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The Notifications Strategy that Put Us in the Product Hunt Newsletter

Getting noticed on Product Hunt is a start-up founder's dream, but it’s not an easy task. There’s only one chance at listing a specific domain, so it can’t be a short sighted attempt. The internet is a web of communication, and depending on how it is used, teams can effectively notify their communities about their Product Hunt launch.

Why You Can't Replace REST with GraphQL

When I Googled “what is GraphQL” to learn more about the network protocols, all I saw was a comparison between REST and GraphQL. Most of the conclusions said, “use GraphQL.” It felt very binary (and trendy, for that matter), which is a problem because each product and use-case is unique. The fact is, whatever is newest and shiniest gets recommended more loudly. But you have to weigh the trade-offs and come up with a solution that is best for your situation.

How to Add a Notification System to your MVP

As a product engineer, you likely understand the value of incorporating notifications functionality into your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Here's what you can accomplish by building notifications: Drive engagement. Notifications inform customers that there’s something going on in your application that’s worthy of their attention. Timely notifying your audience about valuable content or interactions with other users is great for building trust and engagement.

Product Hunt Launch | Troy Goode | Courier.com | Wuphf 2.0

The rest of the Courier team and I have been building an exciting new way to design, send, and monitor all of your app's user notifications. As you may have heard in my video above, we understand that notifications are difficult to get right. So much so that most of us aren't excited about receiving many of them.

Who Knew Email Subjects Are So Complicated

Did you know that email subjects, by default, only support 127 characters?! I didn’t, and I ran into a “fun” puzzle of a problem earlier this year when a client of ours noticed a problem with Courier-built emails in Microsoft Outlook. Small rendering issues and bugs like this can give the wrong impression to a recipient of an email. It can make the end user feel the product they are using is poorly planned or not tested.

From MVP to Production Ready With Serverless

Having been at startups my entire career, I’ve encountered the dichotomy between speed and scale when building software products.The usual attitude entrepreneurs take when building the first iterations of their products is “...we aren’t anywhere close to facing problems of scale, so let’s worry about that when we get there.” This first version of the software is built and shipped fast, and it’s only a matter of time before engineers realize that they simply don&#8217