How Zapi Makes Building Internal Tools Less Painful
- Founders
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Thomas Jiang
Jonathan Low
Building custom internal tools can be a world of hurt. It's complicated, expensive, and way too often, mind-numbingly dull. Thomas Jiang and Jonathan Low built Zapi precisely because internal software customization felt needlessly difficult. Zapi streamlines the process, ditching outsourcing nightmares and endless DIY fiddling.
Pivoting From Landing Pages to Internal Apps
Thomas and Jonathan didn't set out to fix internal software – they originally tackled landing pages. After spending way too many hours wrestling with different approaches to landing page generation and talking to potential customers, they realized landing pages weren't the real problem. Teams actually needed an easier way to build custom internal tools. So Zapi pivoted, and suddenly things started to come together.
Stateful User Environments Made Simple
Zapi uses Fly Machines to instantly provision stateful project environments in the region closest to the user. Each Machine comes pre-loaded with starter code, dependencies, and everything necessary to jump right into work.
"Fly Machines are stupid simple," Thomas says. "Anyone familiar with Docker will feel immediately at home. We didn't even bother hiring a DevOps team."
Fly Replay: No More Routing Spaghetti
Routing web traffic isn't interesting – unless you manage to screw it up. With `fly-replay`, Zapi uses a simple Fly.io app to quietly and correctly route user traffic to the apps their users create. No complex routing layers, no headaches.
"`fly-replay` wiped away an entire category of potential problems," Thomas explains. "Our routing logic is just a handful of lines of code, and it just does its job."
Zero Waste
Fly Machines' automatic suspension takes care of scaling apps up and down without human oversight so Zapi doesn't waste time or money on idle resources.
"Fly handles scaling invisibly," Thomas says. "We're free to actually build stuff rather than babysit infrastructure."
Infra That Gets Out of the Way
Fly.io won Thomas and Jonathan over with fast Machine boots, easy filesystem management, and an infrastructure model that stayed out of the way.
"We'd already used Fly.io before," Thomas adds. "Coming back was the easiest decision we made."
Zapi's lean team now spends zero hours fighting infrastructure and all of those freed up hours making internal software easier for everyone else. Just as it should be.