Addictive, fun, quick, yet interesting and subtle if you're into strategy games. I think you have a potential winner on your hands. Some polish and tweak may be needed based on feedback here, but a mobile app could make a killing
At one point, I was helping a great speaker build her first conference, which was a smashing success. When we turned on the ticketing platform on, orders started pouring in
In parallel, I was building my first side project, or more precisely I was starting to add pricing for the first time to a side project
As a result I had, at the same time, a stream of several thousands of euros, and MY FIRST 19€ from something I BUILT MYSELF
I was incredibly more proud of the latter. There is a sense of pride, of accomplishment, in thinking that you've built something useful enough for someone to open their wallet for you
As with all usage-based product, when you start it is cheap (much cheaper than building on your own), then as you grow your resources will hopefully scale with the number of users.
If your resources don't scale with usage, yes, you have a problem, but I'd say not limited to algolia
What's different is that with other products, i.e., those that have clear and understandable pricing, you can forecast the future costs and make a decision about whether it's an affordable solution for the particular product/business you're building. With Algolia, you can't.
Why would I want to build a product/business that uses Algolia technology as a key component when I have no idea whether the eventual cost of Algolia will be acceptable? I wouldn't, which is why despite Algolia's extremely attractive features, I have time and time again been unable to recommend its use.
I was a very inexperienced developer with tutorial-level experience of Rails, and I learned javascript from Algolia client tutorial. I have a 50-emails support thread with their CEO and CTO when they were doing YC.
This level of patience and care at onboarding a new dev was incredible and I always rooted for them. I came to know them better a few years later (small world) and they are absolutely adorable, very down to earth and modest despite their tremendous growth
But one thing has not changed : when you implement Algolia in a project, it feels like magic. The speed + convenience combo is unbeatable
it matters but not in the sense that everybody should aim for a super large corporation.
It matters because it validates that cooperatives can grow very large, and refutes the claims such as "yes it's nice, but of course it works only for small ventures and could never grow)
No it shouldn't (even if I agree with your sentiment about company, growth and probably life in general). People interested in coop model have a legitimate interest in proving that it can work for various business size
