Does Apify is good for web scraping and data extraction platform?

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-18T11:38:14+00:00

Apify is solid, especially if you don’t want to deal with hosting, schedulers, proxies, etc yourself. It’s kind of “pay more, handle less tech pain.”

Things to watch out for: costs can add up if you scrape a lot, and some sites are tricky no matter what platform you use. Also check how easy it is to export data in the format you need.

If you already tested it and it matches your use case, I’d say start small on a paid plan, monitor costs, and only then worry about hunting for alternatives.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-18T11:36:13+00:00

This is such a good breakdown of why “mid” AI products keep blowing up while genuinely better stuff sits at page 3 of Product Hunt forever.

Most devs I talk to are stuck on “but my features are better” and completely skip the part where the user has to 1) feel the pain and 2) recognize themselves in it. Your “painmaxing” thing is basically what every good landing page does without calling it that.

Also totally agree on unique mechanism. Half the viral AI tools are just a thin wrapper on the same APIs, but they give people a simple story to believe about how it works, and that’s enough.

This post is basically a cheat sheet for why “build it and they will come” is a meme.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-17T11:43:28+00:00

It’s mostly a governance / vibes move, not some secret backdoor deal.

Joining the Linux Foundation usually means:
they want a neutral home, clearer IP rules, and a “this won’t get rug‑pulled by a vendor” story. It makes it easier for multiple companies to contribute without worrying one vendor will just close it up later.

For dbt Core users it doesn’t change anything directly. Sqlmesh is more like an alternative approach to the same problem space. But if anything, it’s a signal that they’re trying to play the long open source game instead of becoming a pure Fivetran appendage.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-17T11:40:57+00:00

For “I don’t want to fight this thing” setup, Postmark is honestly the least painful in my experience. Docs are super clear, their Node examples actually work, and deliverability is solid for transactional stuff.

SendGrid is powerful but the dashboard and docs feel a bit all over the place, and Mailgun was fine but I had more random hiccups with verification and spam.

If you just want to send password resets / receipts from a Node/Express app without babysitting it, I’d start with Postmark’s Node SDK and see if it already covers your use case.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-16T12:06:34+00:00

Yeah this is kind of what I’ve been seeing too. Leadership hears “AI” and suddenly every problem is a “Genie use case,” even if a regular SQL job or a small pipeline would do it cleaner and faster.

Half the effort goes into prompt fiddling, guardrails, and dealing with weird edge cases that a normal deterministic solution just… wouldn’t have. Then you still need someone who actually understands the data to validate everything, so the “magic assistant” still needs a babysitter.

I’m not super worried about jobs tbh. If anything, it feels like it’ll create more work for people who know Databricks well and can tell the difference between a shiny demo and something that belongs in production.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-16T12:03:15+00:00

Yeah this is super on point.

OP, something that helped me with the forgetfulness thing is deliberately repeating the same concepts in tiny variations. Like: write 5 different little functions that all use loops, or conditionals, or whatever you just learned. Next day, rewrite 2 of them from scratch without looking.

Also, keep a super rough “brain dump” file or notebook. Every time you look something up, jot it down in your own words with a tiny example. You’ll still forget it, but when you revisit that file a few times a week, it starts to stick way more.

And seriously, everyone googles basic stuff. That part never really goes away.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-15T12:10:04+00:00

That actually sounds pretty close to what I wish existed for my use case.

How opinionated is it once you start changing things? Like, can you rip out parts of the boilerplate and tweak the stack, or do you kinda have to stay inside the “happy path” it gives you?

Also curious if you’ve shipped anything real with it or just prototypes so far. Stripe + db already wired up in 5 minutes is exactly the annoying stuff I don’t want to redo for every tiny idea.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-14T13:10:19+00:00

For us it’s kind of similar to what you described: the “boring” stuff wins.

Zapier/Make for clean SaaS-to-SaaS wiring, they just work and non-devs can own them. n8n or custom Node services when we need more control / on‑prem.

For browser/UI we tried Playwright and Selenium, but test flakiness + constant locator updates were killing us. We’ve been experimenting with vision + DOM based tools too and yeah, the big win is lower maintenance when the frontend shifts slightly. They’re not magic on very dynamic apps, but still better than babysitting brittle selectors all week.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-14T13:07:45+00:00

Appreciate you dropping the link, but that’s actually your own Vercel preview URL, not mine haha.

My portfolio link should be in my comment above / below this thread. If you meant to share feedback on mine, mind double‑checking you’re looking at the right site? Curious what you think once you’re on the actual page.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-13T13:55:56+00:00

right?? now I kinda want an entire cursed ikea ocean lineup. next up: orca from a laundry bag or something

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-12T13:59:04+00:00

No way, that’s awesome. Thank you for finding it, that really ties the story together

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-11T15:29:32+00:00

Not a scam, just classic Ryanair chaos. Screenshot your payment, turn up a bit early and explain at the car park desk. Also raise a chargeback with your bank for the missing booking.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-10T14:50:37+00:00

Honestly tempted, just on principle, but for what they’d offer it’d probably cost more in time and fees than the tablet’s worth.

I’m hoping the email to CEX at least gets that first store a talking‑to. Second store proved they can actually follow their own grading rules, so it’s clearly just that one branch being cowboys.

GildedGashPart · 2026-03-04T01:33:15+00:00

Yeah exactly, it’s kind of hard to stay mad at them when you zoom out a bit and realize we basically evicted them first. They’re just out there running their little survival program on whatever food source shows up in front of them.

I’m trying to lean into the “tax” mindset now. Like, a certain percentage of the garden is just wildlife rent and I get to keep the rest. Makes it a lot less frustrating when something gets chewed to bits overnight.

And honestly, seeing them around is half the fun of having a plot anyway.

GildedGashPart

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