

Ask HN: What SaaS apps have a great UI ? - olalonde

I'm building a new SaaS web app and looking for inspiration on UI design.<p>Can you name some web apps that you find have a really great UI/UX ? Is there any website that showcases such web apps ?<p>Some web apps that come to my mind: 37signals.com's apps, Mint.com, FreshBooks.com<p>Thanks HN !
======
davidedicillo
<http://www.getballpark.com/> <http://www.campaignmonitor.com/>
<http://www.getharvest.com/>

also you can find a bunch of other good examples on <http://cloudomatic.com/>,
a directory of SaaS applications

~~~
ryduh
Check out <http://www.metalabdesign.com/> (the makers of BallPark) for some
great inspiration.

------
rubeng
+1 for MailChimp. The fact that they make sending out emails fun means they're
doing lots of things right with the UI. They serve as inspiration for many of
the things I'm starting to do with my own SaaS web app.

Regarding the 37signals apps, I find Highrise the most impressive from a UI
standpoint.

------
zarski
Smashing mag. has some good articles on this topic.

[http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/25/designing-user-
in...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/25/designing-user-interfaces-
for-business-web-applications/)

[http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/12/10-useful-web-
app...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/12/10-useful-web-application-
interface-techniques/)

I have worked pretty hard on the UI/UX experience for
<http://simplton.com/screenshots> and have been happy with the results.

Also, look no further than Google, their interface work with Google Reader and
Docs is excellent.

~~~
javery
Ok, so I will be that guy. You should really talk to a designer about your
site UI/UX. To me it looks very much like a windows/java application and I
honestly wouldn't use it or trust it with my data.

I know that sounds harsh, but trust me. It's better someone tells you and you
can fix it then if everyone stays "nice" and doesn't say anything.

~~~
zarski
Appreciate taking the time for the feedback. Great advice.

------
Janteh
<http://wufoo.com/> is beautifully designed, really useful UI and great work
with all the colors.

------
koenbok
We leverage Cappuccino to get a near-desktop experience for
<http://www.enstore.com>. You can create an account to play around yourself or
watch a video here: [http://cappuccino.org/discuss/2009/10/06/cappuccino-in-
check...](http://cappuccino.org/discuss/2009/10/06/cappuccino-in-checkout-3/)

------
jasonlbaptiste
This is a really hard one, but we've come across a ton of beautiful apps since
starting Cloudomatic:

\- List of Cappucino apps (these are always beautiful):
<http://cloudomatic.com/tag/cappuccino/> \- One that we added yesterday:
<http://www.staction.com/> I think the app is simple and the ui is
beautiful/something new.

If there's a large enough list of more obscure/unknown apps, I'll try to
highlight the top 5 when I'm on this week in cloud computing later. Apps doing
some crazy HTML5 /cappuccino stuff are always a plus.

~~~
olalonde
Never heard of Cloudomatic before, but I wish I had. It seems like a great
service and I actually like your UI ;) Good luck with it !

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
thank you! We're putting something new out today that should be really useful.

------
benharrison
I'm a fan of Jesse BC (<http://31three.com/portfolio>). His designs are always
top-notch IMO.

Some examples are: <http://www.campaignmonitor.com>
<http://expressionengine.com>

------
swombat
Without trying to be overly self-promoting, we've spent a lot of time making
our UI look good over at <http://www.woobius.com> . Worth having a look and
including it in your inspiration list, perhaps.

------
waxman
<http://freeagentcentral.com/> and <http://campaignmonitor.com> are both
paragons of SaaS UI: beautiful form, and elegant function.

------
stevenbrianhall
I'm pretty impressed with <http://www.freeagentcentral.com/>, it's "great
UI/UX" in the sense that as much as looking good, it also functions well.

------
eswat
The Invoice Machine has a pretty good interface. Simple yet aesthetically-
pleasing: <http://invoicemachine.com/>

It may not be much of a looker, but I always appreciated how MailChimp manages
to make a boring subject like mailing lists fun: <http://mailchimp.com/>

------
mogston
Here's some more great examples of effective UI design: <http://flowtown.com>
<http://survs.com> <http://pulseapp.com> <http://www.xero.com>

~~~
ebloch
Wow - thank you for the Flowtown love #humbling

------
oziumjinx
<http://www.xero.com/> <http://www.crazyegg.com/>

It may not be the most beautiful, but <http://www.salesforce.com/> works
extremely well for its application.

------
turoczy
I've always been a fan of Urban Airship <http://urbanairship.com>

------
megamark16
We use Pivotal Tracker at my day job and I really like the UI/UX. It's
intuitive, functional, and simple, all things I look for and try to emulate in
my own work.

Update: Link <http://www.pivotaltracker.com/>

~~~
mogston
Agreed - we've moved all of our DEV queue into PivotalTracker after benefiting
from it's ridiculously simple UI and workflow.

------
cmelbye
This is PaaS, but Heroku looks amazing and has a great UI. Also, Divvyshot was
beautiful.

~~~
mijoro
I felt the same way about Divvyshot but now can't find screenshots of it
anywhere (and I don't have an existing account, so I can't log in to see it
anymore)

Do you know where I can find some screenshots of it for reference?

~~~
cmelbye
Here are a few:

<http://cl.ly/Zhy>

<http://cl.ly/cQs>

<http://cl.ly/a50>

Their home page is also stunning though: <http://divvyshot.com/> (check out
the map at the bottom of the about us page for example)

------
oneplusone
I am biased, but Guestlist is pretty good. A lot of our UI design focuses on
making the app feel faster than it is while remaining highly usable:
<http://www.guestlistapp.com>

~~~
davidcrow
Guestlistapp is great, the integration to 3rd party tools is extends the
service and federates additional services (particularly for best-of-breed
services like Campaign Monitor, though I'd like to try it with MadMimi).

I keep hoping for additional functionality, i.e., can't wait for the next
release.

------
dylanz
<https://rightsignature.com>

Upload a document and play with the tools. Very easy to use and the control
you have is amazing.

------
warfangle
Big fan of Pivotal Tracker (<http://www.pivotaltracker.com/>). Great product,
great UI.

~~~
moe
Argh?

The piv UI is horrible. Sometimes it auto-updates, sometimes it doesn't, the
whole open/close item metaphor is horrible as it pushes stuff around
constantly, the text-areas are way too small, can't edit your own comments,
stuff more or less randomly jumps to other tabs when changing status (which
may or may not be currently visible)...

Well, that's just what _immediately_ popped into my head, I'm sure there's
more if I look again.

Pivotal has easily one of the worst GUIs of any ticket tracker I have used.
It's right down there with bugzilla, just in a different, over-ajaxified way.

~~~
warfangle
Pivotal isn't mainly a ticket tracker (although it can function as that too).

It's primarily a sprint planning / user story device. The way it can track
sprint velocity and aid immensely with figuring the optimal size of future
sprints (as long as your stories are fleshed out and points set for them) is
fantastic.

------
JangoSteve
I've been a big fan so far of Cashboard. <http://www.cashboardapp.com>

------
henriklied
<http://carbonmade.com> is another webapp with a great and exciting UI.

------
roachsocal
BitsyBox Hosted CMS w/API <http://www.bitsybox.com>

------
zeidel
Check out www.tungle.me - Super simple very intuitive social calendar.

