
Breeze is closing on August 1 - wlll
http://basecamp.com/breeze/
======
dylangs1030
This is a really good example of how to write a shutter letter. But it's not
appropriate to criticize companies that shutter free services (i.e. Google)
for not doing _every single checkmark on this list_ (especially if they only
miss one of them[1]).

Google has a lot of free products. Notably, Google's shut down of Reader comes
under a lot of flak for how it was delivered to the public. But 37signals sold
Breeze for $10. Google Reader was free. And yet, Google did everything
37signals did here _except recommend alternatives._ They even gave a longer
sunset.

37Signals had _customers_ \- Google only had _users._ There is a world of
difference in the utility and obligations in the company-user relationship
there. Google could shutter any product it wants without telling anyone. It
would be bad press, but doing anything more is a kindness and respect for
users _in imitation of how companies should treat customers._ You didn't earn
that kind of respect or attention from Google, they gave blog posts and
announcements and free data and sunsets because they care. In most cases you
would only get that kind of attention because companies don't want to burn
paying customers from using their other products.

This in no way criticizes 37signals. It's a great discontinuation
announcement. But stop deifying them and demonizing Google when Google
actually went above and beyond in letting you know. Those comments aren't
productive, they're just angry.

[1]: [http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-
googl...](http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-
reader.html)

~~~
philwelch
It's not shutting down Google Reader, but rather a pattern of behavior where
products built on open standards are replaced by walled gardens. Google+
hasn't taken off either, but Google is doubling down on it rather than
shutting it off.

~~~
dylangs1030
Google+ has taken off. It's just not a booming social network for friends like
Facebook is. In that regard, Twitter hasn't taken off either.

I'm not trying to build a strawman here, but people judge Plus and Twitter by
the wrong metric. Facebook is not the only model of how to run a social
network. Google+ is a website for professional connections with selectivity
based on who will see what, precisely because there are so many different
types of relationships available. Facebook is literally just for friends (and
should be). They're doubling down on it because users are using it, it's
showing itself to be a better product. _And_ \- it's gaining traction without
Google having to resort to the sort of advertising that Microsoft is doing
with Bing. It's much more organic.

But I digress - my comment here was specifically in response to the many
comments I've read disparaging Google for its handling of Reader. I agree with
you that Google has a tendency to merge products into semi-androgyny. But I
also think this is a good thing. Google is slowly limiting its product
selection while maximizing effort into each product. There may be some kinks
to work out, but I believe that the basic philosophy of quality over quantity
is there.

And, honestly, products like Reader and Feedburner are so multifarious and
down the pipeline that without a solid base of _paying_ customers Google could
never hope to improve them substantially. In fact, they haven't really been
improved substantially.

I believe that while Google could improve the way they're doing it, it will be
a net win for them to consolidate services into more feature-rich products
they can devote exponentially more attention to.

~~~
jmduke
I don't disagree with your distinction between Google+ and FB, but I disagree
with the conclusion that its taking off. There's no doubt that Google+ is
trying to occupy a different space than facebook, but I see no proof (I think
any of the 'active users' stats Google touts around are more or less
fraudulent) that they're doing any better than their two biggest competitors
on either side of the spectrum: LinkedIn and Twitter.

 _it's showing itself to be a better product_

How? Because in my mind the #1 feature of a social network, regardless of
domain, are the social interactions it enables -- and right now Google+ is
losing to the likes of Branch and Quora in that department.

~~~
dirkgently
>(I think any of the 'active users' stats Google touts around are more or less
fraudulent)

Fair enough.Do you also think the same for the numbers released by Facebook or
twitter or instagram too?

------
loupeabody
This is an odd announcement considering the last I heard, 37signals would
prevent new signups to phased out services, not abandon them entirely [0]. I
can't imagine that Breeze was all that resource intensive to maintain, but I
don't really know what goes into such a service.

[0][http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/david-h-hansson-
pa...](http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/david-h-hansson-partner-
at-37signals-twist-e337/)

...

 _Jason Calacanis: Yeah. I remember Back Pack.

David: We stopped offering to new people. Ta-Da List and Writeboard. The
critical thing, I feel like, we did right was to say, “No new people could
sign up for this. Everybody who’s still on it, we’re still going to support
it.” We’re just going to continue to support it.

Jason C: So what was the thinking there? It doesn’t cost us that much.

David: It doesn’t cost that much to support it. What’s really expensive in
running these services is you have to keep scale as your growing. You have to
buy new hardware and manage the ops. You have to deal with the bugs that
invariably will spill out from launching new features and all that stuff. If
you stop launching new features and you stop growing then it becomes a non
issue in many ways.

Jason C: Set it and forget it.

David: Exactly. Set it and forget it. It’s going to be there till… I don’t
necessarily want to say the last guy closes the lights or whatever… but
there’s no imperative for us to close it down. I think it’s a much more humane
way to deal with…_

This conversation is in direct reference to Google's decision and management
of shutting down Reader

~~~
petercooper
_I can't imagine that Breeze was all that resource intensive to maintain, but
I don't really know what goes into such a service._

As far as I understand it, they send the e-mail directly from their own
servers. Maintaining a system to do this reliably is quite labor intensive as
you need to try and get (and stay!) whitelisted with the larger providers and
constantly put out 'abuse' fires. Dealing with e-mail is a labor intensive
pain in the ass at the best of times..

~~~
anon808
37S already does the whitelist heavy lifting for their other services (esp
basecamp) that push tons of emails out.

------
MartinMond
Wasn't Breeze sold as "Pay once - use forever"? It's a joke that they now just
cop out via "yeah we'll refund your money".

Compare this to Backpack that was also discontinued but since it's paid for
monthly, 37signals decided to let existing customers continue to pay and
receive their service.

So Backpack stays alive (albeit without new signups) since it continues to
make them money, but Breeze gets closed and all customers get shafted. Even
thought Breeze was sold as "forever" while Backpack was sold as "monthly".

And let's not forget that Backpack needs a lot more (security) updates and
maintenance than a simple mail server for mailing lists.

~~~
jiggy2011
How is that a cop out? You get your money back so whatever use you got from it
was effectively free apart from the minor inconvenience of moving over to
another service (which they are kind enough to make suggestions for).

~~~
MartinMond
Because it was sold as "just pay once and get your mailing list", not as "just
pay once and get your mailing list for a few months then no more mailing list"

~~~
jiggy2011
How long should they run the service at a loss for before they are allowed to
bin it?

According to the site , they are giving you your data back anyway.

~~~
icebraining
For as long as they agreed to do so. They shouldn't have promised what they
couldn't deliver. It's wrong when ISPs do it ("unlimited!") and it's just as
wrong when small "fun" tech companies to it.

~~~
jiggy2011
Since 37s can't run this service until the end of time then it seems
reasonable to expect it to end at some point.

~~~
anon808
Then they shouldn't promise 'unlimited'. Why not pay as you go. If I pay
monthly I expect to have the product for the month. If I pay forever I expect
to have the product for forever.

~~~
jiggy2011
That's a fairly unrealistic expectation. I doubt that many of the products we
use today will exist in 50 years time for example.

It's like going to an all you can eat, eating the entire buffet yourself and
then demanding they go out and find you more to satisfy your limitless hunger.

~~~
tg3
That's a bad analogy; eating the entire buffet is truly unrealistic (and by
that I mean a biological near-impossibility).

37S promised the product "forever", and provided it for 4 months - even if you
didn't think "forever" actually meant until the end of time, I think it is
reasonable to assume it meant more than a year.

------
bobsy
Didn't know it existed... that said.. this is how you discontinue a product.
Say sorry, send the client their data, recommend alternatives. Well done.

Far better than past attempts by Yahoo, Google, Aqui-hires who shutter a
product and leave it to clients to figure out how to get their data out.

~~~
bornhuetter
"Say sorry, send the client their data, recommend alternatives."

That's exactly what Google do, and they get ripped to shreds.

~~~
jbigelow76
But 37signals closed Breeze because it didn't hit a critical mass of
customers. Google can't say the same thing about many _cough_ Reader _cough_
of the products they close down. That's why Google gets ripped to shreds.

~~~
smackfu
It's not about critical mass, it's about profitability, for both companies.

~~~
jbigelow76
That's not necessarily true for either company. Remember when 37signals sold
Sortfolio to focus more on core products? Sortfolio made over $200K in profit
in a years time[1]. And Google made no attempt to monetize Reader at all so
they can't say it was only about profitability.

Companies make strategic decisions all the time even at the expense of profit
when warranted.

[1] [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-
goi...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-going-twice)

~~~
dylangs1030
Yes, but profitability also delineates _users_ from _customers._ One will
naturally get more attention than another.

Comparing Google Reader to 37signals' Breeze is comparing apples to oranges,
and it's not fair to subsequently conclude Google didn't do everything it
could when it gave a longer sunset, but no alternatives. That's the _one_
thing they didn't do, and their users were _free._

~~~
jbigelow76
Google keeping Reader free wasn't an act of altruism, at least not as far as
I'm concerned. I think it gave them the kind of cover they needed to shutter
it when Reader ceased to be useful. G even resisted monetizing after large
numbers of users begged them to take their money and make a viable business
out of it. Reader was never a product, it was a strategy.

37S saw Breeze only as a product to live and die on it's own merits (even if
some customers really loved it). Google saw Reader as a product to manipulate
the market (if you subscribe to that theory). This is why I think Google
deserves to get ripped while 37signals shouldn't, even if Reader only had
"users" and not "customers".

------
petercooper
What I find interesting is how quickly they made the decision. It was launched
less than 4 months ago.

It looked like a good service, I heard good reviews, and while I'm not against
the "shut things down that don't get traction" idea, 4 months seems quite
tight for something that was at least making _some_ money. A lot of the most
successful products take much longer to find their feet (although I appreciate
this was just a side line and not the next Skype or Facebook).

~~~
vineet
Sounds like they may not have had a high enough viral coefficient as they
would have wanted. So they felt like it was not worth investing more in
product development or marketing.

Definitely impressed that they had the discipline to shut it down in 4 months.

~~~
petercooper
I guess one difference between 37signals and many others who launch products
is that they have a huge audience on which to promote the product out of the
gate. It'd be crazy to tell someone with a small audience to quit on a product
in 4 months but if you had 100,000 people hit a homepage and only 10 people
buy.. maybe that's a clearer signal.

------
masnick
One of their replacement service suggestions is <https://fiesta.cc>. It looks
nice but it's totally free -- I get nervous when there is not a clear business
model. (It was almost shut down a year ago according to their blog:
<http://blog.fiesta.cc.>)

Another suggestion is <http://www.mail-list.com>. They charge around
$1/user/year, which seems pretty reasonable to me (one reason I didn't sign up
for Breeze is that $25 seemed like a lot for a lot of use cases, like a list
for a season-long sports team). But in the fine print, it says the minimum is
a $99 purchase per organization per year.

Their final suggestion is <http://www.emaildodo.com>. Call me a snob, but the
late 90s design scared me off.

So none of these seem like great options -- I'd rather use
<http://librelist.com>, which is run as a free for-the-good-of-the-internet
service from what I can tell.

Assuming Google and Yahoo Groups are too heavy-handed for a simple mailing
list, what do you use? Any experience with these?

~~~
jmharvey
If you're looking for another alternative, we're building
<http://zeromailer.com> . It's still in active development, but the core "just
let me make a simple mailing list" is there.

Pricing model is that lists with fewer than 1000 messages[1] per month are
free, and higher traffic lists basically pay by volume. We also have a couple
of premium features (e.g. custom domains) that we're upcharging for.

I'd love to hear what you think of it, and what you think we can do better.

Oh, and I've always liked being able to administer mailing lists from the
command line, so we've got a command line interface in testing, ping me if
you'd like to check it out.

[1] messages = total volume of mail, so basically (emails * list members)

------
nate
Yesterday I read a Reddit post about a guy being depressed because he started
a new project each month for the past 9 or so months and none of them became
business. He gave each one a month before declaring it a failure.

This provides two great reminders:

1) Even really smart and accomplished folks can't always predict what's going
to be successful. But they got something delivered, gave it a good effort, and
then decided to move on.

2) Declaring failure after a day or a month is far too short sighted. Breeze
launched in January. So about 6 months of lots of data and customers (or lack
of) to make decisions like this with.

"Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be
famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in
your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute"

-Louis C.K.

~~~
alabut
Point #1 is a recent lesson learned for me. I remember seeing Robert De Niro
on Inside The Actor's Studio saying essentially the same thing. He can't tell
anymore while filming a movie how good it will be based on how the shoot is
going, since he's been on well-run productions that flopped and chaotic
stressful ones that came out great. Now he just concentrates on giving a great
performance no matter what and doing a lot of work.

Also: <http://dcurt.is/what-a-stupid-idea>

------
Kerrick
It's funny, I just set up a mailing list this weekend. Being a customer of
37signals' other products, the first thing I thought of was Basecamp Breeze.
So, I went to their site to check it out.

Their site had a "Why use Breeze" page. I looked at the page, and it compared
itself (and introduced me) to competitors. The _only_ thing Breeze itself said
was better about Breeze compared to Google Groups was that it was easy to set
up. So I went with Google Groups and spent an extra 10 minutes configuring it
to save $25.

They sold their own competitors to me.

------
fmavituna
I would love to see the "why" in a blog post.

When I first heard the launch of this product I was a bit skeptic. 37 Signals
sells good to techies ( _and where techies are in charge of the order_ ) but
this particular product was specially geared towards non-techies, hence it
would be really hard to make it work.

My guess would be that the system didn't organically acquired enough users, I
might be wrong, and they simply cut their loses. Maybe they'll post something
in the upcoming days to enlighten us.

Considering they constantly and harshly criticizing everyone else's business
model and they literally wrote a book on how to run a business like this, a
blog post with details is expected of them.

~~~
chris_wot
Not enough people signing up seems like a good reason to end the service to
me...

------
Zimahl
I had a similar idea to this about a year back and didn't get out of the
feasibility stage. After crunching the numbers I just couldn't make it work as
a free service. Maybe I wasn't doing it right, but the bandwidth of
attachments becomes the killer. Mail-list.com seems to have the pricing in
just about the right spot, and I'm not sure that is something the common user
is going to go use.

It appears that Fiesta.cc had this issue as well. From their blog they were
going to shut down about a year ago but managed to figure out how to keep it
running. Their site is a little short on details - I'm not sure what the
limits on the mailing lists are.

~~~
sstrudeau
So why not offer a free service that doesn't support attachments and offer
attachment support as a paid upgrade?

~~~
Zimahl
It's still on my list of possible projects. I kick it's tires every once in a
while.

------
biot

      "So put a price on it and put it up for sale. If people buy
       that’s a yes. Change the price. If people buy, that’s a
       yes. If people stop buying, that’s a no. Crude? Maybe. But
       it’s real."
    

(from <http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3394-how-to-price-something>)

Perhaps this should be amended to include: "If not enough people buy, you
shutter the service. Crude? Maybe. But it's real."

------
dave_sid
I think Breeze was just an experiment for 37 Signals, which might explain the
unusual pricing strategy of a one off payment.

I'd bet they always intended to refund all users if they didn't meet a
critical mass. If they had charged a subscription, then it would have been
less simple than just giving each user their ten dollars back.

Can't say I'm against it. It's certainly an interesting way of testing an
idea, and backing out if it doesn't gain enough traction. I guess everyone is
happy.

~~~
dave_sid
Having said that, I'd be slightly sceptical the next time they launch a
product. Are they just testing the water and is that too going to be
discontinued in a few months time?

------
205guy
Something I've wondered about shut-downs like this: why don't they sell the
whole product off as an independent business? That's what brick and mortar
places usually try to do before closing (if they didn't go bankrupt). I could
imagine an enterpreneur wanting to take over a working product with an
existing brand and a customer base instead of building it from scratch.

Seems like this business could be run by a 1- or 2-person team, which would be
ideal for an independent developer with the right skills. A running product
that doesn't take off and limps along might just be what these people are
looking for. Manage 3-5 part-time projects like this, and a couple could live
comfortably in whatever location they choose.

I suppose in this case, there were factors such as a shared backend with other
in-house products, so it couldn't be extracted and switched to someone else's
server. Still, seems like a shame it wasn't even considered. It would even be
a great learning project for a budding entrepreneur (run servers, add
features, do marketing, deal with customers).

~~~
Maxious
A mailing list product is probably next to worthless without the 37Signals
name.

------
joshdance
Has anyone on HN actually used Breeze? Lots of comments, haven't seen one from
a real user. How does a real user feel?

~~~
bcobb
Used it for some small group communication when planning a bike race. It was a
great alternative to 20-deep CC lists and Reply-All, and I think would have
worked for our cycling club's internal mailing list if there had not been a
cap of 50 members. It was nice to have a simple interface for managing list
members (compared to, say, our web host-provided ezmlm lists), but its closing
won't hinder our future event-related communication.

------
antidaily
It's refreshing to see these guys fail for once. There, I said it.

~~~
FireBeyond
There is a little schadenfreude for me. When they launched, there was a
significant air of pompous righteousness from 37S about how poor existing
offerings were, and how this was the way things should be.

That, and their marketing materials for the service weren't just "polished
phrasings", but actively lied: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5040580>

------
gcanyon
This is a great shutter letter, but I'll play devil's advocate:

When someone starts something from scratch, there is a clear message of "We're
trying to make this work, join us in the experiment." Anyone with half a brain
understands the possibility that the idea could fail and either languish or
die. Thoughtful users assess how they will participate on that basis.

37signals is not a startup. When they announce they are launching something,
people are less likely to think that it could fail, and more likely to jump
in. 37signals benefits from that good will, and has presumably a better chance
of success, or at least a higher rate of guaranteed sampling, than some random
startup.

As such, 37signals is potentially in a position where they should be more
committed than the average startup, and more graceful in their handling of
failure. In short, they should be held to a higher standard.

It's still a good letter.

------
duck
Here is the original announcement post:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4997634>

And just as everyone mentioned, it is hard to charge money for something like
this these days and get traction.

------
damoncali
Am I the only one that notices the strange paradox of the valley's (speaking
loosely) celebration of failure, and the often intensely negative reactions
people have to a service being shut down? Doesn't one go with the other?

------
ghrev
Makes ya wonder why they didn't just "Rework" it to attract more customers?

------
andyhmltn
That's a shame! This was one of the things I saw when it launched and thought
'why didn't I think of that?'

~~~
smacktoward
At least now you know why you didn't think of it!

------
zhenjl
What about Google groups as a replacement? Only potential problem is it may go
the way of Google Reader?

~~~
FireBeyond
It would be a bit like eating humble pie for them to recommend Google Groups.
They did little hit pieces against Google and Yahoos services, to talk about
how Breeze was orders of magnitude better.

------
nhangen
Seems like 37S really are a one-hit wonder. Love the guys and the team, but
seems they can't get anything launched that stays launched, and since they
waited far too long to redo Basecamp, I'm positive they lost some business in
the past 3-5. I'm curious to see what's next.

Didn't Chalk get a longer run than this one?

~~~
wmboy
Can't really call them a one hit wonder, the new Basecamp has taken off and
IMO is better than the original Basecamp.

~~~
nhangen
It's still the same product, just a redesign. Basecamp is great, and it set
the standard for many in the industry, but I was much more excited about their
future when they had a diverse product offering.

~~~
wmboy
According to them it's not the same product (remember listening to a Mixergy
interview where it was stressed that they were different - different code,
solving the PM problem in a different way).

Edit: just found the product page for Basecamp Classic
(<http://basecamp.com/classic>), man it looks pretty ugly!

~~~
nhangen
haha yes, it is ugly. One of the reasons my team left it behind a few years
back. Tried a bunch of pm systems and strangely enough, the two we loved most
were free (Asana and Trello).

------
programminggeek
Good show for honesty.

------
growthlol
this. makes. my. day.

guess the "gurus" didn't do enough "growth hacking".

hahaha

last laugh goes to.

me.

~~~
acangiano
I post this not for the troll above, but for well-meaning folks who might
share similar schadenfreude. This type of mentality will set you to fail in
life. Time and time again. You might have a laugh at their expense now, but it
might be the only thing you have. Meanwhile they have success and millions of
dollars. A failure is just a temporary set back to them. The best attitude
when you see people succeed is to say "Good for them", and not envy their
success. Learn from it. In fact, learn from their failures as well, so that
you are less likely to make the same mistakes.</troll-feeding>

------
timmillwood
shame

