Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Thanks!

We're both in the same domain, open-source, and E2EE. Right off the bat, I'd say there are a few key observable differences:

- Infisical is open-source more-or-less from the get go and, as a testament to that, we've grown our community and contributors a lot (50+ now); Envkey was closed-source for a long time before deciding to open-source more recently.

- Infisical is E2EE with opt-out ability so user's can sync secrets directly to cloud platforms like Vercel, Render, GitHub, Netlify, etc. via their APIs; Envkey doesn't have this capability.

- Infisical's client is browser-based; Envkey's is an application you can download back.

Depending on your circumstance and needs, you may find pros and cons for going with either solution.

I will acknowledge that Envkey has been around for much longer, so it may have broader functionality in some respects (e.g. they have SDKs developed across most major languages that we have on our roadmap for the following quarters). Lastly, (small mention) I think that we do care about UI/UX more than a lot of other solutions in the market.

These are just some early thoughts; will add on as more come in.




Hey, CEO of EnvKey here. Congrats on the launch! Adding a few points to your points:

- The server portion of our v1 was closed source, but all client-side code has been open source all along. Now we're fully open source, as you say.

- Syncing to other platforms can be useful, but apart from breaking end-to-end encryption, it more or less guarantees that you're going to end up with consistency bugs. This is just the nature of failure modes in distributed systems. EnvKey's single source of truth architecture ensures consistency. Config and secrets are always pulled from EnvKey rather than being duplicated across platforms. Also, since all that is needed to integrate with any platform is to set a single environment variable, custom-built integrations are rarely needed (we do have a light-weight one for Heroku, but that's it).

- Browser-based is good for UX and convenience, but it nullifies most of the security benefits of end-to-end encryption. Browser-based end-to-end encryption doesn't protect against attackers or insider threats.

I'd also add that we care a lot about UI and UX as well, but we see our goal as making the best UI and UX that is possible while offering real, uncompromising end-to-end encryption. This does require some UX tradeoffs, but in our view, given the sensitivity the data involved, they are worth it.




Consider applying for YC's W25 batch! Applications are open till Nov 12.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: