Ask HN: What startups have you bought things from?

[jawns]

We see a lot of startups promoted here on Hacker News ... but which ones -- if any -- have you actually purchased things from?

[chbrown]

WakeMate here, too. Trying to sell it off, though. Kind of disappointed, really:

a) I had to send if off to the refurb. center after about two months of use (and pay my own shipping).

b) I haven't seen much progress in the app except stability increases. With all that raw data, I can imagine tons of fun features, particularly social applications.

c) Their website's claim, "You pick the factors and Wakelytics shows how they affect your sleep," translates to "You tag your nights and we let you sort by those tags." This is typical of the lackluster analysis-web app that your sleep data gets uploaded to.

d) The app self-admittedly cannot analyze sleep periods of less than 3-4 hours, and in reality considers anything less than 5-6 hours too short to recognize or record. (There is no mention of this shortcoming/limitation anywhere on their website.) This makes it pretty much useless for polyphasic sleep. Or naps of any kind.

No big deal, though. $60 is not that much money. It's a nice effort, and a good idea, but just not a very satisfying execution.

[EricR23]

Just noticed your post below mine! Gah. Sad to see other people are sharing my feelings on it!

[rdl]

Instapaper, HelloFax, AppSumo, Humble Bundle, AirBnB, lots of iphone/ipad apps, Mailfinch (USPS mails pdfs), earth class mail (receives mail and scans it), google voice, pandora, hulu, netflix, 23andme.

As for hardware, super super happy with the Withings scale and the Fitbit; fairly happy with the Zeo, not very happy with the WakeMate. Kind of looking forward to getting a lockitron.

Omnifocus (desktop, iphone, ipad) and other Omni packages are probably my most favorite commercial software, though.

Probably will sign up with tarsnap, but I want to set up my own dduped rsync backup too.

[jaz]

Is earth class mail worth the price? I thought about signing up about a year ago, but some bad reviews made me hesitant.

[benologist]

I bought some stuff from AppSumo in a package once though I didn't end up using any of it for very long.

MongoHQ I came across here when they announced their integration with Heroku, we never used Heroku but we did go on to become a fan and paying customer of MongoHQ's for the last year or so.

AppHarbor I have a free account on, I really like what they're doing but I'm not sure if I'm ready to give up control of my servers yet!

ChatterAnalytics from the other day I'm just waiting for them to do something so I can pay to use it, cause that scratches an itch that I have that I hacked around half-arsedly the day before their post here.

[GavinB]

Dropbox is the one startup that's earned the right to charge my credit card every month.

[zbruhnke]

I've bought stuff from Appsumo, have a paid account on twilio, paid account on Dropbox, heroku, use wepay, optimizely,and hipmunk.

those are the ones that i can come up with off the top of my headm additionally out of all those I cannot think of one of them i have a complaint about

[kn0thing]

Hurray! I must know: did you book a hotel or flight on hipmunk?

[code_duck]

I've bought 40-50 Android and iOS apps, mostly made by individuals and microcompanies - I think some people might consider them startups, others would not. Does a company have to have grand plans to be called a startup?

I've done business with startups like Etsy from when they were in the startup stage, to the established business stage (Etsy still considers themselves a startup though, however I think a company has passed that stage 6 years and 150 employees in).

I've hosted sites on Heroku, bought 'pro' on Forrst, and booked a flight through hipmunk. It seems there are probably some other companies in there, less well known, but it's not coming to mind.

[kn0thing]

Score! Thanks for searching with hipmunk.

[JimmyL]

I love followup.cc, and gladly send them money each month.

[aaronwhite]

I hardly send an email w/o it at this point

[EricR23]

Purchased a WakeMate. Very disappointed... My unit came pretty much dysfunctional-- it won't stay turned on-- and they have yet to resolve my issue. Many e-mails simply go ignored.

[staunch]

Olark.

Anyone who doesn't use Olark on their site is at a huge disadvantage.

Happy to pay em.

[daimyoyo]

I have used HelloFax several times and it's awesome. I save a lot of money with it because I don't have to go to fedex and pay them $0.25/page just to send faxes.

[tdfx]

I'm on their $4.99/month plan. I hardly ever send any faxes so I never go over my quota, but it's nice to have my own number to be able to receive them. On the rare occasions I need to send a fax, their editing/signing tools are a true pleasure to use.

[dcpdx]

I'm a regular user of HelloFax; it's a lot easier than going to OfficeMax to fire off a couple-page document every now and then for my day job.

[jonmarkgo]

AppSumo, Humble Bundle, Pandora, Netflix, Arduino, Github, Kickstarter, WePay, Twilio, UserVoice, MailChimp, and likely more...

[citricsquid]

WakeMate, despite its flaws (which are few and far between) it's a fantastic thing to have, I love it a lot.

Also Appsumo.

[riskish]

does wake mate really work?

[eswat]

I have a paid accounts with Dropbox, Instapaper and Simplenote and donated some money to Forrst. I’ve bought stuff from AppSumo and have bought a Wakemate. I’ve also bought several OSX and iOS apps from companies I could arguably call startups. There’s also the various Kickstarter stuff I donated to and indie games I’ve purchased.

[herval]

Github, appsumo, dropbox, lasfm (not a "stsrtup" anymore, I guess), hipchat, rovio, zynga and a few ios devs (goodreader, instapaper, quickoffice, mypad)...

I'm pretty sure there are others, but these are the ones I can remember from the top of my head. And all of them RULE!

[Ntagg]

Adgrok, monthly subscription, and they've been great (my only affiliation is as a customer).

[krispykrackers]

I booked a flight to Memphis through hipmunk.com, it went amazingly smooth and my flight was fantastic. What a forthcoming success to such a previously defunct process! <3 himpunk!

[lauraannmorris]

yeah I agree. hipmunk is awesome. i also use etsy. and here in EU, couldnt live w/o spotify so paid for premium.

[kodeshpa]

TuneIn radio for sure,I can listen to tons of radio stations, podcast, espn games for free on all platform and in just .99 cent i get pro version with which i can record stations.

[pktm]

Does kickstarter count?

[rokhayakebe]

getclicky