

Notifo (YC W10) Will be Shutting Down - jazzychad
http://blog.notifo.com/notifo

======
amirmc
Sad to see this go. On a more positive note, I'm really impressed with this
shut down notice.

It gives a brief explanation of the situation, clear indication of what might
happen next and alternatives that people might consider.

I've had to draft one of these before so I know it's difficult. Especially the
part where you mention alternatives because there's no going back after that.
The only thing I'd have done in addition is to email the same message to all
users (but that might already be in progress - Edit: It is).

Kudos and thanks for the service so far.

~~~
jazzychad
Thank you. I worked very hard to make sure that the announcement was as
'professional' as possible. I've seen too many other companies get railed for
poor interaction with their users when shutting down, and I wanted to avoid
that.

I sent an email to all service account owners with the same information to
make sure that they read it, since they will be impacted the most by having to
switch to a new solution.

~~~
cdh
I'm curious, have you considered leaving the site online, but charging a small
amount per month for personal access?

I'm guessing there might be a fair number of people (myself included) who will
miss it, and it might at least provide you a little extra income on the side
without too much effort or expense.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Agreed. I too find the service useful enough that I would be willing to pay
for it.

------
ilamont
Chad, I am sorry to hear about this. I understand the frustration and other
negative feelings associated with shutting down something that you've put a
lot of effort and hope into.

I have a question. You mentioned that Notifo never gained enough traction with
publishers or consumers. Can you share with us some of the metrics around
this, in terms of targets and actual usage? Also, what are some of the things
you tried to do in terms of marketing when it was clear that word of mouth and
the other methods weren't working?

------
marcamillion
Wow...kudos on having the balls to a) admit this finally - especially given
the implicit pressure you must feel being a part of YC with PG's "perseverance
is everything" mantra. and b) admit it so candidly and publicly.

Why could you just not leave it running (on Heroku's free plan for instance)
and not maintain it for a while and see what happens?

Or did you do this already and realized that it needed you hands-on daily to
work?

Or is there some pre-text to have taken money from YC and Yuri Milner that you
basically have to officially kill it and liquidate everything?

~~~
jazzychad
Well, I didn't get the Yuri money (that started two batches after mine),
otherwise the runway would have been much longer.

The system is too custom to run on any of the Heroku-like services out there.
I'm exploring other potential options, but I'm not one to give out false hope.

~~~
patio11
Just my opinion, but there's no shame whatever in killing it dead, and it is
probably optimal for both you and your users/customers. I take a salary to be
the on-call ops guy for my services. If Notifo isn't paying the bills, _the
heck with that_. A server dying at 3 AM in the morning is your problem if _and
only if_ you are getting compensated to worry about that.

You have a life to lead, at Twilio (or wherever) and all the parts of your
life that are more important than working. The Notifo chapter is over. Much
love to users from those days, but they don't get a moral claim on your time
until doomsday because you happened to write some code that one time.

It's also maximally in their interests to be clear about this: Notifo is going
away. It will not be improved, it will not be maintained, it will not be
supported, it will probably not be turned into whatever some does-not-do-this-
for-a-living person thinks is an ideal way to continue providing service to
them for free to far-too-cheap. If your notification needs matter to you,
start transitioning now.

~~~
whatusername
Patrick -- are you going to change the name of Appointment Reminder now? I
think I remember you posting that you had notiphone.com registered for it -
but went with the boring name option instead of clashing with a new yc
company.

~~~
patio11
Prior to reading today, I would have said "I might change the name of
Appointment Reminder at some point in the future, but have no specific plans
to do it in the near future." I think that's pretty much still true.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Plus "notiphone.com" sounds like an anti-Apple website.

~~~
ericd
FWIW, I read it as Not iPhone dot com at first.

------
DanielRibeiro
The founder's post: [http://blog.jazzychad.net/2011/09/08/fouling-out-moving-
on.h...](http://blog.jazzychad.net/2011/09/08/fouling-out-moving-on.html)

------
maxklein
So what am I going to use for my HN replies notifications and my retweet
notifications now?

I always liked notifo, and this is a sad day for software.

~~~
jdg
Boxcar (<http://boxcar.io>) can send you retweet notifications, and I'll be
reaching out to pg here shortly to add Boxcar support for HN notifications.

We would love to have you as a customer.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Is there any chance you'll support Android devices in the future? That was one
of the huge selling points of Notifo, that it actually worked on more than
just Apple products.

~~~
jdg
Yes, definitely. If you have an android device and would like to beta test it,
email me (boxcar.io/about) and I'll send you a link.

Please help spread the word in return. :)

------
PedroCandeias
Kudos for the perfect message. Sad to see it go, though. It works so well and
it's so easy to integrate. I'd gladly pay for the service, even the basic
level, simply for the ease of use.

Why can't we save notifo?

~~~
kilian
Very sad to see it go, Notifo is probably one of the most frequently opened
apps on my iphone. I'll second the sentiment: I'd gladly pay for the service.

------
jwr
I've been using Notifo for almost a year now (I think) and I always liked
everything about it except the fact that it was free. I couldn't see how the
company stands to make money without charging users.

So I always suspected this moment would come and I always wondered — why not
simply charge people? I would have gladly paid, say, $20 a year — just for the
limited amount of notifications I receive. It's a valuable service that
appeals to an audience that values their time. Sure, you can hack your own
notification system, but why bother if someone already did it for you?

I use Notifo with github, my monitoring systems, my backup systems and a bunch
of other things. Again, charge me on the order of $20-$30 a year, and I'll
pay.

~~~
mibbit
I think the problem was they couldn't find enough people who wanted to use it
for free, to bother trying to charge some of them with a premium package.

------
jasonmccay
Seriously bummed. This was a reliable and (very) useful service for all of our
environments on EC2. We had it tied in with Nagios and it worked quite well to
alert us of issues.

Since this is official, we will probably start relying on PagerDuty now.

------
klinquist
Sorry to hear this. I am a technologist at Cisco and I enjoyed showing the
capabilities of Notifo in tech demos (for example, having a virtual assistant
send links to my phone).

------
jonursenbach
Them shutting down is going to have some interesting side effects with their
Github integration. Wish Github would buy them up and continue running the
service.

~~~
jdg
Boxcar (<http://boxcar.io>) offers Github notifications. We would love to have
you as a customer.

~~~
jonursenbach
Yeah, signed up yesterday at the request of a coworker.

------
jvandenbroeck
Damn, that sucks. But why don't you try to make money in a different way? When
I look at <http://notifo.com/pricing> I can't see you making (immediatly)
money with this strategy. I think you'll have to become really big before
services will pay for it.

I read in the comments that people like the github notifications, why not
focus on developers & try to ask eg. $27 a year for it? I think if you look
for low hanging fruits, you can certainly make a living from it. And once you
do that, grow, grow,.. :)

------
robbiet480
Will you think about open sourcing the backend? Or selling it?

~~~
seany
There is a similar type thing at www.notify.io which existed before notifio
was around anyway.

~~~
kermitthehermit
Here are the bad news: it's also owned by another twilio employee and the
single person behind it doesn't listen to the community, nor cares about it.

------
dmpayton
What a bummer. I integrated notifo into my (as yet unreleased side-) project,
and it was really easy to get going. The main purpose of my app is to send
alerts, and I'd planned to highlight notifo integration as one of the
features.

Good luck on your next adventure, Chad!

------
benatkin
Sucks to see this happen, and to see Convore (which jazzychad wrote an iPad
app for) floundering as well.

~~~
zacharyz
What indication is there that Convore isn't doing well? What is the measure
for success for it?

~~~
teej
Two of the three founders left to do a new startup.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Source? (Edit: I believe you. I am just curious what they are doing now)

~~~
jubbam
<http://boilerplateinc.com/>

<http://cantwa.it/about/>

------
PStamatiou
It was a great ride! Have fun with Twilio and come by for a drink after your
first day. :)

------
jonhohle
I'm the author of Howl (<http://howlapp.com>), another alternative for general
push notifications.

Howl supports notification icons, stores notifications locally for offline
viewing, and is a universal app. There is an official Growl plugin, and API
for integration elsewhere.

~~~
re_todd
Love the name "Howl", whoever came up with that should get a bonus.

------
nitrogen
Sorry to see this go. "Create a Notifo plugin for automation platform" has
been at the top of my second-tier TODO list for quite a while. I hoped to be a
big commercial purchaser of Notifo services. There's definitely a need for a
unified notification system, but I respect that you need out and need a way to
pay the bills. I only hope that the other services are as easy to interface
with and support as many platforms as Notifo. Good luck in the future!

Edit: if there's any way for a paid option to keep Notifo going as a zombie
process, please let us all know.

------
artursapek
That's a bummer. Any chance of a public release, to keep it alive? Also,
Hacker news will need an update now.

~~~
mahcuz
I was just thinking this. It seems incredibly selfish to put software into its
grave simply because the current developer can't afford to continue working.

------
dholowiski
Sadly, my own project 1pix.me, which is based on Notifo will probably shut
down when Notifo shuts down, as I probably won't have the time to change over
to a different service.

But thank you for the great service - it was great while it lasted (I got your
email earlier today).

~~~
dholowiski
I do want to add that as a developer who used the API to send 37916 (and
counting) notifications, I fully expected to get an email one day asking for
money. I never did, and that makes me sad.

------
samps
This is a shame. Notifo was a great service, and to add insult to injury, I
just finished adding Notifo support to my side project
(<http://loglet.radbox.org/>) _yesterday_.
[https://github.com/sampsyo/loglet/commit/4b6923f7aaf9b076cdc...](https://github.com/sampsyo/loglet/commit/4b6923f7aaf9b076cdc404988216a23014577172)

I found the API straightforward and intelligible and signing up a new service
was a breeze. I hope one of the alternatives is similarly well-designed.

------
arctangent
I'm sorry for the founder that this didn't work out.

However, I always find it a bit crappy when services just suddenly shut down.
Was there not the option to ask users for more money and/or donations?

Perhaps just being naive here and I admit I know nothing about Notifo... but
it does seem like there's a systemic problem with innovative startups suddenly
shutting up shop after running out of cash when perhaps they could have turned
things around if they'd admitted to their customers earlier that they were
short of cash.

Any thoughts?

~~~
unshift
the economics might not work out. if it brings in $30k a year, it's not worth
the long days and exhaustion of keeping the service running.

i'd be comfortable paying about $10/yr for my account (since i don't use it a
ton) but at that rate it's hard to make a living and justify the time and
effort. notifo is really handy but it's not something many people want to pony
up for.

~~~
jazzychad
Yes, exactly. As a consumer product the numbers would not add up, sadly. There
are other factors on the publisher side that led to this; I'll be doing a more
in-depth post mortem at some point.

~~~
arctangent
So basically it's the business model that failed, rather than you personally.
You had an idea that seemed good enough to spend time on but the market just
wasn't there. No shame in that. Better luck next time!

------
kermitthehermit
Have you considered releasing the code as open source and turning the current
notifo service into a paid service or something like that?

I'd happily contribute to the source.

I've given both notifo and notify.io a shot, but they both lacked a lot of
features along with an extensible API.

It looks the only way to do it is to either extend something other than
notify.io or write something like this from scratch.

Whatever your decision might be, I hope notifo will continue to exist under
one form or another.

------
drdaeman
That's sad.

I've used Notifo to be notified about HN replies and I'd say it was very
useful. GitHub integration was useful, but I've actually used it only once or
twice.

What was a major turn-off to me is lack of GNU/Linux client and client API.
Thanks to HTTP notifications, I were able to hack my own desktop client, but
it was a kludge far from being convenient.

------
mortenjorck
Notifo always seemed like a perfect acquisition for a number of the services
it integrated with. I would have imagined Twitter snapping it up well before
Bagcheck – it's a real shame no one ever bit.

Chad obviously knows his stuff, though. I'd imagine he's learned an enormous
amount from the experience, and I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes
next.

------
dlevine
Good luck, Chad.

A while back, I hit a point where I felt like my startup wasn't going to make
it. I needed a change. I took a job with an established startup, and about a
year later, I was ready to move on and do my own thing again.

This is a marathon, not a sprint, and you have quite a while to make your
mark.

------
Splines
Thanks for the work - I loved notifo and have it hooked up through Growl to
ping me when important things happen. It pains me to need to search for a
replacement when it worked so well, but after all, nothing is permanent. Good
luck with your future endeavours.

------
zbruhnke
Sorry to hear that Chad, I've already mentioned it to ya many times but keep
working hard, lots of us out there recognize and appreciate the work you've
put in (and enjoy reading your code). You'll make it one day even if it was
not as easy as you imagined

------
fHbjKlf6
FWIW, I'd have paid $50 p.a, I don't have many notifications setup but those
that I do are important enough to actually prefer to pay for the service.
Thanks team Notifo!

Anyone know of anything similar that works with Android?

------
bane
Sad to see it go, but good on you for having a solid go at it. No shame at
all. Something to be extremely proud of for seeing the entire life-cycle of a
company from the inside...something you can't learn any other way.

------
qeorge
Damn. Notifio was one of the more immediately awesome ideas I'd heard. Sad to
see it wasn't able to become a thriving business.

Good luck Chad. Excited to see what you make next. High hopes.

------
trocker
One of the most inspiring comments on this post - 'Sad news. Congrats on what
you achieved though. Much respect. Best wishes on your next project.'

Seriously, chad, Congrats. :)

------
rdamico
I've been a heavy user of notifo myself, and will be sad to see the service
go. Also agree that the notification was very professional and should set an
example for other services.

------
there
sorry to hear, chad. i relied on the android app to send notifications from
various things to my phone without sms.

anyone know of a free android alternative that uses c2dm?

------
joelhaasnoot
A shame, I actually use this. Not as much as I'd want, but Github and Pingdom
notifications are very very handy.

Any other simple Pingdom notification systems for Android?

------
decadentcactus
Definitely sucks to have to shut something down. Best of luck in the future,
and I'm sure having to do this will help then too.

------
ctek
It's sad to see Notifo shut down, but this is beginning to feel like 2000 all
over again. There are simply too many startups.

~~~
jwr
I think there are too many startups that don't even try to charge users. If
the word "free" is all over your web page, I'm immediately worried.

As we can see from this discussion, there are people who would gladly pay --
obvious question is how many and whether they would support the business.

~~~
StavrosK
Yes, but it's sad that they didn't even try to charge...

------
angryasian
anyway we can get a post mortem, about what you learned, could of done better
or different, things like this ?

~~~
jazzychad
Yes, I'm planning on doing this at some point, but it might be a while.

------
meric
Sorry to hear this.

I'd like to know, though, how many users did the service get?

------
alwillis
I really like this service; I use it everyday. I'll be sorry to see it go.

------
marchdown
It was great while it lasted.

------
trin_
why dont you just ende the free service and start charging?

------
the_mitsuhiko
What killed the service for me was the lack of .io domain.

