks like Serverless?
Hi, Dylan, a co-founder here. It's a great question.
We've found that for integrations or common automations, building on a cloud platform is too low-level. You've got to manage a number of services that aren't core to your use case (e.g. API Gateway, IAM, Cloudwatch Logs, etc.). We operate at a higher level and just give you an execution environment to run Node.js code or stitch together pre-built actions, similar to integration platforms like Zapier.
Of course, Serverless and other frameworks abstract part of the cloud services, but you're still running on that platform, and when you need to troubleshoot or scale the service, it's likely you'll have to peek under the covers. We tried to build a serverless platform from the ground up and provide services like the HTTP server, key-value store, logs, and other services right inside the UI, or accessible in code. There's no other cloud resources to manage or monitor.
This kind of abstraction isn't great for every application, but we think it shines when you're building integrations or data pipelines that aren't part of your core app.
The pre-built actions and built-in OAuth / key-based auth also operate at a higher level than most cloud services. We've tried to provide these in a developer-friendly way, so you have full control over how your workflow runs, but don't have to manage the parts that are tangential to the logic of your app.
As we expose more APIs for building and running workflows, we'd love to support a framework like Serverless.
I'd love if you have time to give Pipedream a try and see how it works for yourself! We're looking for feedback on how we can improve so we'd love more eyes on it.
How would you differentiate yourself from Microsoft Flow?
I haven't used Microsoft Flow in depth so I unfortunately can't comment.
If you've used it and like it, I'd honestly love for you to give Pipedream a try and tell us where we can improve compared to your experience with other tools. We'd love the feedback!
dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com
Congrats on launching!
I'm a founder of a startup in the same space, so just wanted to say good luck. I love the name. It's exciting to see so many folks working on making connective developer tooling a better experience.
I had a link originally included in here but -- you guys should enjoy your launch. I understand and have a great deal of empathy for the effort it takes to build and launch something new. Enjoy all of it, and keep up the good work.
- Keith
Keith, this is Dylan, a co-founder. We've been very impressed with what y'all are building at Standard Library and I agree it's a great time to be working on developer integration tools! Thanks for the note.
The example demo looks very slick! it looks like Zapier but a bit more low level. Also for anyone interested in running functions but not interested in handling the complexity of aws lambda I'd check Cloudflare workers https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/
What security measures are in place to deal with malicious code from other users?
Since you guys haven't answered, I'm going to assume there is no such security in place.
Hi, this is Dylan, a co-founder and engineer. I'm sorry we didn't get back to you sooner. It's tough to respond to every single comment on a Hacker News thread and we've been quite busy with launch. Hope you can sympathize.
Your code runs in its own Node execution environment and VM, completely isolated from other users' code.
Happy to answer any other specific questions you have! Feel free to reach me at dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com .
> Develop any workflow, based on any trigger
As far as I can see the above should come with a footnote saying "for some value of any".
Looks very cool, despite being entirely web-centric.
I'd have an easier time evaluating pipedream if I got something other than a blank page when clicking through to the website from my mac running chrome.
Hi David, this is Dylan, a co-founder. I'd love if you had the time to send me a screenshot of what you're seeing, with your Developer Tools Console open in Chrome, if you don't mind. It'd be a huge help!
dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com
How does this differ from Amazon Lambda?
Only read the landing page so far but it looks like Lambda with just Node support. Can someone correct me if I’m off?
Hi, this is Dylan, a co-founder. It's a great question. Having built many applications on Lambda this is something I think about a lot :) .
We've found that for integrations or common automations, building on a cloud platform is too low-level. Frequently you're working with more than just a Lambda. You've got to manage a number of services that aren't core to your use case (e.g. API Gateway, IAM, Cloudwatch Logs, etc.). There's a lot of boilerplate config, and many of these services are tangential to the core logic of your app.
We operate at a higher level and just give you an execution environment to run Node.js code or stitch together pre-built actions, similar to integration platforms like Zapier. We manage the HTTP endpoint, function config, and give you built-in observability. We also provide higher-level services, like built-in app integrations and OAuth / API key-based authorization. Building this yourself on AWS can take time.
This kind of abstraction isn't great for every application, but we think it shines when you're building integrations between services.
I'd love if you had time to sign up and see how this works! It's free to use and we'd love the feedback.
Let me know if that answers your questions, or if you have any more!
Your comment has me imagine a more visual, GUI-based editor on top of AWS Lambda (i.e. hooking up all sorts or internal/external events, tying workflows or multiple Lambdas together, still including a small editor for writing JavaScript, etc.)
I mean, you can write code in-line with AWS Lambda but to have an application help setup multiple Lambdas and/or integrate outside APIs would be pretty neat.
That's spot on! Take a look at our intro video for an end-to-end overview of how to use the tool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivkE26ZsyUo&feature=youtu.be .
I'd love if you had the chance to sign up. It's free to use and we'd love the feedback.
I like it but I don't fully get it. Why use this service and not Lambda or Azure Functions?
Hi, this is Dylan, a co-founder. It's a great question. Having built many applications on Lambda this is something I think about a lot :) .
We've found that for integrations or common automations, building on a cloud platform is too low-level. Frequently you're working with more than just a Lambda. You've got to manage a number of services that aren't core to your use case (e.g. API Gateway, IAM, Cloudwatch Logs, etc.). There's a lot of boilerplate config, and many of these services are tangential to the core logic of your app.
We operate at a higher level and just give you an execution environment to run Node.js code or stitch together pre-built actions, similar to integration platforms like Zapier. We manage the HTTP endpoint, function config, and give you built-in observability. We also provide higher-level services, like built-in app integrations and OAuth / API key-based authorization. Building this yourself on AWS can take time.
This kind of abstraction isn't great for every application, but we think it shines when you're building integrations between services.
Let me know if that answers your questions, or if you have any more!
How's this going to be monetized? What sort of execution limits are there?
We believe anyone should be able to run simple, low-volume workflows at no cost, sharing their workflows with the public so everyone benefits from the work of others. We also want to foster a positive community where people feel good about sharing their work and where everyone can learn from one another. In the future, we may offer features available on paid tiers which would be logical enterprise features such as single sign on (SSO), team collaboration and higher SLAs and throughput.
The constraints are listed in our docs - https://docs.pipedream.com/pricing/
What framework/template are you using for docs.pipedream? They look great.
PS: On Desktop, the left third of the Pricing content/copy is rendered behind the menu.
Thanks for letting us know, I just rolled out a fix to the hidden content. Can you let me know if you're still seeing the issue?
We use Vuepress for the docs and it's awesome!
https://vuepress.vuejs.org
Looks good now!
WOOHOO!!! Congrats on the launch!!!
Name reminds me of a big adult novelties brand and company.
free until when :)