We needed a payment processor that works seamlessly across the world, including African markets. Stripe isn't available everywhere we operate. Paystack gave us card payments, bank transfers, and a clean API with minimal integration effort.
Speed. We built a polished UI without writing a single CSS file. The utility-first approach meant we could iterate on designs in the JSX directly without context-switching. Once you get used to it, going back to traditional CSS feels painfully slow.
Deploy a Node.js backend with zero DevOps. We pushed to main and had a production server running in minutes. The logs, environment variables, and auto-deploys just work. Heroku's free tier disappeared, and Railway filled that gap perfectly for an early-stage product.
Postgres + auth + realtime subscriptions in one platform, with a generous free tier. We went from zero to a working backend in days instead of weeks. The realtime feature lets us push live sync progress and notifications without managing WebSockets ourselves. Firebase couldn't match the SQL flexibility we needed.
We needed an AI that could reliably extract structured insights from messy user feedback — interviews, support tickets, Notion docs. Claude's ability to follow complex instructions and return consistent JSON made it the clear choice over GPT-4 for our pipeline. The output quality on qualitative data analysis is noticeably better.
Gemini