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Tell HN: Postman update removes all your stuff if you refuse to create account

by drunner on 10/6/23, 4:14 PM with 173 comments

• by mtmail on 10/6/23, 4:31 PM

  So they quickly followed what their competitor Insomnia did recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37680126

  Related "Ask HN: Alternatives to Insomnia?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37691914 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725326

• by pests on 10/6/23, 6:35 PM

  There are some extensions for VSCode that let you define your requests in a text file and has ways to run the file and show the data.

  Here's one I just found: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...

  Syntax looks like:

      GET https://example.com/comments/1 HTTP/1.1
  
      ###
  
      GET https://example.com/topics/1 HTTP/1.1
  
      ###
  
      POST https://example.com/comments HTTP/1.1
      content-type: application/json
  
      {
          "name": "sample",
          "time": "Wed, 21 Oct 2015 18:27:50 GMT"
      }

• by blahyawnblah on 10/6/23, 6:28 PM

  I've really been enjoying HTTPie: https://httpie.io/

  Postman has long been too bloated to be useful.

• by isbvhodnvemrwvn on 10/6/23, 5:56 PM

  I have found Bruno (https://github.com/usebruno/bruno) to be a decent basic alternative with a nice bonus of being version control friendly, keep in mind that it's fresh and relatively unpolished though - for instance it doesn't ask you to save changes before closing the app.

• by pjmlp on 10/6/23, 6:20 PM

  Yes, it happened to me as well.

  Fortunately I regularly export the collections that still matter.

  Now I am no longer a Postman user, as due to NDA's we aren't allowed to store project data on them.

  Paying was never an issue, not having a secure alternative is what killed it for us.

• by CommonGuy on 10/6/23, 6:28 PM

  As one of the creators, I can recommmend https://kreya.app. It is not open source (like Postman), but has a strong focus on privacy and also stores the data locally.

  As it has more powerful features (IMO) than most alternatives listed here, I am a little disappointed that it isn't mentioned more often.

• by helloanoop on 10/6/23, 11:56 PM

  Try Bruno - https://github.com/usebruno/bruno

  - Free and Opensource IDE for exploring and testing APIs

  - It is lightweight with MIT license

  - Bruno stores your collections directly in a folder on your filesystem

  - Use git for collaboration

  - No cloud sync. Fully offline.

  PS: I am the creator of this project

• by vorpalhex on 10/6/23, 6:10 PM

  PostWoman (now called Hopscotch) is a foss clone of (possibly an older version) Postman if you want a 1:1.

  https://hoppscotch.io/

  If you want "curl but friendly", I like httpie - https://httpie.io/cli

• by 4lejandrito on 10/6/23, 9:13 PM

  I started building my own 100% local tool in response to the current situation with postman and insomnia:

  https://github.com/4lejandrito/fetchbook

  I really liked Bruno (https://github.com/usebruno/bruno) but I prefer the flexibility of a real language like typescript and the Request Web API standard.

• by user3939382 on 10/6/23, 6:54 PM

  Highly recommend the HTTP client in the JetBrains IDEs. I looked carefully at the standalones in this category and IMHO it’s the best. Text based so you can seamlessly manage everything with your repo, with automatic features built in from parsing the text.

• by baq on 10/6/23, 6:59 PM

  Am I crazy for using curl and editing the shell cmdline with vim when I need to work with lots of headers?

• by Jaygles on 10/6/23, 6:29 PM

  After the whiffs of enshittification caught my nose I did some research and switched over to Insomnia. I don’t make use of any advanced features, just a pre request authentication call that was a little bit of a pain to set up. But it’s working exactly how I was using postman so it’s a suitable replacement for me

• by joe8756438 on 10/6/23, 6:35 PM

  For the emacs users: restclient.el

  It’s excellent. Doesn’t have server mocking AFAIK, :shrug:

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• by jicea on 10/6/23, 10:28 PM

  You can give a try to Hurl [1], a CLI open source tool, based on plain text and curl. It allows you to run and test Rest/SOAP/GraphQL APIs (I'm one of the maintainer).

  There is no GUI, so Hurl is not a drop-in Postman replacement, but it has nice features: it can be easily integrated in CI/CD, it's fast and it's powered by curl!

  A detail: Hurl is given to the community by Orange, a French telco. Orange is not in the dev business, so it should remain free, open source, analytics free for a long time. In any case, you can easily convert Hurl files to JSON [2] in order to switch to another tool or not being trapped in a single provider...

  [1]: https://hurl.dev

  [2]: https://hurl.dev/docs/frequently-asked-questions.html#how-ca...

• by taesu on 10/6/23, 6:19 PM

  This is how you kill a product. Ill be jumping ship too

• by funvill on 10/6/23, 7:10 PM

  I been using 'Advanced Rest Client' (ARC) https://install.advancedrestclient.com/

  No accounts required, offline, open source, A little bloated using electron but its multiplatform and a desktop client.

• by isodev on 10/6/23, 7:23 PM

  If you’re on macOS, my preferred tool is Paw/Rapid API https://paw.cloud/

• by jphilip on 10/6/23, 8:02 PM

  I remember encountering Postman years ago when it was a chrome app where I'd fill some fields and use it against a server absent a frontend to prototype/test.

  I never understood what's the improvement from having a headless client written in Python using requests or something and the data in source-code, kept versioned? I figure requests or similar libraries have something with sessions and cookies that allows me to issue requests against an active or mock server. This way I can specify the API, data to send each endpoints and possibly also use these snippets in testing.

  I have usually taken this Python route when I've wanted something nicer (this is subjective) in comparison to cURL.

  Can someone experienced here tell me the value add over something like this with Postman?

• by ok_dad on 10/6/23, 6:07 PM

  Learn and use curl, then you won’t have any issues like this. You can make some scripts in Python or something, too.

  I say this because the last three tools I used for this all got shitty (postman, insomnia, and thunder client).

• by wg0 on 10/6/23, 7:07 PM

  Bruno is great. Offline. Open source.

• by SoftTalker on 10/6/23, 6:23 PM

  Do you use emacs? Have a look at https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el or similar.

• by AdmiralAsshat on 10/6/23, 7:06 PM

  Is this all stuff that you had kept in your Scratchpad? I think Postman had been warning users for months that Scratchpad would be going away, and that you should migrate everything to a workspace.

  I'm not saying the decision is right; personally I much preferred the scratch, because it didn't require a freaking network request every time I want to look at my API collections. I'm just saying, this didn't come out of nowhere.

• by iLoveOncall on 10/6/23, 6:50 PM

  > Any alternatives that I can migrate to?

  If it works for your use case: writing integration tests.

  I used Postman in the past but I never really got the point of "storing" queries beyond the history.

  I think if you have that need it means it's time to write a frontend to call your endpoints, or use integration tests.

• by mrguyorama on 10/6/23, 7:07 PM

  FYI some of our people internally use Jmeter. https://jmeter.apache.org/

  It's not flashy so it probably wont get the standard "we are going to milk you for data" plan

• by eshack94 on 10/6/23, 6:49 PM

  What a joke. Great reason to find a replacement tool.

• by james-revisoai on 10/6/23, 4:28 PM

  This happened to me 2 years ago, I think it has always been a bit of an issue.

• by pipeline_peak on 10/7/23, 12:19 AM

  I can’t stand Postman, it’s just clunky in a distinctive Electron-powered way I can’t explain. I don’t get this new wave of dev tools that try to bypass programming but feel more complicated than just programming. The environment variable setting is weird, doesn’t handle /r/n without a plugin.

  Anytime I want to automate or do something slightly more complex than run a request it becomes a homework assignment.

  I’d much rather just use Python and work up a small library. Everyone has their own preferences in the end and it’s much less painful doing it my own way.

• by moochee on 10/7/23, 12:29 AM

  I’d like to recommend Insomnium, a 100% local-first Insomnia fork. https://archgpt.dev/insomnium

• by hbn on 10/6/23, 7:16 PM

  Is that what happened? I DO have an account (begrudgingly made because it doesn't just let you do a JSON export of your collections, you have to send it to the cloud and then download it for some baffling reason) and last time I opened it all of my environment variable values were wiped.

  I've been wanting to get off Postman for a while. It's so clunky these days, and they're shoving way too much shit in it that I don't care about.

• by zikang on 10/6/23, 7:14 PM

  Check out https://recipeui.com! It’s an open source Postman alternative with TypeScript and autocomplete.

• by masukomi on 10/6/23, 6:28 PM

  another alternative: RapidAPI https://rapidapi.com/

  it's a good api client, and it's free for individual use and they have some sort of nifty marketplace integration catalog...thing with remote API servers that makes it easy to find and try API services that offer data / functionality you want to connect to.

• by dannydainton on 10/6/23, 8:21 PM

  Your Scratch Pad data is safe and accessible.

  It can be Migrated to a new Workspace, once you create an account, using the 'Cog Icon > Settings > Data > Migrate data' menu option.

  Alternatively, it can be Exported from the Lightweight API Client(signed out version) using the 'Cog Icon > Settings > Data > Export data' menu options.

  You don't need to go searching for the data in your file systems.

• by worksonmine on 10/6/23, 9:13 PM

  I'm surprised OpenAPI/Swagger hasn't been suggested. Define either as yaml or inline JsDoc comments if you're working in js/ts. I thought it was more popular than postman but I must be living in a bubble.

  Local, open source, versioned and can serve as interactive documentation for users. Never tried it personally but it can even generate code from the specs.

• by cellis on 10/6/23, 6:40 PM

  Paw (now RapidAPI) is a very good alternative, though I can't say they wont be under the same capitalist pressures as Postman. I paid $50, one time.

  https://paw.cloud/

  Edit: To be clear it's an app (downloadable client), despite the url.

• by vorticalbox on 10/6/23, 7:13 PM

  If you use vs code you can use thunder[0]

  [0] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rangav.v...

• by maniflames on 10/6/23, 6:53 PM

  I’ve been using https://insomnia.rest/ and it has everything you need and does not require you to log in

• by KomoD on 10/6/23, 7:56 PM

  Not very surprised, Postman has continued to get more bloated and pushy with accounts, I ended up just moving to Insomnia after using Postman for many many years.

  Edit: turns out Insomnia has enshittified too

• by mjepronk on 10/6/23, 6:12 PM

  Httpyac, to install the VS Code extension, just do:

  ext install anweber.vscode-httpyac

• by tonfreed on 10/6/23, 11:06 PM

  Caught a workmate in my team out as well. We can't create accounts and keep it all in the cloud at our job, so we had to find an installer for an older version.

  Absolutely scummy behaviour

• by pirsquare on 10/6/23, 7:14 PM

  We need a free Postman replacement tool with Photopea business model that is driven by ads, not VC-funds.

• by david422 on 10/6/23, 6:27 PM

  Same. Quite a surprise. I switched to IntelliJ http requests and am seeing how that does for me.

• by floucky on 10/6/23, 6:25 PM

  I'm sure it's a bug, they have nothing to gain from it, especially if there's no warning about this.

  It's also a good reminder for everyone to back up everything!

• by liyasthomas on 10/6/23, 6:16 PM

  We’re building an open-source Postman alternative.

  1.6m+ users, 100k+ monthly active users, 55k+ GitHub stars.

  Web app: https://hoppscotch.io GitHub: https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch

• by _the_inflator on 10/6/23, 7:17 PM

  I would really like to see Chrome offering an alternative to Postman. For me, it feels natural, to have everything in one place.

  What do others think?