Changes to our stack in 2024

We keep a pretty faithful list of downstream services and apps we use, and just published a big update to backdate some of the changes from the past few months. You can view the full list there, of course, but I thought it'd be fun to chat a bit more about the specific changes:

New additions

• Audiogest, a really lovely AI-powered transcription tool for internal notes and meetings.
• Notion, which I used way back in 2018 for external-facing documentation and am now using for internal documentation. It's expensive (seat-based pricing always is when you're working with freelancers!) but not so expensive that I feel tempted to move to some other solution instead.
• Cloudflare, and in particular their Worker abstraction, which replaced my $200/mo Imgix bill with... $2/mo.
• Pika, a nice web app for making simple share images and screenshots.

Removals

• We churned from AHrefs (still a great tool!) because we weren't getting enough day-to-day value out of it to justify the $99/month price.
• Bear, since we're back to using Notion for internal documentation. (More people than just me need to know how stuff works!)
• Imgix, as aforementioned.
• Texts, which has grown a little too brittle for my use case — I'm back to just alt-tabbing between seven apps at all times.
• Sketch, which was ousted by the aforementioned Pika. (I still go to their marketing page every few weeks, though, as sheer inspiration.)

Changes & notes

• Due to reputation and operations issues we encountered, we migrated a huge swath of our traffic from SES onto Postmark. There's still a good amount left to transfer, but that decision has been borne out in the results thus far.
• Looking at the list in full, I'm not particularly unhappy with either the quantity nor the sum cost as it stands today. Margins are good, and I know I could save a solid $200/mo if I worked to build my own replacements of the Twitter API integration and DNSHelper but that just seems like a poor use of my time.