So here's the thing - I was helping my friend set up his portfolio site last weekend. Everything was going smooth. Nice design, fast site, Vercel h...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Well, as you said, the point you are trying to make is,
But the main reason those platforms exist is to reduce development time, development cost, scalability etc.
Many do indeed make their own stuff, I myself have build utility apps that only I use and many of them are either built and hosted on netlify/vercel as you said. But, few things you need to keep in mind in my opinion is that.
TIME: If you invest development time into something already existing you are losing time to make something that does not exist. Which is literally opportunity cost.
COST : If you choose to build something Instead of paying for a platform you are still paying a cost, and the cost is of paying yourself.
Scalability: Generally the platforms providing services have to be compliant with many performance optimization & handle security vulnerabilities which needs to be revisited every now and then. Now, it is true you can handle all of those by yourself. But, it is generally cheaper opportunity cost wise to let it be handled by a company/platform who has developers that are doing the same thing, but because they are selling their service to many customers they are charging less than the cost of effort you would put into the application.
Obviously, its one man's opinion (my opinion in this case), but I feel that if you use a platform for existing services, you get more time to put in more features/ innovations in your application. In the long run, this generally results into more things done with a short span of time.
Say his weekend time that he spent was 150$. Wont this be covered in 6/7 months?
The point was to avoid paying to these SaaS for so simple services, specially when you are a developer yourself.
I agree with what you say ....
But if we are building a portfolio site or a static pages then why not build it .
You are not self hosting when you use Vercel and Suprabase.
The easiest way to build a form I know is using Netlify forms. I looked at the pricing and it is 1 credit per legitimate submission. You get 300 credits for free.
If you get more than 300 mails on your contact form, that means you should start putting money into your website.
I meant to say you can host it yourself not on prem hosting
But was it really necessary to store all the form information in a database and have a dashboard? What about GDPR or other applicable data privacy laws?
If your friend isn't getting flooded with emails it seems to me like simply sending the email to a mailbox would have been much simpler to do. I know that for statically hosted sites this is not an option, but you mentioned that it's deployed to Vercel so you do have access to server functions.
But I also understand that there is a real need for projects like these. I had a quick glance at the code and I'll check it out in more detail after my vacation because this seems like something worth contributing to!
India f*cks GDPR :D
That is a valid point! I mainly built this as a simple side project to make it easier for people to deploy their own instances. Since it is self-hosted, the user retains full control over their data, which helps with privacy concerns.
Thanks for checking it out! Enjoy your vacation, and I look forward to hearing your ideas and seeing your contributions later
Netflix for a database insert and an email??? Netflix ??
"netflix money" -> money which we can use to pay for netflix
Oh okay!! LOL
My bad I should have quoted that
Signs that I'm getting old . . . (but then I have a habit of staying off the internet and get information from books, none of the books I've read have quoted the word "nextflix money") . . . isolation is both good and bad.
😅I mean when I read it myself even I got confused then I added marker to quote but forgot to add that in final draft 😂
Why are forms sometimes perceived as a “Bad Practice”?
Friction: Forcing users to fill out 10 fields (name, surname, phone, subject...) just to send you a question is a barrier. People prefer a direct click on an email (mailto link).
Distrust and Black Hole: Users often do not know whether the form has actually been sent, to whom it has been sent and when (or if at all) they will receive a response. An email in the sent mail gives them a sense of control.
Technical failures: Broken validation, poorly configured SMTP on the server or aggressive spam filters can cause the message to never arrive without one of the parties knowing about it.
Aggressive Captcha: Images of tractors or traffic lights are frustrating for users and reduce the conversion rate.
Nice work
Thanks a lot!
If you found it useful, I’d really appreciate a ⭐ on GitHub:👉github.com/Varshithvhegde/formrelay
Impressive
Thanks
This is super impressive Varshith!
Thank You!!
DIY solutions are great for learning, but the value of paid form services isn’t just storing data. It’s the reliability, deliverability and spam‑filtering they provide. For many sites the hidden cost of maintenance and handling abuse ends up higher than a $20/month subscription.
Exactly i totally agree this solution may not be scalable or reliable there are lots of moving part. But I felt that i could build it so built it ..
Can you develop a medical service appointment application
I can do it if it is "legit"
We can.
Love this mindset. So many “$20/month problems” are really just weekend builds once you strip the fear away.
Self-hosting with Vercel + Supabase hits that sweet spot between control and simplicity — and your point about owning small pieces of the stack really lands. Great reminder that we don’t need SaaS for everything.
Thank You!!
Thanks for sharing , this is a good tool for many use cases. I can see myself using this
Thank You!!! It means a lot
why not to use simple free Cloudflare?
developers.cloudflare.com/pages/tu...
Yes this also an option!!
Didn’t want to pay for a form, so built his own — impressive, but kinda extra 😄
Yeah I know 😂 but the feeling of building something ,nothing can beat it
I hope it continues to help and evolve
Yes sure thanks
I like it. Great!!
Thank You!!!
Страхотно 😃
Благодаря!
(Thank You!)
Well done! :D
Thank You!!!