> The goal of the current maintenance is to fix a lot of long-standing issues with the site. The underlying infrastructure was getting very fragile as technical debt accumulated over time. A team is working very hard right now to make sure that once the site is back up, it's on much better footing and will be solid and reliable for the long term. Despite the unfortunate amount of time this is taking, it will be a major benefit to the site in the long run.
If I were a developer there I would be feeling really not very good. Minutes of downtime on the systems I’ve worked on gets my heart rate going.
The maker people I know have been migrating away from Tindie because it has felt like a sinking ship for a long time.
I really like the idea of Tindie so I hope they can succeed. I don’t understand what sequence of events led to this being such a large problem that they can’t even keep their site online. The post says something vague about the engineering team is hoping the migration work is close to finished, but it’s been years since I remember any engineering team knocking out the entire site for days without being able to restore it during a failed migration. Are they outsourcing dev work to the type of agency that bills by the hour and perpetually churns low hourly cost work to make their money in volume fixing their own code?
It can be as simple as a terraform apply wiping out huge swaths of the backend infra, getting that back, depending on how disciplined you are, can take in the order of days/weeks.
Unfortunate. Tindie is (was?) a pretty unique marketplace. Amusingly, a lot of what they were selling was probably illegal due to FCC rules: for the most part, you can't sell electronics without EMI certification and "I'm just a hobbyist" is not an excuse. Kits get a bit of leeway, but finished products don't.
Before the tariffs, I noticed that Chinese companies were trying to undercut them. I've gotten multiple mails asking me to start selling my designs with China-based outlets: they would make the PCBs, assemble them, and pay me some money for every item sold.
Can you share more information about the undercutting? I've heard of places like Elecrow trying to incentivize people to sell via their platform/OEM service but it sounds like you've had people asking you to license your designs?
I never followed up, but I didn't read it as some serious IP licensing thing. It sounded like they've come to the conclusion that they're making the stuff that's sold on Tindie anyway, so might as well set up a website and ship directly to your customers.
There are a number of things on Tindie that I have been unable to find anywhere else at any price. (Mostly small batch bespoke electronics.) I hope they figure this out.
About Sunday/Monday last week right before it went down I noticed the site was supper buggy and failing to add things to cart, I emailed support and got a "we are checking the issue". Since it went down all I've heard from support is "Please be patient. Tindie will be back up soon as we are currently performing maintenance. At this time, we do not have an estimated timeframe to provide."
The fact that it wasn't communicated at all prior and not having a timeframe makes me thing this was probably an ops screw up.
I see this a lot with small independent sites with big userbases. Instead of being honest, they hide mistakes behind maintenance or blame it on hackers.
Concerning, a professional development team should have been able to manage this switch with minimal to no downtime. Makes me wonder what other mistakes they're making.
I'm reluctant to trust my payment information with them in the future.
Yeah this sucks, I have a bunch of hobbyist orders stuck in limbo since last week -- customers have paid, but I can't pull the orders down even through the API.
I really like Tindie as a platform and have been using it since nearly the beginning...but I'd have lost the contract if I pulled this level of nonsense on a customer's production application.
It's like Etsy for small-scale electronics - if you build a cool, niche electronic device as an individual, Tindie is a marketplace to sell in low volume (possibly as a kit).
> The goal of the current maintenance is to fix a lot of long-standing issues with the site. The underlying infrastructure was getting very fragile as technical debt accumulated over time. A team is working very hard right now to make sure that once the site is back up, it's on much better footing and will be solid and reliable for the long term. Despite the unfortunate amount of time this is taking, it will be a major benefit to the site in the long run.
If I were a developer there I would be feeling really not very good. Minutes of downtime on the systems I’ve worked on gets my heart rate going.
I don't have the links handy but I believe there are some comments from staff on social media that give more details.
Edit: https://hackaday.social/@tindie/116427447318102919
https://hackaday.social/@tindie/116436988752373293
The maker people I know have been migrating away from Tindie because it has felt like a sinking ship for a long time.
I really like the idea of Tindie so I hope they can succeed. I don’t understand what sequence of events led to this being such a large problem that they can’t even keep their site online. The post says something vague about the engineering team is hoping the migration work is close to finished, but it’s been years since I remember any engineering team knocking out the entire site for days without being able to restore it during a failed migration. Are they outsourcing dev work to the type of agency that bills by the hour and perpetually churns low hourly cost work to make their money in volume fixing their own code?
> The maker people I know have been migrating away from Tindie
To what? The only alternative I know of is Lectronz.
It can be as simple as a terraform apply wiping out huge swaths of the backend infra, getting that back, depending on how disciplined you are, can take in the order of days/weeks.
You have to wonder why it's so hard to put that on their 503 error page. I suspect something's much more broken than they're letting on.
Unfortunate. Tindie is (was?) a pretty unique marketplace. Amusingly, a lot of what they were selling was probably illegal due to FCC rules: for the most part, you can't sell electronics without EMI certification and "I'm just a hobbyist" is not an excuse. Kits get a bit of leeway, but finished products don't.
Before the tariffs, I noticed that Chinese companies were trying to undercut them. I've gotten multiple mails asking me to start selling my designs with China-based outlets: they would make the PCBs, assemble them, and pay me some money for every item sold.
Can you share more information about the undercutting? I've heard of places like Elecrow trying to incentivize people to sell via their platform/OEM service but it sounds like you've had people asking you to license your designs?
I never followed up, but I didn't read it as some serious IP licensing thing. It sounded like they've come to the conclusion that they're making the stuff that's sold on Tindie anyway, so might as well set up a website and ship directly to your customers.
Free market is a good thing.
It's good until some unregulated electronic device creates interference that makes some poor guys pacemaker act up and kills them.
There are a number of things on Tindie that I have been unable to find anywhere else at any price. (Mostly small batch bespoke electronics.) I hope they figure this out.
About Sunday/Monday last week right before it went down I noticed the site was supper buggy and failing to add things to cart, I emailed support and got a "we are checking the issue". Since it went down all I've heard from support is "Please be patient. Tindie will be back up soon as we are currently performing maintenance. At this time, we do not have an estimated timeframe to provide."
The fact that it wasn't communicated at all prior and not having a timeframe makes me thing this was probably an ops screw up.
I see this a lot with small independent sites with big userbases. Instead of being honest, they hide mistakes behind maintenance or blame it on hackers.
Concerning, a professional development team should have been able to manage this switch with minimal to no downtime. Makes me wonder what other mistakes they're making. I'm reluctant to trust my payment information with them in the future.
Scheduled maintenance in 2026 is insane
I've bought some cool stuff off Tindie. My latest purchase was this set of earrings that alert when you're near a Flock camera
https://colonelpanic.tech/#products
This really tickled me, I wasn't expecting them to just be a pair of esp32 dev boards you attach to your ears
Yeah this sucks, I have a bunch of hobbyist orders stuck in limbo since last week -- customers have paid, but I can't pull the orders down even through the API.
I really like Tindie as a platform and have been using it since nearly the beginning...but I'd have lost the contract if I pulled this level of nonsense on a customer's production application.
Who is Tindie?
It's like Etsy for small-scale electronics - if you build a cool, niche electronic device as an individual, Tindie is a marketplace to sell in low volume (possibly as a kit).
They must have really bungled something if they can't roll back and get the site operational again.
:( I really like Tindie and what they're doing