We have two main use cases: 1) building apps on top of Postgres instead of Salesforce, and 2) replacing existing Salesforce <> Postgres syncs (either Heroku Connect or in-house builds).
Postgres makes a bunch of things easy for developers: building responsive web apps, handling SSO and user access rules, and scaling large datasets like time-series data. But Sales, Customer Success, and Ops teams usually don’t have direct access to Postgres - instead, they rely on Salesforce as a type of database. These teams need up-to-date data on users, orders, and services, and they need to edit this data. As a result, in a lot of organizations there’s a sort of abyss between Postgres and Salesforce.
For example: say you're a car rental company. People rent cars via your web app built on Postgres, but your CX team uses Salesforce to track/update users, cars, and rentals. One of your users calls in to say that they were in an accident and the car is totaled. Your CX team (on the Salesforce side of the abyss) needs to manually update the status of the car - "Unavailable" - and reassign upcoming reservations to other cars. These edits made in Salesforce must sync to Postgres so that the user sees their updated reservation details.
We first came across this syncing problem when we were deep in pivot hell during YC W22. At the time, we were two weeks away from Demo Day and we had been pivoting for five weeks. We felt like failures every morning, and it seemed inevitable that we’d drop out. Then we talked to a founder who told us how hard it is to simply keep Airtable and MongoDB in sync with each other. He tried Zapier, he tried writing custom scripts, all to no avail. At last, we had 1) a technical problem 2) frustrating a smart founder 3) with a big potential market. We started to build, raised a conservative amount of money at Demo Day, and kept our burn extremely low.
After a year, we had a product keeping Airtable, Notion, and Google Sheet tables in sync with larger databases, but it still felt like a stop-gap: companies were often using us to stand up lightweight BI, avoid creating internal tools from scratch, or build quick admin dashboards. Once they felt the limitations of, say, Google Sheets, they moved off Bracket to a more permanent solution. Not only did this shrink the size of the market, but also left us feeling like we were creating a vitamin, not a painkiller.
Then we talked with companies who wanted to sync CRMs - specifically Salesforce - with Postgres. They either had high-maintenance in-house solutions for syncing, or they were using Heroku Connect, which enables two-way syncs between Salesforce and Heroku-hosted Postgres. They couldn’t get rid of Salesforce and they couldn’t allow the two systems to get out of sync, so they were stuck with Heroku Connect.
There are two major problems with Heroku Connect, though: 1) it's super expensive, and 2) it ties you to Heroku Enterprise as a hosting platform. These companies wanted something as reliable as Heroku Connect, but hosting-agnostic and priced competitively. We sensed an opportunity to build something useful here, so we got to it.
Bracket makes it easy (90 seconds of setup) to get a Salesforce object and Postgres table syncing with each other in near-real-time. Using our app, you connect your Salesforce via oauth, connect your Postgres via connection URI (with options for SSL protocols), and either have Bracket generate a Postgres table from scratch or map fields between Salesforce and an existing Postgres table.
Once connected, Bracket can sync two ways or one way at a cadence decided by the user. We offer two sync methods: polling (default) and streaming. Using the polling sync method, changes sync on average every 30-60 seconds. Using streaming, changes sync on average every 10-30 seconds. You can read about how each method works, and the APIs they use, here: https://docs.usebracket.com/polling
We offer a few monthly subscription plans based on the amount of data kept in sync, with a free starter plan. You can try us without a credit card at https://app.usebracket.com/. If you don’t have a Salesforce or Postgres already set up, you can see Bracket in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRkaAa667T0
We’re hoping to build the best two-way syncing tool possible. We’ve got tools like Hubspot and MySQL in beta, and we’d love your feedback on other integrations that would be useful, product experience, and anything else that comes to your mind. It’s all very much appreciated. Thank you!
by Andrey
Azimov