Good to hear but I wonder how many of their customers left already. When my team heard that Grove was going out, given the problems we had with Grove through the last few months, we quickly pulled the trigger and moved to Hipchat.
Yup, we certainly have some work to do to win users back. If you've got any suggestions, or if there's anything we can do to get you back, please let me know! jacob at jacobian.org.
We were users of Grove, and moved to plain ol' IRC right away after the announcement. There are a few things that Grove did very nicely that we liked like archives and offline email notifications.
* Devs spend a lot of time setting up their systems and it would be nice to have an assurance that you are here to stay to make spending time integrating stuff with Grove worth it.
* You may want to rebrand to help make the assurances easier.
* A better web-client that works on a mobile phone. Some of our users were mobile and Grove's website was almost unusable on the phone.
Thanks for the feedback; let me try to give you some more info:
1. Yes, we're (painfully) aware that restoring users' trust is going to be a big deal. There's obviously no way I can prove the future, so all I can say is that we're in this for the long haul. Grove fits in perfectly with our business, is a product that we fundamentally believe in, and so it's not going anywhere. We're not going to sell it, or shut it down, or "pivot" into a different business. I hope I have a good enough reputation that you can take me at my word, but whatever: our actions over the coming months and years will prove this.
2. We're not re-branding; that feels dishonest (plus, I love the brand.) I'm confidant that we can restore whatever trust we've lost.
3. Oh hells yes, I want an awesome mobile site/app, too. Realistically it's a bit down the list after some of the backend stuff we need to hammer our first. But I want one, bad, so it'll happen as soon as we can!
Thanks again for the feedback, it's really helpful. If you've got anything else you'd like to tell me/us -- or if there's anything more I can do to get you back as a user -- please drop me a line (jacob at jacobian.org).
You may be better of with a re-launch under a different brand recycling the tech. Re-establishing a reputation once it has been dented this badly may be more work than starting afresh.
We also moved to HipChat, but I prefer Grove. HipChat's AIR app is ok, but kind of clunky and has almost no customization options. Being able to use any IRC app with Grove was one of the biggest selling points for me.
