[jkarneges]

Hi, our company (https://fanout.io) was the one that was interviewed here. The formatting of the article seems a little messed up. Hopefully they fix that.

For those curious about the technical specifics of our two offerings, we had (and still have) both a hybrid proxy/broker system and a basic JSON messaging system. The proxy system is the reason we started the company. However, we built the JSON system so we could compete directly with companies like Pusher and PubNub.

In old versions of our websites, we tended to highlight the JSON system over the other. For example, in 2014, the "Simple" category was promoted first: https://web.archive.org/web/20140207193606/https://fanout.io...

In 2015, we changed it use a left/right flow. However, the proxy system was still branded as advanced: https://web.archive.org/web/20150315032351/https://fanout.io...

Today, the proxy system is the only one we promote on the site. In order to reach that point, we had to figure out how to make the proxy system more usable. We've succeeded at this by creating very fancy integration libraries, such as our Django library: https://docs.fanout.io/docs/django-quickstart

[janekm]

Following on from your links, if I understand it correctly, Pushpin: https://pushpin.org/docs/about/ is essentially an open source version of your service that you support (I presume you alluded to this in the interview as "OSS is a good driver of traffic for us").

I believe that is a great model for smaller SaaS companies to follow, as it reduces a lot of the risks ("use our service to reduce your time to market. If you don't like it later on, here's your out."). Great stuff!

[jkarneges]

"here's your out" is a good way of putting it. :)

When I'm on the buyer side, often one of my top concerns is understanding how I could potentially stop using a thing. Usually this comes down to selecting tools based on open technology.