Would love to hear your feedback about my MVP
Hello Indie Hackers,
I launched today imager200 as a solo founder. imager200 is a HTTP API that receives images (as bytes) process them based on the operation you choose (resize, rotate, compress,...) and either returns them back to you (as bytes) or store them somewhere of your choice. I have now integrations for 5 storage options: Dropbox, Google Drive/Photos, AWS S3, and storing directly to a host over ssh. I am planning to add more based on user feedback.
The idea may seem odd at first glance, but this is mainly aimed at software developers who deal with applications that process lots of images. Being a software developers myself, I noticed that developers often need to setup / manage backend services that deal with images themselves. The objective is to make their life easier. This may be considered as kind of B2B service.
What do you guys think about the idea ? https://www.indiehackers.com/product/imager200
Also do you have any advices on good ways promote the product ? Besides here, and producthunt, I am not sure what are the best platforms to do some non intrusive friendly marketing.
Thanks.
Are you aware of Cloudinary? Seems like the major player in the market you're targeting. Try setting up a page on LandingPing so that you have something to share and collect early users off of while you validate your idea. Forum posts are great but are ephemeral as you have probably experienced.
Hey! I am aware of Cloudinary. I am trying to differentiate imager200 from Cloudinary by giving the user the freedom to use their own storage service. For now, there is only 5, but planning to add more in the future. It could even be a good idea to integrate with their storage. Also, the low pricing compared to Cloudinary could be a competitive advantage. From operations standpoint, Cloudinary has some advanced ones like face detection...etc but may not be as demanded as the standard day to day operations like compress, resize, ...etc By the way,There is also another player https://www.imgix.com/. They also have an advanced set of operations, but you need to store the image in their CDN and there you will be charged by request.
I just created a test ping in LandingPing, let's see!
You're absolutely right, imager200 is basically a "headless" version of Cloudinary. That's a great advantage imo, everyone is very wary of vendor lock-in nowadays. I would actually love to use it on LandingPing!
We think alike. I am glad you could see the added value for the product, and this is what I had in mind while working on it. "no vendor lock-in" is mentioned on the landing page by the way. I am also planning on adding new features that would set the product apart like pipelines which would allow chaining several operations and post operations in one request and have the backend work on them asynchronously with one request. Thanks for checking out imager200, there is a free basic plan by the way.
yay I already got two subscribers on LandingPing
Oh I absolutely missed that you already had a landing page, I assumed you only had the product page on indiehackers since that's what you linked! I'm going to use it then and let you know how it goes ;)
yes there is: www.imager200.io, I also added a new "how-to" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jIVNjyHZGA
let me know how it goes!
Firebase did image resizing as an installable cloud function (recent addition, and I think that installable marketplace might be something you'd be able to publish to at some point)
It integrate triggers of image uploaded to storage/S3 which is a side you should consider, the input/trigger integration
Probably no-code/baas, could target such platforms like firebase users and it's alternatives...
Might be nice if the landing page early on gives visual representation to the image transformations offered
Thanks hatkyinc, I will think about including the list of all transformations in the landing page.
Good point about No-code. imager200 is exactly meant for that: outsourcing the processing of images. Maybe I should start using this word in the future
I kinda mean it's an easier sell if you offer it as integration to existing platforms where people already don't want to code a backend, that's what's common to baas and no-code, while with baas commonly the writer codes JS and in co-code they commonly use a drag and drop system, for both, the closer you push it to them, the less work they need to do, the easier the sell is
API is nice and generic, but leaves much reading and thinking to the user
a JS/TS lib wrapping the API, means for a common front-end guy,
profit
in baas format this is hopefully like a github extension install (I mean like triggering by google storage/aws s3)
starts working by itself
The most generic is integrating it so something like zapier, so you might get many different input points by implementing once
This should be similar as a no-code extension from the user's POV
I see. Yes definitely offering an SDK that supports different languages and that calls the API under the hood would be a plus. It would require additional effort for maintaining though. It could be something I could hire somebody to build.
The main concern for front end direct usage is security. Since the API key is meant to be confidential and can be easily seen in the javascript. I am thinking of adding an additional method for authenticating besides API Key, e.g something that would issue some temporary access that expires after a certain time interval. This would be useful for front end direct usage. For now, I am assuming the API would be called from a backend-to-backend. Thanks!