I admire the effort, but I don't think the mental effort required to create a Google Group is so high as to pay $10 for this service. Google Groups really aren't that hard; from a college kid's perspective, all students and teachers are already familiar with the ecosystem to the extent that even 60+ year old professors don't need to ask a student to help them after class just to set one up.
Frankly, it takes more effort for me to grab my credit card from my wallet and input the payment information than it does to set up a Google Group.
Still, best of luck to the 37signals team! I love the idea of one-off services like these.
I imagine 37signals know what they are doing with the pricing here. It would be fascinating to hear how they did their customer and pricing research for this product.
I posted a comment on their blog about this, not sure if it went through though (old IE version here at work...)
I think they WAY overstate the difficulty of setting up a Google Group. I just did it in 2-3 steps.... All of the "settings", "more settings" and "permissions" they describe all work JUST FINE as defaults.
Not only that, it is free....
They talk about filling out a Captcha as "difficult", but I have a hard time seeing how filling out credit card details is any easier
I personally don't think this would have got any attention if it wasn't out of the 37Signals shop.
As a P.S., did you notice how they display the Google Groups signup with form validation errors? ....
"I personally don't think this would have got any attention if it wasn't out of the 37Signals shop"
It likely wouldn't have, and wouldn't be viable for a 'regular' startup without an existing audience of people who've already bought web services and trust the brand.
Yes, there will be some non 37s customers who become customers because of this, but this will succeed financially primarily because of the already built-in audience.
There is nothing wrong with Bootstrapping subsequent projects using your last one.
I just believe that there is so little value prop in this (if you are even moderately competent using Google) that I have a hard time seeing it succeed at $10 unless the 37s name pushes it up.
This arrived the day before I needed to create an email list for a small group of friends I'm involved with where we email each other once a week or more. $10 for literally 90 seconds work to get us a list was a no-brainer really. We have no need for a web GUI, and google groups piss me off every time I try and login to see anything there anyway. Perfect service for what we wanted!
Personally, I have no need for this product. They solve a problem I don't have. They list the flaws of email as:
1. You have to remember each person’s email address
-- Gmail has a groups feature, so I just need to make a mailing list once and never worry again. Alternatively, Facebook groups are easy for informal communication.
2. If someone doesn’t “reply-all” when responding to a group email with multiple email addresses, then it all falls apart.
-- Eh, sometimes not every single message needs to be sent to every single person. I like the flexibility of being able to choose reply-all or just reply to one.
Perhaps this would be useful for someone who's not very good with email, but if my mom can't figure out how to send an email to a group then I doubt she's gonna sign up for this product (or even know to look for a tool similar to this)
I think the point is that your mom wouldn't have to do anything.
One person -- presumably the one who is good at email but frustrated that everyone else isn't, e.g. You -- sets it up and pays and just sends their very next email to 'the group'.
And everyone else just responds to that email as they would any other and it Just Works for them, regardless of whether Mom chronically forgets to "Reply All" or Dad never remembers to put Aunt Sally on the list.
I'd imagine people who don't email a lot with less-tech-savvy types probably don't see the advantage. And it really does sound like a 'feature' that any mail host could add at any point.
But if it gets traction and other mail providers match the feature, that's a win for everyone, right? I doubt 37signals has big plans for the revenue from this service. They're likely just solving their own problem and charging just enough to cover the administrative overhead and dissuade spam use.
If you work at even a moderate sized company, it probably means you need to make a request to a different department, and 1 or more people may need to sign off on that request. It might take a day or two. Meanwhile you can probably expense $10 with no special authorization and have you email list instantly.
And at the same time break all kinds of rules and possibly violate various contracts and whatnot because email is now leaving the company server, traversing the Internet, being processed and stored by a 3rd party and transmitted back to your servers.
I'm part of a small business that does government contracting ... that'd be one hell of a thing to have to admit to during an audit!
No, but creating the product is a very small piece of the puzzle. 37Signals have a good amount of existing customers and what looks like a well greased marketing machine. That's what'll make this successful or not.
I was thinking the same thing. This is the kind of thing I would create for a friend for free on a weekend or two. Unless I'm missing some huge complexity.
Exactly my thoughts, there are quite few alternative solutions, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, even Mailhosted serves[1]. Is 37signals just looking for a different challenge? I am guessing that this will be integrated into one of their other products.
They aren't, which is what most if not all of the critiques are missing: it's just an upsell for their existing customers, of which there are enough to make building this tool worth it.
10 minutes ago I setup up Google groups for a small company. They had no clue what Groups is for, nor why it's better than CC'ing a dozen people. The Groups page does an awful job of explaining it's purpose to non-technical people. The lesson here is that tech people need to learn to communicate with normal humans. 37signals shows you can charge for that as well.
Maybe it is not, but if it's one-click and time saving people would pay for it. For the same reason they pay for things like soccer match results via SMS or $0.99 shopping list app for their iPhone.
I could see the monetary value in the email domain grab, but is breeze123.com such a great domain to begin with? I don't think that's worth paying for. Their video and splash page just seems to be showcasing the different emails you can get, at breeze123.com.
"our-interns@breeze123.com"
"awesome-book-club@breeze123.com"
That just sounds like a password. And it's all they're offering. I guess they think Google Groups isn't catching the entire market that would have a use for this.
Another problem I see is they say "pay once, use forever" when I've found that I always lose the need for a certain group email list after a while. A project ends, a team breaks up, a meetup stops happening.
Maybe a better product would be something that makes it easier to set up and throw away these more temporary email domains.
The payment looks most like a barrier to spam. Thus anything that made it possible to create more groups and/or larger groups would require an increasingly higher price to break the economics of using this to spam people.
What fascinates me about this is that there really is (for me, at least) a 'go to' place for setting up a simple email list. And how the gap is so big, they can charge for it.
I.e. the kind of thing you'd recommend your mother or father to go sign up for and manage themselves. Or in other words, their target audience.
Folks folks folks. The primary issue with Google Groups is that it's ugly all around, not just the signup process. This is an issue that this community (keen on fixed width fonts and cli) doesn't usually care about. But I promise you that my wife cares about something being not ugly.
Talking about not ugly; it seems that they're using a hex encoded unique identifier for the groups (see movie-talk-bfcd5ecc@breeze123.com in the comparison page.)
I really don't get why people don't look into encoding designed to work well with your eyes more often. There are some pretty good and easy options out there such as ZBase32 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base32#Alternative_versions)
Wow. When I first saw it, I thought "huh? Isn't this just a mailing list? Is this an actual product?"
Then I did a quick search for "setting up a mailing list" ... and I got Google Groups (not the same), a bunch of address book hacks for Outlook and then GNU Mailman.
They found a really good market with something really obvious.
I don't understand the pricing though.
Why just a one-time fee?
Why a limit of 50 people and no other pricing plans?
2013 must be flying by, it's already April 1st...? ;)
Jokes aside, I don't understand why they are making such a big deal about this? I understand they have an existing large client base already and if they wanted to add this to their product list quietly that would be one thing, but why try to turn it into something bigger than it is...?
Also, I would say (based on what I've seen) that most of the Basecamp clients are somewhat "tech smart", meaning they could easily see there is next to no value in this for a price. There are countless free alternatives that anyone with a basic "tech smart" savvy could figure out. Not to mention a lot of those alternatives would be much more flexible. I'll even go as far to say that the average person (like my parents, family, etc.) knows about even easier alternatives (for free) like Google Groups or Facebook Groups. And both of those would include all of the functionality (plus more) presented by Basecamp Breeze (and again, for free).
I typically associate 37signals products with intuitiveness and creativity/originality, this seems like neither. I'm quite disappointed.
Pretty genius pricing--if the lifetime cost of your customer really is that low (which I'm sure that is), I bet their signup rates will be much better than something silly like "$2/year".
I find it very interesting how so many people commenting here are shouting "This is so stupid! It's so EASY to setup a mailing list, I can do it in 2 seconds! Even a monkey could setup a freakin' Google Groups list!"
Seems to me they don't understand just how technical they really are compared to a large portion of the people in their everyday lives.
I can think of 1 single person in my family who knows what Google Groups is. But I can think of at least half a dozen people who might need to be able to email a group of people without needing to know technical things.
>> EDIT: Also, the basecamp.com homepage is now a lot less focused then before. I'd be curious to see how or if this affects Basecamp conversion rates.
i dont think that will be case for lifetime. They will change when needed focusing on what is important.
$10 one time doesn't seem that profitable long term.
This product is either supposed to be a loss leader that brings more customers into the 37Signals fold (to use Basecamp, etc) or there are more features and functionality planned for the Breeze product.
My guess it's the later and its why Breeze wasn't just incorporated into Basecamp.
I think it's the former. This feels to me like a marketing strategy and loss leader to grab a new set of customers and eventually migrate them into the full Basecamp product.
I could see people saying to themselves, "I love this email list thing, but it would be cool if we also had a calendar or could create lists, etc..." which prompts the upgrade to Basecamp.
The $10 one-time fee then becomes a way to separate the customers who are at least willing to take out their credit card for something like this, vs. those who would never do that. It will probably end up being a decent marketing tool that pays for itself over time.
61 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadFrankly, it takes more effort for me to grab my credit card from my wallet and input the payment information than it does to set up a Google Group.
Still, best of luck to the 37signals team! I love the idea of one-off services like these.
I think they WAY overstate the difficulty of setting up a Google Group. I just did it in 2-3 steps.... All of the "settings", "more settings" and "permissions" they describe all work JUST FINE as defaults.
Not only that, it is free....
They talk about filling out a Captcha as "difficult", but I have a hard time seeing how filling out credit card details is any easier
I personally don't think this would have got any attention if it wasn't out of the 37Signals shop.
As a P.S., did you notice how they display the Google Groups signup with form validation errors? ....
It likely wouldn't have, and wouldn't be viable for a 'regular' startup without an existing audience of people who've already bought web services and trust the brand.
Yes, there will be some non 37s customers who become customers because of this, but this will succeed financially primarily because of the already built-in audience.
I just believe that there is so little value prop in this (if you are even moderately competent using Google) that I have a hard time seeing it succeed at $10 unless the 37s name pushes it up.
I didn't say there was anything wrong with it.
1. You have to remember each person’s email address -- Gmail has a groups feature, so I just need to make a mailing list once and never worry again. Alternatively, Facebook groups are easy for informal communication.
2. If someone doesn’t “reply-all” when responding to a group email with multiple email addresses, then it all falls apart. -- Eh, sometimes not every single message needs to be sent to every single person. I like the flexibility of being able to choose reply-all or just reply to one.
Perhaps this would be useful for someone who's not very good with email, but if my mom can't figure out how to send an email to a group then I doubt she's gonna sign up for this product (or even know to look for a tool similar to this)
One person -- presumably the one who is good at email but frustrated that everyone else isn't, e.g. You -- sets it up and pays and just sends their very next email to 'the group'.
And everyone else just responds to that email as they would any other and it Just Works for them, regardless of whether Mom chronically forgets to "Reply All" or Dad never remembers to put Aunt Sally on the list.
I'd imagine people who don't email a lot with less-tech-savvy types probably don't see the advantage. And it really does sound like a 'feature' that any mail host could add at any point.
But if it gets traction and other mail providers match the feature, that's a win for everyone, right? I doubt 37signals has big plans for the revenue from this service. They're likely just solving their own problem and charging just enough to cover the administrative overhead and dissuade spam use.
I'm part of a small business that does government contracting ... that'd be one hell of a thing to have to admit to during an audit!
[1] - http://wiki.list.org/display/COM/Mailman+hosting+services
Seriously, just ask your mom or dad or how they might go about setting up a mailing list.
I don't know how this product will sell but in general I think that is not a bad maxim.
"our-interns@breeze123.com"
"awesome-book-club@breeze123.com"
That just sounds like a password. And it's all they're offering. I guess they think Google Groups isn't catching the entire market that would have a use for this.
Another problem I see is they say "pay once, use forever" when I've found that I always lose the need for a certain group email list after a while. A project ends, a team breaks up, a meetup stops happening.
Maybe a better product would be something that makes it easier to set up and throw away these more temporary email domains.
Is there a way to set this up with a custom domain?
https://groupme.com
I.e. the kind of thing you'd recommend your mother or father to go sign up for and manage themselves. Or in other words, their target audience.
I really don't get why people don't look into encoding designed to work well with your eyes more often. There are some pretty good and easy options out there such as ZBase32 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base32#Alternative_versions)
Then I did a quick search for "setting up a mailing list" ... and I got Google Groups (not the same), a bunch of address book hacks for Outlook and then GNU Mailman.
They found a really good market with something really obvious.
I don't understand the pricing though.
Why just a one-time fee?
Why a limit of 50 people and no other pricing plans?
Why no custom domains?
Jokes aside, I don't understand why they are making such a big deal about this? I understand they have an existing large client base already and if they wanted to add this to their product list quietly that would be one thing, but why try to turn it into something bigger than it is...?
Also, I would say (based on what I've seen) that most of the Basecamp clients are somewhat "tech smart", meaning they could easily see there is next to no value in this for a price. There are countless free alternatives that anyone with a basic "tech smart" savvy could figure out. Not to mention a lot of those alternatives would be much more flexible. I'll even go as far to say that the average person (like my parents, family, etc.) knows about even easier alternatives (for free) like Google Groups or Facebook Groups. And both of those would include all of the functionality (plus more) presented by Basecamp Breeze (and again, for free).
I typically associate 37signals products with intuitiveness and creativity/originality, this seems like neither. I'm quite disappointed.
I'm not 100% convinced 37Signals hires 'someone junior' though.
Seems to me they don't understand just how technical they really are compared to a large portion of the people in their everyday lives.
I can think of 1 single person in my family who knows what Google Groups is. But I can think of at least half a dozen people who might need to be able to email a group of people without needing to know technical things.
1) Why was the Basecamp brand attached to this product?
2) If Sortfolio was deemed expendable, why did this product pass muster?
EDIT: Also, the basecamp.com homepage is now a lot less focused then before. I'd be curious to see how or if this affects Basecamp conversion rates.
i dont think that will be case for lifetime. They will change when needed focusing on what is important.
Hyperbole.
This product is either supposed to be a loss leader that brings more customers into the 37Signals fold (to use Basecamp, etc) or there are more features and functionality planned for the Breeze product.
My guess it's the later and its why Breeze wasn't just incorporated into Basecamp.
I could see people saying to themselves, "I love this email list thing, but it would be cool if we also had a calendar or could create lists, etc..." which prompts the upgrade to Basecamp.
The $10 one-time fee then becomes a way to separate the customers who are at least willing to take out their credit card for something like this, vs. those who would never do that. It will probably end up being a decent marketing tool that pays for itself over time.