Hello World!
I wanted to take a moment to introduce the world to RocketFlag.
I’ve been building this product over the past few months, mostly to solve a problem I have seen encountered in countless teams I’ve worked in, but one that is a solved problem.
What is RocketFlag
At it’s core, RocketFlag is a feature flagging (toggle) system, and its purpose is to be free to solve the problem of enabling teams to release faster, and more often. This is a central belief of mine and one of my career aspirations, to help teams ultimately release faster and more often as well as safely.
Feature flagging tools do this by enabling code to go out which may not be accessible for days, weeks, months or dare I say it, years, until the team is ready. When I say team, I don’t just mean the software developers, I also mean the support team, the product managers, QA, marketing, and the list goes on. It takes a team to release new features and support them well, so just because the code is written and deployed, it doesn’t mean everyone in the team is necessarily ready to go.
Feature flagging enables that.
This is where RocketFlag comes in.
Why build RocketFlag?
I developed this product because I saw a gap in the market of free tools which supported developers using feature flags in a simple, and easy to use manner.
With two lines of code you can integrate feature flags into your application and easily get going.
const rocketflag = createRocketflagClient();
const flag = await rocketflag.getFlag("IFldMzqP5jtv9wAL");
And in those lines you’ll have your flag object back and then make decisions about what to enable for your users.
I made this as easy as possible with the Node SDK with more SDKs planned.
RocketFlag also has a few nice bonus features too which are all free and included.
- Cohorts: enable your feature flag for specific users or groups.
- Traffic Splits: enable your flag for a percentage of users.
Ok, how do you make money if it’s free?
If you like what you’re hearing you might be thinking well, what’s the catch? How does this app make money? And it’s a good question to ask. Firstly, let me begin by saying I have no interest in harvesting data about your usage or your users. I don’t store anything that’s not required for the core service to work. There are some paid plans for those who need more features. Realistically, its more of a “I want to support this” rather than anything else, but there are some useful tools in there that people may wish to take advantage of.
Special License
If you’re an enterprise or have special requirements and you want to make use of RocketFlag, I have a special option where you can buy a one-time license of the product. This is aimed at organisations who might have strict data controls or operate in highly regulated environments. Or for those who need to use the service offline, such as if they’re packing software for use in locations which have no internet. This license was inspired by the 37 Signals team who created Once.com.
In the purchase you will get:
- Instructions on how to set it up
- All the source code
- Support if something goes wrong
- The ability to make any modifications you want
In summary
So why use RocketFlag? In short:
- it’s extremely fast
- it’s free (and yes, really, free)
- it’s really easy to use
I’d love to hear what you think about RocketFlag. Give it a go, and please reach out to me with any questions, I’d love to help you and your team move faster.