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Ask HN: Please review my startup: TheSunnyTrail

85 points by octavdruta ↗ HN
Hello guys & girls, we are looking for a helping hand from the HN community (especially from people that run web apps that use the SaaS model)

We enable founders / CEOs to easily to track the financial performance of their web apps in order to make better business & product decisions.

Here's how it works: Companies can use our API to send us transactions (signups, payments, upgrades, downgrades, cancellations) occurring in their webapp. Our web interface then allows them to keep track of metrics such as churn, customer lifetime value and others.

We'd love to explore whether this is something that might be helpful to you and hear your feedback.

You can check out the product over here: http://www.thesunnytrail.com

50 comments

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coderdude
Nice site design. It's certainly unique and you stand apart from the crowd.

I just registered an account and I'm playing with it right now. I really, really like the getting started flow after the registration page. Just pick your programming language, then you're presented with the methods for installing the API wrappers, then you get your API key and help on making calls, handling errors, etc. I'm not left in the dark on how to proceed -- I'm shown what to do next.

The API wrapper for Python looks simple and easy to use. I could easily see myself using this for my next Web app.

For some reason on https://www.thesunnytrail.com/start, while logged-in, I am unable to click on the Stream, Overview, or Plans links below the logo. Also, there is no page title.

The settings page is dead-simple -- I like that.

Without being able to click on those other links that's all I could test so far. However, so far so good! Good luck, I think this has a lot of potential.

Edit: Played with the demo account. The dashboard looks good. I really like the stream feature. I think that's something I'd have open in a browser tab, going back to it every 10 minutes or so to refresh the page and see if anything has happened. It definitely appeals to the "stats update addict" in me.

andreisavu
Thanks for feedback. You are unable to click on Stream, Overview or Plans because you haven't sent any data. I agree this behavior can be improved. :)
kolektiv
I rarely comment on these threads, but I had a quick look at yours and I like it a lot. It's fresh, nicely designed (although some of it could be a little "tighter" perhaps although I'd struggle to quantify that). I also think it fulfills a useful niche. I think it's going to live or die by the price points to some degree - companies who can afford X probably already have the capabilities of visualising this data, where X is the problematic point, if that makes sense.

But I think there's a niche there. It's certainly something I'd consider using if a project had this requirement.

Only one design point I'm not so keen on - the cutting off of the descender on the "y" of sunny trail on internal pages - it just feels a little jarring to my eye. Fairly minor quibble though - nice project!

rjrodger
Agreed, site design is very nice.

Any plans for node.js support? I would install today if you had that :)

One minor UX quibble: after signup, it's not so obvious that my registration has succeeded if I have to step out of the linear flow - e.g. to read the API docs. You need a "Hi Foo" message somewhere.

andreisavu
I believe you can write a wrapper in node.js in minutes. Check the raw API docs at https://www.thesunnytrail.com/developers I would do it myself but I'm not familiar with node.js. Let's get in touch. You can find me at andrei@thesunnytrail.com
subbu
Beautiful design. It definitely addresses a problem. Pricing seems to be on the higher side. But then again I wouldn't mind paying that if my own product had revenues and could afford it.
rjrodger
You kinda also need a proper About Us page - photos, bios, investors? etc. Where are you based?
coderdude
Honest question: Does anyone really care about seeing photos and bios of people in the company? I don't think I've ever looked that information up, even if I pay that company money. I agree though that there should be some kind of about page on the site. They also need to list their privacy policy and possibly a terms of use page as well.
gyardley
Honest answer: yes, I care. Like the privacy policy and terms of use, executive photos and bios are one of my 'this is a real company and therefore it's safe to pay them money' filters. It's not as important as things like SSL on the login page or not sending back my password in plaintext, but it still matters.
andreisavu
Honest answer: I also care. It's not like we are trying to hide something. Most of the time Octav it's available on the Live Chat and we write individual emails to all the users that signup for the service. As side note security is really important for us and we are taking all the measures needed to ensure data privacy.
JamesDB
Yes I think it's important. Nice to see the people behind a site, so it's not just a faceless organisation.
mise
Yes, it's important to know who you're dealing with, who you're giving business information to.
andreisavu
We are two founders: Octav Druta http://www.octavdruta.com/ and Andrei Savu http://andreisavu.ro/ working from Bucharest, Romania. We've got no investment so far.
leftnode
Are you bootstrapping this entirely (i.e., have quit your normal job and working solely on this?) or are you working at a regular job and working on this on the side?
andreisavu
We are working mainly on this. We don't have a regular job.
zrgiu
I feel very proud when a fellow (or two) romanian comes out with something like this. I love it, and I think I'll use it in the future. Great work!
mbesto
Awesome! Romania is a huge hotbed for technology right now! (i'm literally sitting in our offices in Cluj right now) Good luck to you guys.
kgthegreat
Did you guys do the design as well?
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bradleyjoyce
I absolutely love the idea and the look/feel of this app. When I first heard about it I thought... this is what I've been looking for.. an easy way to auto capture and generate all these important metrics!

So I got started immediately with integrating it into TweetSaver. Unfortunately, I ran into a show stopper pretty quick.

When passing a signup event, they require you to send a unique username. This was a major bummer since for the free level of my app, users are not required to give an email address and in general emails may not be unique to a user in the system. This essentially renders sunnytrail unusable for me.

The best part though is that co-founder Octav is always in the live chat on the site, so I explained my situation and he said they would take a look to see if there is a better solution. I'm anxious to see if they can make some changes that will allow me to use their service!

andreisavu
Hi Brad! I'm glad you like Sunnytrail. Your problem can be easily solved. I suppose that you are generating for each users some sort of unique ID. My advice is to use that to generate an username (if not already available) and a dummy email address. You should be able to update those later when that customer upgrades to a paid plan. TweetSaver looks great! Get back to us on email if you've got more questions.
bradleyjoyce
that feels pretty hacky to be honest.

the real issue is that one person may have multiple accounts in the app, and they may want to use the same email address for all accounts... I have no reason to enforce a unique email address.

It's odd that Sunnytrail would when there is usually a common unique identifier across all apps for users.. user id

andreisavu
Sunnytrail does not enforce an unique email address or an unique username. We are tracking users based on the supplied internal user ID (or an email address hash if an internal user ID is not provided).
bradleyjoyce
hmm, I'm pretty sure that's what Octav had told me in chat.. either way you require an email address...

    RuntimeError: The request is invalid: {"message": "invalid JSON message", "errors": [["", "A valid email address is mandatory"]]}
andreisavu
required but not unique. just generate a dummy one based on the user id.
bradleyjoyce
so just really curious.. what's the reasoning behind requiring it?
andreisavu
we are planning to add some features that depend on that email address (some sort of advanced client profile)
smoody
This is a great example of someone finding a nice, untapped niche that was staring us all in the face. Well done!
octavdruta
Thanks, everyone for sharing your ideas / comments / questions! Keep'em coming :-) If any of you wants to get in touch via email you can find my address over here: http://scr.im/sunnytrail
unohoo
There is a market for this no doubt about it. Although several startups I know prefer to do this internally - for privacy reasons.
[dead] jakedahn
This is fantastic; I had been thinking of doing something similar just for my private use and I can guarantee it probably would have been hacked together and not very pretty.

Really love your ui, and will definitely be using the service for future sass apps I build.

andreyvit
Octav, I've spent a bit of time staring at your signup page because it wasn't clear if you're asking for my full name or for a login (here — http://cl.ly/1E2e1S3B2y2J3R0N2r3U).

Other than that, looks terrific.

octavdruta
We're asking for a username (for login) rather than your full name :-)
booduh
UI comments:

- Separate the primary call-to-action from everything else. On your homepage, the bright orange call-to-action is competing for attention. Perhaps things can be rearranged such that the primary call-to-action is in the direct reading path of the user. Also, I strongly recommend de-emphasizing/gray-scaling other links/logos (for example, the green link, "Check out the Sunnytrail dashboard", is the first action I saw).

- Play up the video a bit more. Make the video placeholder smaller, then place it where the "green hills" are now (the hills take up too much space, for very little value added).

- Tighten up your "tag line". What are the revenue metrics? Be specific and concise when presenting the purpose/value of your product. A useful formula: 3-7 (basically, keep it short) words to grab the user, then one supporting sentence below.

I think messaging will be your best advantage here. If you can communicate clearly and concisely exactly what you are doing and how you make it EASY to do, then you may find yourself better off.

PS: to be honest, I actually don't know what I can do with these metrics. I need to be sold.

karlclement
Hello there,

First of all, the overall design is beautiful, bright and esthetically pleasing. I enjoy the use of the bright colors and vector graphics to make the home page more appealing.

Although I do think that there should be more information on the home page. Probably a tabbed format or a simple slideshow to display the main features of the application. I understand you are aiming for simplicity but I personally enjoy a more feature filled application.

When visitors access the "Features" page, you can add a more detailed description explaining how the application works. Maybe a step by step process to setting up the API.

The "Pricing" page is great, simple and answers the most common questions users might have.

The "Developers" page is also very instructive. Although as a PHP developer, I would like to be able to access a wrapper example or a step by step tutorial explaining the process. Maybe a tutorial to match the Demo Dashboard setup.

For the link to the blog, I would have liked to see a dedicated blog for thesunnytrail.com. Seems unprofessional. Could be a simple Wordpress installation with a matching theme. You could even use a simpler platform such as Posterous and create a matching theme.

I enjoyed the simple and straightforward "Dashboard", but the sidebar seems empty. Maybe add additional submenu items horizontally under the main tab bar.The interactive jQuery charts are a must.

Overall, I think this is a fantastic idea and a fantastic application. Great job. I think it will be very popular for any web startup. Good luck!

octavdruta
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback Karl!
dlsay
Very nice. I spend so much of my time designing reporting like this or doing it manually in excel. I especially like the cohort reporting. Im launching a new product now and will seriously look at a this. Any details on the pricing?
octavdruta
Not at this moment. We are going to offer pricing tiers based on the size of your userbase.