BreezyPrint (http://www.breezyprint.com) is a service that lets you print from mobile devices. It's easy to set up (~2 minutes), incredibly easy to use (printing takes ~10 seconds), works with practically every printer ever made and supports nearly 500 different kinds of attachments. You can watch an introductory video here if you like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBENYGv9rj4
We launched in April on BlackBerry only, and have just crossed the 1000-user mark. We offer a 14-day free trial, and so far, about 30% of users seem to be converting to paid once their trial ends.
Everyone's first question: "When's the iphone app coming?" It's coming very soon. If you want to participate in the beta (hopefully launching late next week), click here: http://www.breezyprint.com/iosbeta (redirects to a google docs form).
Everyone's second question: "How does it work?" BreezyPrint consists of a mobile app, our server in the cloud, and a small piece of client software the user installs on his PC (Mac client yet to come). Through the PC client, the user selects printers to use with BreezyPrint, and the list is uploaded to our server. When the user initiates a print job from his mobile device, the device queries the server for the list of printers and displays it to the user. The user selects the printer he wants, and the document is encrypted and sent to our server, where it awaits download/decryption/printing by the PC client associated with the selected printer.
I'm very aware of the various competitors in the market and have some (proprietary) plans for beating them, but I would love to hear any feedback from the HN community on what we can improve.
In particular:
1) Any suggestions on how to make the use process clearer, without adding a ton of extra pages to the site?
2) Is there anything on the site that just doesn't make any sense to you?
3) We're pricing at 4.95/mo or 29.95/year, and the fee is for the service, not any one app itself (it's a per-user, not per-machine, license fee - so if you switch devices, somehow lose everything, etc., it doesn't cost you anything). Any thoughts on this?
4) Any other suggestions? What question(s) should I have asked, that I missed?
Thanks very much in advance for any feedback. I've been lurking on HN for probably about six months now, and have learned a ton. Looking forward to hearing what you all think.
I was taken back a bit by the monthly fee. I was thinking it was a one time purchase kind of app. $29.95 a year is not to expensive but still it seems like a tough sell. Obviously you are not having an issue if you are having a 30% conversion rate.
What I was looking for and didn't see right away was how did it work. I think a diagram would be worth a 1000 words in this case. In order for this to work, your computer has to be on that is running the client software. How often is it checking in with the cloud server to know something is ready to print? It has to be alot in order to be able to 'print in 15 seconds' as you claim. I'd have an issue with that, but I'm protective over what is running on my machine.
On the fee: because the software checks in, we have fixed monthly per-user costs, so I am very hesitant about offering a one-time price. Obviously there's quite a bit of margin in the offering right now, but that's why it's not once-and-done.
On the architecture: definitely agree that we should put up a "how it works" diagram. And to answer your question: right now, it checks with the server once per minute. We do it that way, as opposed to having the server ping your machine whenever there's something waiting for it, in order to make it easier to deal with firewalls and the like -- setup is a one-click process.
As a result, the act of printing a doc takes less than 15 seconds, really (usually something like 8), but it can take up to 1 minute for the doc to arrive at the printer.
3 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 18.7 ms ] threadWe launched in April on BlackBerry only, and have just crossed the 1000-user mark. We offer a 14-day free trial, and so far, about 30% of users seem to be converting to paid once their trial ends.
Everyone's first question: "When's the iphone app coming?" It's coming very soon. If you want to participate in the beta (hopefully launching late next week), click here: http://www.breezyprint.com/iosbeta (redirects to a google docs form).
Everyone's second question: "How does it work?" BreezyPrint consists of a mobile app, our server in the cloud, and a small piece of client software the user installs on his PC (Mac client yet to come). Through the PC client, the user selects printers to use with BreezyPrint, and the list is uploaded to our server. When the user initiates a print job from his mobile device, the device queries the server for the list of printers and displays it to the user. The user selects the printer he wants, and the document is encrypted and sent to our server, where it awaits download/decryption/printing by the PC client associated with the selected printer.
I'm very aware of the various competitors in the market and have some (proprietary) plans for beating them, but I would love to hear any feedback from the HN community on what we can improve.
In particular: 1) Any suggestions on how to make the use process clearer, without adding a ton of extra pages to the site?
2) Is there anything on the site that just doesn't make any sense to you?
3) We're pricing at 4.95/mo or 29.95/year, and the fee is for the service, not any one app itself (it's a per-user, not per-machine, license fee - so if you switch devices, somehow lose everything, etc., it doesn't cost you anything). Any thoughts on this?
4) Any other suggestions? What question(s) should I have asked, that I missed?
Thanks very much in advance for any feedback. I've been lurking on HN for probably about six months now, and have learned a ton. Looking forward to hearing what you all think.
What I was looking for and didn't see right away was how did it work. I think a diagram would be worth a 1000 words in this case. In order for this to work, your computer has to be on that is running the client software. How often is it checking in with the cloud server to know something is ready to print? It has to be alot in order to be able to 'print in 15 seconds' as you claim. I'd have an issue with that, but I'm protective over what is running on my machine.
On the fee: because the software checks in, we have fixed monthly per-user costs, so I am very hesitant about offering a one-time price. Obviously there's quite a bit of margin in the offering right now, but that's why it's not once-and-done.
On the architecture: definitely agree that we should put up a "how it works" diagram. And to answer your question: right now, it checks with the server once per minute. We do it that way, as opposed to having the server ping your machine whenever there's something waiting for it, in order to make it easier to deal with firewalls and the like -- setup is a one-click process.
As a result, the act of printing a doc takes less than 15 seconds, really (usually something like 8), but it can take up to 1 minute for the doc to arrive at the printer.