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

28 points| r00k | 14 years ago |hackerengine.com | reply

20 comments

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[+] bcardarella|14 years ago|reply
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.

[+] _pius|14 years ago|reply
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.

[+] smackjer|14 years ago|reply
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.

[+] adrianpike|14 years ago|reply
- 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.

[+] r00k|14 years ago|reply
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.

[+] aeontech|14 years ago|reply
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?
[+] r00k|14 years ago|reply
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.

[+] outside1234|14 years ago|reply
add Devise and i'll give you $4.99 for the whole thing.
[+] webbruce|14 years ago|reply
Yeah, add Devise and I'll buy it actually
[+] r00k|14 years ago|reply
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!

[+] nhebb|14 years ago|reply
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."