11
11 Comments

Don't sleep on Google Sheets for backend infra!

For analytics on Timestamps usage I log directly into a Google Sheet😂

And this actually works great! Minimal infra, structured, fast (no querying GBs of server logs), and I can manually touch up the data (needed for the user column).

Don't sleep on Google Sheets for backend infra🤪

posted to Icon for group Developers
Developers
on September 3, 2020
  1. 2

    Haha, agreed! I just launched Opsgrid, which uses Google Sheets for free server monitoring data retention. It's stretching things a bit - I can store about a year's worth of per-minute metrics at a width of 10 columns - but so far it's been working fairly well.

  2. 1

    Google Sheets are awesome as an interface. Which is why so many things are poping up around using Google sheets as a core component. Sheets to Site/Api/Ecom page etc etc

  3. 1

    I use Google sheets for a project
    The only complaint I have is that the API sometimes of not reachable

  4. 1

    Does google offer an option to expose sheet data through an api or do you use a third party service specifically for that?

    1. 2

      There’s an Api, and you should be able to find a lib for your language

  5. 1

    I was actually thinking of using Sheets for a small side project! Wanted to modernize this hard-to-navigate directory of real estate tech companies (https://www.cretech.com/directory/company?page=1&sortField=company_name&sortBy=true&companyids=&searchFields=0) by scraping the contents and using Airtable as a simple database for my own directory, would you recommend Sheets instead?

    1. 1

      @AndrewKamphey? Would you recommend Airtable 😜

      1. 1

        I would recommend trying sheets.

    2. 1

      Can't comment on Airtable, but sheets has worked well for me, though I'm not exactly using it as a database. I have heard of others using it as a simple db though (including Patrick Mckenzie).

  6. 1

    Yeah, it's nice for some use cases - but be aware of the limits.

Trending on Indie Hackers
I built a tool directory that doesn't pretend every founder has the same needs User Avatar 57 comments AI helped me ship faster. Then I forgot what my product actually does. User Avatar 36 comments Drop your landing page URL. I'll use Ferguson to tell you why visitors might be leaving User Avatar 33 comments Most early-stage SaaS companies miss churn signals — here’s how to catch them early User Avatar 26 comments How I Run a 1.7M Product Search Engine at 66ms on a $0 Hosting Budget User Avatar 18 comments I thought picking a voice for my app would take a day. It rebuilt everything. User Avatar 18 comments