

Invoice Bubble: Please review and let me know your thoughts - stulogy
https://invoicebubble.com

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hcho
I am not a native English speaker, I might not get the feel of your domain
name right. Having the word bubble in your name doesn't really convey trust to
me. Do native speakers feel the same?

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nudge
It doesn't really have any connotations for me in this context. Obviously, if
it were to do with investments, 'bubble' would be an odd choice. In the
context of invoices I don't think it really means anything.

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Torn
Agreed, I thought this would be a cool css / js tooltip effect or something.

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JoachimSchipper
I thought it would be some article about the difference between cash and
accrual accounting, and how temporary differences in these numbers can cause
(short-term, but potentially fatal) problems.

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stulogy
:) sorry to disappoint! sounds like a good idea for an article.

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JoachimSchipper
I'm not sure I'm disappointed, really; just slightly surprised.

Good luck!

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nudge
Very nice design. A few thoughts:

1\. Your testimonials would be better with names, I think.

2\. I would like to see some data-export options, just so I know that I
wouldn't have to start again entirely if I stopped liking your product.

3\. Your pricing page says "We offer a free plan to get you started, then a
paid plan that has all the features and no limitations for a tiny $5 per
month". This is a little confusing, because you're also offering me a free
trial to get me started. Your free version distracts a little from your paid
product, which is already very good value. Do you need a free version?
Consider dropping the free version entirely, or dropping it from the signup
options, so that I get started on a free trial of the full product, but can
switch down to the free one if I like. I'm guessing it'll be easier to get
people to pay to keep using features than to pay to use ones they haven't used
yet and don't know they need (which would happen on the free plan route).

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stulogy
Hey thanks. 1) Yup, ok will put those in. 2) There is already data export for
everything. 3) You are 100% right and I need to sort this out.

Thanks for your helpful feedback.

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ros99
Site looks lovely. If you can work out how to tell when an invoice is paid
through the system (without trusting the user to tick off the invoice as paid)
I would suggest offering the service with no sign-up cost and charge a % of
the paid invoices.

There's a reason most every payment site does it this way :)

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stulogy
Hey. Yeah that's an option. Last month we helped our users create over $50,000
in invoices (thats invoices that were paid), so a percentage would be an
interesting idea. :)

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synnik
I wonder if invoicing alone is worth paying for...

Although I know my feelings are inaccurate, I've never minded invoicing
because I am asking for money. I actually somewhat enjoy it. It equates to
income.

By the time invoicing becomes a serious drain on productivity, I'm already
doing well enough to have that function covered either via an accountant or
just an accounting software system.

So yes, you are solving a problem -- but a pretty darn minor one... will
people really pay for that?

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mootothemax
I like it a lot! My only nitpick is on the pricing page: "yearly price." I
prefer using "annual" instead of "yearly," but I don't know if that's a
cultural thing ;)

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stulogy
Hey, where are you from?

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mootothemax
England originally, and now in Poland, which has done nothing but utterly
confuse my English ;-)

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prog
Looks good.

I think it would be a good to put the "pricing" button after "take a tour" and
"try it free". Right now you need to look hard to find it. :)

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_Lemon_
It's good but I'm not sure on the pricing. (Incidentally why is this "hidden"
at the bottom of the front page?)

I'm comparing it to Google Checkout as it's what I currently use to take
payments. How does it compare?

The first thing is that I don't know how you're taking money from the clients
or prompting them to pay. Do they pay via PayPal or Google Checkout or do they
have options? "get paid online through PayPal" would suggest they do.

If so, how do you make money? What's your secret to getting such a low price?
I think I'm paying Google several hundred each month to process my payments
(PayPal would be the same) so are there hidden charges?

Is there an API? It's nice (and crucial for me being able to scale) not having
to process all my clients manually.

Please correct me if I've completely gone off the plot but this is my stream
of consciousness. I do like the front page!

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stulogy
Hey. API is in development yes. Yes well Paypal will take their 3.4% off you,
we are literally just storing your invoices and connecting your clients with
Paypal. We don't take any payments from your client - it goes direct through
to Paypal. Feel free to contact me if you want to talk more about it.

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alttab
This instantly reminded me of BillMeBob.com

However, BillmeBob does nothing but create an invoice. You beat them here by
integrating with paypal, but why pay you AND paypal to get paid?

You are basically a "value add provider" so make sure your pricing points are
right. The "Project Bubble" page does a better job of pricing comparisons.

To me, both "Project" and "Bubble" are offputting. When it comes to getting
paid, people may not want to use a product called "Project" as it could convey
unreliability. You obviously have some affinity for the word "Bubble," so
maybe try to find another phrase that more accurately describes your business
and is catchy.

Otherwise great work on the software, look, and feel!

Maybe "PayBubble" or something?

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jakerella2
The site looks nice: clean lines, etc. - but I'm left wondering why I would
use your service over Freshbooks, which seems to have more features (all be it
only 3 free clients to your 5).

I think your "tour" needs to have a lot more information: you show a tiny
piece of an invoice, how about a sample PDF? A video intro to the creation of
an invoice would be great.

Lastly, while live help is always appreciated as an _option_ , I would
definitely stray from sending messages to online users in that live help popup
without them asking for it... kind of creepy.

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paraschopra
Design looks great, though on the home page your two buttons are competing for
attention. Ideally, have just a single button there. Or make one larger than
the other. I think the homepage is too _light_ to excite a potential customer.
Also, somehow I have hard time distinguishing it from other invoicing apps.
Maybe you would want to answer why is it different?

A small typo in your testimonial. Spelling of definitely here -> "definately
switching to this"

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stulogy
Thanks for the feedback, I'll fix the typo. Let me know if you think that
Project Bubble's home page is any more exciting. I have spent a lot longer on
that one (from a marketing angle): <http://projectbubble.com>

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uggedal
One of the clearest landing pages I've ever seen. The green color gives me
associations to safety -- something I'd want in a service which handles my
payments.

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hooande
This site is great, I plan to use it soon.

I wish it said something about paypal more clearly on the home page. Finding
out whether or not you provide payment processing options took some looking.
Overall it looks great.

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stulogy
I just put a LiveHelp thing in, so if you want to talk to me about Invoice
Bubble you can on the site. I also disabled Forced SSL, so it should be faster
now - thanks for your feedback everyone.

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jmah
BTW going to a page with SSL (like "Try for Free") makes the chat area show
"Olark: Upgrade your account". Could be a bit confusing.

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hristov
As of the writing of this post your site is impossibly slow or dead.

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paraschopra
It is on HTTPS, maybe that is why?

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stulogy
Ahh yes... the whole site is on HTTPS.

I'm not sure what the best approach is for the SSL. It looks good when people
go to the site and see the seal, they know its a secure site. But it can slow
things down. I could make it so that only the actual logged in interface, and
the signup page are secure. What do you think?

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MichaelApproved
SSL is very resource intensive. I can understand wanting to show security on
the homepage but you should definitely turn it off for the site tour and other
pages like TOS.

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egoz
That site even use https to serve images. Btw, Ask HN: I'm planning to setup a
site hosted in linode540/slicehost512 and serve all but images/css/js in
https, and expecting about 5k-10k page views a day. Will that slicehost/linode
instance be enough?

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apinstein
You can't really serve all but images in SSL as unfortunately browsers
complain about this. We tried it but people constantly ask us why they get
alerts (IE) and there is a "caveat" to the lock in Firefox. Sad but true.

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egoz
Ouch! I use my own generated ssl certificate for development and doesn't
realize this. Now, seeing where all https domains serve their image, I see
that you are right. It saddens me, but thanks!

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ianium
Shouldn't SSL be part of the basic package? Having to pay for it seems a bit
off, especially for something high in personal data, like invoicing.

Edit: looks good, btw

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subbu
Beautiful site. How do you provide subscription based payments?

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stulogy
Hey thanks for the comments. So Paypal handle the payments at the moment. Not
ideal - but 1) people trust and recognise the Paypal brand 2) it's great for
startups because there isn't any investment needed to set it up or integrate
it. But you lose out when it comes to the 3.9% they take on the payments. Long
term I will probably end up using CheddarGetter or similar.

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binarymax
Looks very interesting. I am (slowly!) building a site on the weekends in a
similar (non-competitive) area. Do you plan to develop an API?

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stulogy
Yup, building the API and the iPhone app at the moment. Should be ready soon.

