As a developer what would prevent you from using my backend server API?
Hey there,
I'd be thankful to know what would prevent you (if any reasons) to use my product StaticBackend as your backend server API. It's a lightweight Firebase that is now open source, it can be self-hosted for free.
Here's a quick tweet I've posted showing the latest feature coming, it's a live chat kind of page with login/register, websockets communication and data persistance.
Can you share why you would not try it out. Or on the contrary I'm on the right path.
Is it clear to you what it is trying to do?
I'm trying to have the documentation as complete and easy to follow as possible. But it's certainly not easy. Any issue that jump to you with the docs?
This is highly appreciated.
Hi Dominic, I'll answer since I had found your website some time ago when I ran into it the first time and thought it was a good idea but somehow I bounced back.
As an experienced developer, my main driver towards making a decision of this kind is how can this save me time?. Particularly, with features or problems that have been solved already and don't need the wheel to be reinvented. So I think your "Launch your app faster" value proposition is great.
So your landing page satisfied my first requirement right-away. However, as I scanned the page, this went through my mind:
Some take-aways
Earn trust
Firebase is backed up by Google. So I think ultimately your decision of going open-source was the best you could do to even the field and gain trust.
If you're selling to devs, documentation is your best salesman
This has been proven many times by several successful tech-oriented companies. You will want to put some effort on this part, I feel it needs to be more detailed and easier to read.
Help users understand it all quickly
I had some trouble going through the "Getting started" tutorial. Not because I can't understand the code, but because of all of the non-related parts (ie. document.getElementById...) that only add noise to what should be a quick example for me to understand this in less than a minute that have nothing to do with what I want to see.
I bet you'll have more success having a "StaticBackend is framework-agnostic, but here are a few examples: React | Angular | Vue".
Also, it wasn't 100% clear to me how this worked until I visited the "Firebase alternative" section. You should be saying this in your homepage.
I hope this helps. Your product is great, congrats on the fantastic job you've done! I'd be happy to give it a shot for a product I'm about to start building, at some point.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. It is extremely useful to me.
It's always hard to put yourself into someone's else place and try to determine what others are thinking.
Again, thanks, really appreciated.