
Basecamp Breeze officially launched - wlll
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3391-launch-basecamp-breeze-the-easiest-way-for-small-groups-to-keep-in-touch-via-email
======
jmduke
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.

~~~
calgaryeng
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? ....

~~~
mgkimsal
"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.

~~~
grzaks
It doesn't make this product less worth executing by 37s right? What's wrong
about bootstraping your next product by previous one?

~~~
calgaryeng
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.

------
sschueller
If this sells then I am have to reconsider the complexity of problems I try to
solve for people. Is it really that hard to setup a email list?

~~~
eli
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.

~~~
X-Istence
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!

------
statictype
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?

Why no custom domains?

~~~
fleitz
The answer to all your questions is MVP.

------
hacknjack
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)

~~~
lukeholder
its a single email you need to know that sends to all others on the list.

~~~
jmduke
That is also how Google Groups works.

------
caiusdurling
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!

------
timjahn
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.

~~~
simula67
Librelist (<http://librelist.com/>) source code is open.

------
bluetidepro
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.

------
atacrawl
I won't get into the usefulness of or need for the product. That's a different
debate. But this product does raise a couple of questions for me:

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.

~~~
kunal10
>> 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.

------
jbail
$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.

~~~
tchock23
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.

------
scottmagdalein
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.

~~~
mtrimpe
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>)

~~~
jasonfried
We're not using the hex encoded UID in the email addresses anymore. They are
nice and clean now. bookclub@breeze123.com

------
artursapek
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.

~~~
roc
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.

------
potomak
I love to share things with small groups of people through email, I use Google
Groups, it's free and it works great.

------
jmedwards
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.

------
sakopov
If i understand this correctly all this does is creates email groups? Is this
seriously a paid feature?

------
splatcollision
Ok, this is beautiful. First of all, Hacker News readers are not the target
audience.

Looks like a perfectly implemented simple version of the core of basecamp,
communication. Priced to match.

Note: only group members can email the group, so it's private.

------
sklivvz1971
And I thought email was obsolete. Do this with SMSs and it would be HN-worthy
:-)

~~~
jmduke
Just as an fyi, this exists (to some extent) already:

<https://groupme.com>

------
stephen
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".

------
jschuur
This looks like a great way for someone junior at 37Signals to prove
themselves, by developing a small product from start to finish.

I'm not 100% convinced 37Signals hires 'someone junior' though.

------
luigi
I could see this being appealing for people who use GroupMe. "I wish I had
GroupMe but only on email."

------
pdog
I'm curious how/why 37signals decided to make and sell this product.

Is there a way to set this up with a custom domain?

------
kunal10
at this moment it seems like a very simple solution to simple problem (for
some people. reply-all or signup and other services). i think people are
concerned about $10? but looking forward to what will be next in breeze?

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jiggy2011
So, it's a mailing list?

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lhnz
>> Email is the universal constant of communication.

Hyperbole.

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iambibhas
Mailing list for dummies.

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Nikolas0
This has to be a joke.....

