This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about entrepreneurship, design, experience, simplicity, constraints, pop culture, our products, products we like, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago.

Chad 20 Mar 07

I signed up for a free account and found it provided little if any value :( I’m very sad

I thought the entire point of this application was to have “Cases”. Cases are not available on the “Free”, nor “Personal”, nor “Basic” account packages.

It’s not until the “Plus” ($49/mo) package that you even get to have Cases.

http://highrisehq.com/signup

I don’t want to sound like a cynic but why pay for the “Basic” ($24/mo) package, or any lower package, when all you get is Tasks w/ reminders (i.e. Ta-da list, which is free).

Chad 20 Mar 07

Thanks DHH for the message.

I’m going to continue playing with it. I like the look of it. You never know, I might be tempted to upgrade. :)

Josh Walsh 20 Mar 07

Looks great. Signing up now.

Eagerly awaiting the API so we can integrate with it.

Great job.

Craig 20 Mar 07

Chad, what are you smoking? Highrise and Ta-da are nothing alike.

Highrise is about people and contact information and conversations and tasks and files and history and maintaining a dynamic collection of interactions with people who are important to your business.

Ta-da is about to-do lists. Plain simple to-do lists.

Rene 20 Mar 07

Congratulations.

John S. 20 Mar 07

Your signup page has some elements not referenced from your SSL server (most notably the style sheet).

Marc Hedlund 20 Mar 07

Congrats, guys!

PabloC 20 Mar 07

Free edition its very limited.

You can’t really think how do you live with the product with only 25 contacts

If storage is so cheap, why this limitation?

Brian Balfour 20 Mar 07

I agree w/ Pablo.

The free version of highrise has much less value then the free version of your other applications.

Who needs a contact manager if they have 25 contacts or less?

If the purpose of the free version is a trial…then call it a trial.

Other then that I think the application is pretty cool for the first version. There are still some tweaks that I think would help, but hey…thats what getting the first version out is all about.

Brian

Miramar 20 Mar 07

@PabloC: If not this limitation, who will take the payed versions?

Gilbert Lee 20 Mar 07

Congrats!!!

Ben Nolan 20 Mar 07

LOLBSHAX – I could rewrite that in…

;)

Great job guys – congratulations.

Daniel Higginbotham 20 Mar 07

Congratulations!

Would it be possible for you to describe how this compares with Daylite for OS X ? For example, will Highrise allow Blackberry synchronization in any way?

Adam Foster 20 Mar 07

Spot on for my needs guys. Simple interface works a dream. Makes ACT6 look too complex. Blinksale/Freshbooks integration?

Chris Fierer 20 Mar 07

Congrats to the launch. It’s simple, to the point and useful. It’s obvious you guys put a lot of time into this, thanks for another great tool.

Steven Hambleton 20 Mar 07

I have been an ACT ! user for years now and I am really looking forward to this.

Here are a few things that you guys can do to improve the app a little -

1. Add a ‘Companies’ tab next to ‘Contacts’ 2. Add ‘Skype’ to the Phone Number option drop down

Cheers and I look forward to trying it out!

PS. Will you be producing a Smartphone/PDA optimised version? I can see a lot of value from adding stuff while on the road.

Ryan Bergeman 20 Mar 07

Great job, guys! I’ve been fiddling around with it throughout the morning. Very nice =)

Anon 20 Mar 07

Why do I have to keep signing up for new accounts? I have like 6 separate accounts now with 37sigs, any plans to at least unify the logins across apps?

Another tasks list? Why aren’t all the 37sigs tasks lists integrated into one application? Now I have tasks in Ta-Da, Basecamp, and Highrise?

Sean Bryant 20 Mar 07

Awesome. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. And this is one of those web applications that just work.

Marco 20 Mar 07

Gratz guys, but I have to agree with Pablo & Brian about limitation of the free version… or better: a Personal plan at <$12 and a Basic plan with Cases…

However a very nice product.

Diego Ferreyra 20 Mar 07

Congrats on the launch. I just tried it, and I like it a lot. I also noticed the OpenID support, way to go!.

What leaves me wondering is when or how are you going to integrate it with all your other apps. I use Basecamp, and I think your apps are starting to overlap… How are you going to go on this?

Steve Erickson 20 Mar 07

Congrats on the launch guys. This looks great and really helpful for both my personal and professional life.

On a side note, I’m kind of confused as to why everyone is saying that the 37Signals apps are all overlapping and wondering if they will be integrated. To me, each app has its own place and I haven’t ever found myself saying, “Self, I wish I could connect this piece of information in Backpack with this piece of information in Basecamp.” The two are very different in my own life and I’m not sure how integrating them would be beneficial.

alrasbi 20 Mar 07

I am really curious as to why you don’t allow “Basic” plans access to “Cases” after all you do lump it together with “The best plans for most businesses”.

matt 20 Mar 07

Guys I’m disappointed that the cases aren’t allowed until the $49 dollar a month plan. That’s $600 dollars a year for software. I already spend that with you for our basecamp, campfire and backpack accounts combined. I would have gladly ponied up another $12 or maybe even $24 a month for Highrise, but holding out cases doesn’t until a $50/month plan seems wrong and does not flow with your previous pricing.

Mimo 20 Mar 07

Congrats. It seems very simple but yet powerful.What part of the development took most of the time/work?

Colin Dowell 20 Mar 07

I will use the product for my personal life, and as David suggests probably won’t have more than around 20 contacts.

I would probably pay $12 a month for a personal plan if it had cases. Reading the preceding comments it seems others feel similarly. I understand you run a business that makes money and am not complaining at all, but I do love your products and I’m willing to pay for what I use.

Isn’t $12 a month better than $0?

Nathaniel 20 Mar 07

The footer is genius. Logo, privacy, terms, company. And in an ignorable gray too. Nice.

Deepak 20 Mar 07

I love the OpenID … plan to stick to the free version for now to get a feel.

The one area lacking and I haven’t really felt it till now being primarily a backpack user (the basecamp projects I am part of are not run by me) is the lack of integration across the various applications. A super suite for personal or small group project management and organization would be cool – a hybrid of basecamp, backpack, highrise and maybe campfire (all with the same openid).

Highrise may not be the answer for everyone, but it sure looks cool

Rahul 20 Mar 07

Cases seems more like a convenience feature to me than a real killer that pulls me over the edge. They just allow you to group together tasks and people within a certain context.

But any human who knows how to keep track of their own life can do this themselves. For instance, I’m going to use Highrise to keep track of my moving into a new apartment with my girlfriend. This could have been a seperate case. But at the same time, it’s pretty obvious to me that I can look on the landlord’s page or on the real estate agent’s page for the relevant information, and that information wouldn’t overlap particularly much since they both deal with me in completely different ways.

In other words, the free version and cheaper versions don’t even really need cases. Cases are for big companies with lots of contacts where you need automation to keep your headspace organised. The smaller versions can depend on you for that. That’s why I’m happy with the current pricing model.

Joe 20 Mar 07

I’m not sure to what extent exactly you guys design your products with respect to David Allen’s GTD . I suspect not much at all, but thats not the point.

My point is that this is a very interesting innovation on GTD , in that it is a system which reflects people-centric tasks, where as Basecamp reflects project-centric tasks. “Cases” appears to be a way to have the notion of proejcts within a people-centric system.

Great product.

Mike Swimm 20 Mar 07

When I noticed it was live this morning, I yelled over to my brother’s office that Highrise was finally live.

He said “Awesome, maybe Chinese Democracy will come out later this week too!” :)

The product looks awesome, exactly what we have needed for a LONG time.

Congratulations on the launch.

Oopsh! 20 Mar 07

Great!! But the “cases” only up to 49/month??!! :-(

Adz 20 Mar 07

Congrats on the launch, guys. Seems like good value too, with the top plan only 20 cents/hour ;)

Clank van den Bays 20 Mar 07

Dude, that’s some expensive software!

Seth Aldridge 20 Mar 07

This looks like a useful tool! Is it more along the lines of a CRM ?

matt 20 Mar 07

Jason, I appreciate the feedback. A large portion of your customers are small businesses. You jest at $600/year being $6000 a decade or $2 a day, but at the end of the day we all have to make budgets. I think you can see from the feedback that other folks are disappointed to see Cases excluded from the lower plans, because the higher ones are too expensive for their situations.

Part of the reason I enjoy and recommend your products is the no BS pricing. I’ve upgraded past accounts as needed and would likely have done the same w/ Highrise. However this is the first time I’ve seen a feature held back, not an add-on like SSL , storage or more users. I don’t know if I would even use Cases, since I can’t try it at the lower plans. But it strikes me as a departure from your previous apps and a trend that may turn me off to future ones.

John 20 Mar 07

I don’t understand why everyone is freaking out over the $49/month for the basic plan. Yes, it’s $600 per year… for 15 users! That’s just $39 per year for each person. When was the last time you got decent business software for $40? Yeesh.

Eric 20 Mar 07

Thanks for the great product. I don’t need cases right now, but I hope to some day and at that point I will be happy to pay the $49/month. I have gotten so much use out of the free versions of your products, I can’t wait until the day that I can afford to pay for them. Thanks again for all your hard work and contirbutions to the community.

DjD 20 Mar 07

Congrats Guys! Looking forward to checking it out.

Davis Seal 20 Mar 07

I don’t know if I would even use Cases, since I can’t try it at the lower plans.

Why can’t you try it at the Plus level? Every level has a free one month trial. You can downgrade or cancel anytime—with one click.

ToddZ 20 Mar 07

We have 6 people using Basecamp to manage internal responsibilities, and occasionally add a contractor to the system for work on extended projects.

We’ve been eagerly awaiting Highrise to provide an easy way for sales staff to keep track of contacts and prospects. For features and ease of use it looks like our hopes are realized. But I’m still trying to get my head around how one would effectively draw a line between the two apps. I’d like to come up with a one- or two-sentence rule for what goes where, so our staff can easily stay on the same track.

Maybe some examples of BC+HR user scenarios would help people like me?

Greg Macoy 20 Mar 07

Jason, I think it’s fair for Matt to talk about cost implications over 12 months, it’s a very real amount of time (we could talk about minutes/days/centuries but you’re clearly missing the point), especially considering that he is a paid-up customer of your other apps. I’m sure he wasn’t trying to annoy you.

It seems as though there is a strong case for some sort of consolidation of your products/services. Obviously the smaller apps are valuable in their own seperate ways, but I think there is a fair amount of confusion about the overlap (perceived or otherwise). A single login, similar to the Yahoo ID would be great if it were possible. Maybe some kind of “Which app is right for me?” utility would help people decide/clear things up for people.

Being condescending towards your customers that are giving you their honest opinions, and valuable feedback is dangerous path to walk down.

David Ham 20 Mar 07

I get as much value out of reading how you conduct business as from using the products themselves. You distill it down to a simple idea: this is a business relationship. We give you money and you give us useful software products. That’s it. Everyone who sees the product decides if and how much he wants to use it. Price and functionality increase together. If you want out, stop paying and export your data, and we hope you come back some day. Clear, simple.

The way you cheerfully explain this idea personally (I really liked your post the other day about keeping close to your code and customers) is very instructive.

I’m looking forward to using Highrise. But hey, what gives? I refreshed this page all day yesterday looking for the launch announcement, but I had to read about it on Gruber first, like a schlemiel?

I kid. Congratulations on the launch!

brad 20 Mar 07

The pricing issue is in fact one of the biggest challenges faced by online-only software. You can buy MS Office “Ultimate” for $600 and that’s all you’ll pay for the next four or five years unless you decide you need to upgrade sooner than that. In contrast, to use a web-based program like Highrise you have to pay $600 a year every year for as long as you continue to use it.

And these expenses have to be considered in light of all the other monthly fees people are paying…to their ISP for internet access, to their webhost(s), etc….you really do have to look at the annual expense.

I’m not saying Highrise is overpriced, I think it’s very reasonable for the value, it’s just that the whole model of online-only software starts feeling expensive when you look at it long term.

condor 20 Mar 07

integration is overrated. keep the apps separate and focused, they’ll be more useful.

same thing with consolidation. its easy to have a single login/pw, make your login/pw the same for all the apps you use.

jf wasn’t been condescending; the tone of his response didn’t seem helpful, but then again matt’s tone wasn’t constructive.

Des Traynor 20 Mar 07

I’ve been using it for a week, (had a golden ticket), it works very well and its already cleared my desk of post it notes (well most of them anyways).

Congratulations, it’s something that helps me out big time.

Sidenote to the guys: Maybe if you allow just 1 case on the free version, people will then see the additional benefit it brings and upgrade. Sort of like the way you limit Writeboards on BaseCamp. I’m sure you’ve already thought this through yourselves, but I think it’d be nicer for a fuller “try before you buy”.

Doug 20 Mar 07

Great launch, gentlemen. And terrific app!

I’ve been playing in Highrise all morning, and enjoying every minute of it.

One question: was it a design decision to leave out any kind of input mask on phone numbers? [(xxx) xxx-xxxx] Seems like the kind of nice design touch that you guys are so good at . . .

I have to agree with the other folks who were disappointed with the pricing model. I would have liked to see more benefit (cases) at the personal and basic levels. I completely understand that you need to run a business, and I’m very happy with what I get for free, but I don’t think I can imagine upgrading anytime soon.

Once again, thanks for a terrific application and launch process. (I already know how to use Highrise!)

Ian Silber 20 Mar 07

Awesome product!

One recommendation after my first use. Why not have a add link next to the list of contacts within a company (on the company view page). Seems like it would make adding companies with multiple contacts much quicker.

That is all.

Eric Mill 20 Mar 07

I won’t spend much time beating the same horse, but I also will have a difficult time considering upgrading to a pay account (as I have done with Campfire) without getting a chance to experience Cases in at least a limited form.

Greg Macoy 20 Mar 07

Thanks for the response(s) guys, and thanks to Jamis for the swift support response (seems Highrise isn’t playing too nicely with Thunderbird!).

My issue was merely that Matt had raised a valid point, and Jason didn’t seem to respond to it in a very productive way.

@ condor re: consolidation That’s pretty much what I do already, but that’s not really the point I was making.

I’m sure if 37S took an objective look at their suite of apps, as they do others, everyone could benefit. There is clearly some confusion amongst people, and it would be nice if 37S made it clearer for them.

I value 37S and the SvN blog a great deal, I’ve followed 37S from the very early days. I’ve always been pretty happy with (and grateful for) the free accounts for their apps, and maybe one day I’ll upgrade, however the “go f*ck yourself if you don’t like it” attitude we sometimes get is a little disappointing.

Steve Erickson 20 Mar 07

If this is what the product is like at launch time, I can’t wait to see what they have planned for the one month tuneup

Greg Macoy 20 Mar 07

P.S. You can ALL try Cases for 30 days for free.

Just sign up to one of the accounts that offer that service – you can cancel your account within the first 30 days and not be charged a thing!

I’m pretty sure that’s the reason they offer that!

Eric Mill 20 Mar 07

Greg, that’s an awfully good point. I may do that. If Cases do turn out to be awesome, it will still be harder to pay the $49 than it was to pay the $12 for my Campfire needs. 4 times as hard, actually!

Andy Kant 20 Mar 07

Congrats to the 37s team on the Highrise launch. I wasn’t interested in the product until you posted all those previews but I’m excited to try it out later tonight now.

Davis Seal 20 Mar 07

What if using Highrise/Basecamp makes you more productive? If you’re more productive you can add more paying clients/projects. Wouldn’t having more paying clients/projects and time to work on those projects bring you much more money that you are spending on Highrise/Basecamp?

Long Time Listener - Repeat Caller 20 Mar 07

I’m afraid I am going to have to go with the people who are perplexed why Cases are completely left out of the plans below $49 / month. Yes, you have to pay more in Backpack for calendars. Yes, you have to pay more for time-tracking in Basecamp. And while you as the developer have your reasons why thinking that the amount you are charging for the consumer to use Cases in Highrise is completely cool, it seems as though many of your customers have their reasons for thinking otherwise…

One reason for this is that while time-tracking is nice and calendars are nice, they were not features which were available at launch, and as such NOT blogged about on numerous occasions before launch. They weren’t covered in depth before the product was released – and accordingly not features which raised eyebrows of interest for their respective launches.

Arguably, the overwhelming upturn in positive response towards HR (as in the numerous “Oh, so it isn’t just a contact list anymore? Cool! I want in!” comments) on the whole came about very quickly when cases were introduced. You guys blogged quite a bit about how cases are cool, and how they integrate everything together – and yet I fail to see mention of how it was a feature reserved for the loftier price entries. I know you didn’t mention ANYTHING about pricing in the posts, and that isn’t the bitter pill… It just feels a BIT like a bat and switch.

“Check how cool THIS feature is… It’s the one you all want… And you can use it very soon.” And yet no one can even TRY IT OUT unless they shell out at least $50. Sure, you can’t try out time-tracking for free or calendars for free in BC and BP (respectively), but honestly… You guys didn’t really innovate with those features, like you may be doing with cases. Since I know what a calendar tool is like and a time-tracking tool is like, I have a basis of reference to which I can determine whether or not I wanted to invest in those features. And I am far from the only one who knows what calendars and time-tracking are like. But cases, on the other hand, seem to be something very new and because of that something to which I can’t determine if it’s worth using or not for free.

Basecamp was new to me for a web project management application. And I could have tried it for free. Less projects and limited in depth in other areas, but I got a very good taste for free. The same holds true for Backpack. But now one of the things which is new which I want to test and see if it is worth spending any money on at all is beyond my grasp unless I plunk down at least $50.

I’m sorry, but I don’t find this to be acceptable.

It is my opinion (to which I would hate to see dismissed very quickly – as I fear will be the case) is that you should allow a limited number of cases for the free or lower paying accounts. Why not give free users 1 case? Again, my opinion here, but I think you’ll have a greater success of winning people over with upgrading to more expensive plans if you at least let them try out this new feature which has garnered so much interest for your new web app.

I’m sure this remark will just be shot down, but I feel quite strongly about this. And I mustn’t be the only one, because a lot of my friends have talked to me just now about HR and all of them mentioned “HR seems cool, but what’s up with not even being able to try cases unless you shell out $50?”. That must mean something relevant…

Nathan 20 Mar 07

Looks great guys – congrats. To have thousands of people eagerly waiting to pay for your product must be awesome, you deserver it.

You clearly have established your own consistent GUI for web applications and the influence is obvious. How do you feel about other people adopting your look and feel as some sort of standard for online applications? Just as Mac apps have a consistent UI design, and PC programs have consistent designs, if in 5 years most online applications looked like Basecamp would you guys encourage or discourage that?

Nathan 20 Mar 07

Would love to hear what the deployment setup is like? Apache2.2/Mongrel? BSD – Solaris – ?

Mark 20 Mar 07

Not to further throw fuel on the fire, but I’d like to make one distinction: Unlike some features in some of the other apps, Cases don’t gain value in proportion to the number of users accessing the app. The top tier plans provides access to a large number of users AND access to Cases. I think people are clamoring for the option of staying small, but putting cases to use.

Very much liked what I saw this morning; I’m looking forward to integrating things more into my workspace later.

(And looking forward to the possibility of exporting e-mail lists by tag…..)

alrasbi 20 Mar 07

JF everyone knows that Cases are useful especially after your blogged about them so much. I am more than happy to pay for the “Basic” plan, the same way I am doing with Basecamp. I don’t want to try them for 30 days, I want to use them indefinitely. I don’t 15 user accounts and 20,000 contacts. I just need the “Basic” account with “Cases”. Without even trying them, I know I need them.

Nathan 20 Mar 07

DHH – You’re right. I’m not advocating stealing your interfaces outright, though clearly that is already happening. I was thinking more along the lines of establishing consistent UI conventions that users can come to rely on.

Again, nice work – hope you guys will stop responding to banter about the cost of cases soon and crack open some beers.

JoJo 20 Mar 07

“go f*ck yourself if you don’t like it”

37s has never had that attitude. All they simply say is that if you don’t like it, it might not be for right for you. They can’t be everything to everyone.

ep 20 Mar 07

We don’t lock anyone into long term contracts.

Come on, of course you do. Our content is tied into your products and there is no way to take them out if we’re not a developer or invest expensive resources to dig the APIs.

I love your products but you need to see that:

1. You do lock us in (honestly what can I do with an XML dump?) I’m not free and as a customer it disturbs me that you don’t admit it. 2. simple+simple+simple+simple=complicated now.

I read somewhere in the past: “less software”. All I see from 37s is more and more. We need integration now.

Good luck for Highrise.

not ep 20 Mar 07

man, what do you want from them? XLM is the best export format for this sort of data. XML is extensible to any other format and readable by almost any machine in the world. it’s as flexible as it gets. you can’t blame 37signals for you not wanting to make any effort on your own end to do something with the file. they give you your data, you do what you want with it.

ep 20 Mar 07

man, I’m an END USER . Not a geek like you guys. I’m using Basecamp+Backpack because they’re SIMPLE .

XML is chinese for any end-user like me. Try to understand that. There is no point buying a service because it’s simple and time saving then loose these benefits when you just want to read your archives.

Scott Meade 20 Mar 07

I agree with “not ep”. 37signals’ model is about as far from vendor lock-in as you could get.

Nathan 20 Mar 07

ep: What do you recommend instead of XML ? This isn’t meant to be harsh but I think you don’t know enough about technology to make that argument.

ep 20 Mar 07

Nathan, I just want to read my archives offline as they are presented in the tool I’m paying for. Hence, give me the CSS that goes with the XML so that I can print, read, work!

Daniel Haran 20 Mar 07

So, when can we expect to see an API , or is it already wired for ARes?

Craig 20 Mar 07

I’ really looking forward to using your product, great work. Just to let you know the links on: http://www.highrisehq.com/signup for each of the (?) are broken, instead highlighting on each the features.

Davis Seal 20 Mar 07

Hence, give me the CSS that goes with the XML so that I can print, read, work!

If you want to print them, then press the PRINT button.

ep 20 Mar 07

I’ll hire you to print my archived projects! Anyway, we’re off-topic here guys. Sorry you don’t get the point. cheers.

PWills 20 Mar 07

FYI : On the 37Signals homepage, the description for Highrise wraps strangely—the other descriptions are two lines, but Highrise is three lines, with ‘contacts’ undernearth the image. This is on both IE7 and FF2 on Windows.

Scott Meade 20 Mar 07

DHH – Certainly agree with you that no one should appropriate your work. Stealing is stealing no matter if physical goods or online .css files, images, and color palettes. Yet, Nathan has a good question that I’ve wondered about for some time as well so let me ask it from a different angle. When we see best practices in web design being preached and written about for, evidently, consumption and use by other designers; that is where it gets fuzzy for me.

There are definate UI and design conventions that have defined web 2.0 apps and web pages in general. These are discussed in detail in books like Hoekman’s “Designing the Obvious” and Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” and your own “Defensive Design for the Web”. These books put forth ideas for the readers’ consumption and use. These ideas show up in apps all over the place, including apps that have appeared on Screens Around Town such as tickspot.com.

Because 37signals is the net’s rising star a lot of people readily associate those design ideas and best practices with 37signals apps and are then led to ask you: what is your response when people say “Hey, that looks like a 37signals app” and mean it in the best of ways?

Sorry to be off topic…

Craig 20 Mar 07

I’m using IE 6 SP2 , all the links go to http://www.highrisehq.com/signup# which is where I am at so it does link me to anything, also no popups or anytthing else when I hover over it.

Ken Rossi 20 Mar 07

I don’t know if this has been mentioned… and I don’t have that much time to read through all of this but this is more for 37s and company…

On some pricing feedback… how about lowered monthly rates for those who are paying for other products… it would take some algo to figure it out… but like if you are paying $5 for backpack… you get $3 off per month on the basecamp plan if you have it… so the more 37s software you use…it gets cheaper in bundles?

Stacy 20 Mar 07

If no one is complaining about your prices, they are too low. If lots of people are complaining about your prices, they are too high. In the latter case, you maximize profits by lowering the price. Micro Econ 101.

Pricing is always tricky and you need real feedback, actual signup data and complaints, to know where you stand. Then bust a move, if warranted.

One thing I learned about pricing in the retail sector is that people don’t tell you when they are not coming back. So if you don’t adjust pricing quickly, your future customer acquistion cost goes through the roof, even if you decide to lower prices later.

Andy 20 Mar 07

Nice app, though you need to integrate all of your apps into one. Having multiple logins / applications has been unproductive for us. We need to access all of these tools in one place.

Alan Jacobs 20 Mar 07

I have to say that I just don’t get people who say that they “don’t find it acceptable” that 37s fails to give them services for free. Jason and the guys are running a business here; they have created a product and they can charge anything they want for it. If they said I can’t even look at Highrise until I pay them ten thousand bucks, they would be perfectly within their rights, and I would have no business saying that policy is not “acceptable.” It would be acceptable because I would have no choice but to accept it! That might not be a good business move on their part, but hey, there’s no law (moral or otherwise) against bad business moves!

The bottom line is that 37s gives us completely free permanently usable versions of every one of their products, which is more than I get from every other product vendor I deal with. Would they do better if they offered more for free? Maybe. Would they do better if they offered nothing for free and made us pay for everything? That’s a possibility too. All I know is this: while I pay $5/month for my Backpack account, I get an incredible amount of value from other 37s services that cost me absolutely zippo, especially my free Basecamp account. So at this point I don’t think 37s owes me a damned thing; I’m just thankful that they provide as much as they do.

Erik Mallinson 20 Mar 07

Congratulations!

I too agree that I was hoping for a limited ‘1 case for free’ account or at least to have limited # of cases part in a lower priced plan. In some ways I feel like High Rise could be better for our company than Basecamp and while I can justify paying $24 for Basecamp it’s harder to imagine paying $73 or even just the $49 for High Rise.

Dead 3.0 20 Mar 07

Interesting timing of the Highrise announcement and WeBreakStuff launching Basecamp-competitor GoPlan. I wonder when integration between all of 37 Signals products is coming. More on my blog.

Seth 20 Mar 07

I love Highrise, I’m going to pay for it, but not for the $50 plan. I do however want Cases – any chance of you offering the same features as the $24 a month plan, only with cases activated for an extra $10 (or so) more a month? That way I could pay for the same features of the plan I am currently on, but only pay the upgrade fee for Cases. I don’t need the extra storage, contacts, or users (6 is plenty for my 5 person business), but Cases would be a life saver. Hope that made sense…

Great product, and regardless of pricing, I’m hooked and I’m a paying user :) Great job again!

Eric Mill 20 Mar 07

I don’t think anyone’s saying Cases should be free. We’re saying $49/month for what may be Highrise’s killer app is discouraging.

Even if I try Cases for 30 days and adore them, I know I can’t afford $49/month. I pay that much for a utility. If Cases are as useful to me as electricity, heat, or cell phone service, I’ll consider it. Until then, I can try, taunt myself with 37signals’ sweet innovations, and then sadly put it back on the shelf.

Anonymous Coward 20 Mar 07

When did this become a wants=needs society? Some things you just can’t afford and that’s that. The idea that 37signals owes you something because you can’t afford their product at a certain level is so weird I don’t know what else to say. ODD !

Elliott Rosenthal 20 Mar 07

Forget about the actual product, take a look around this interface, its gorgeous!

I have absolutely no use for this product (as a university student) but the attention to detail and “build quality” of this interface is staggering. I hope 37s agree with me in saying its the best construction of any of their products?

How elements fade in. The auto complete feature is implemented really nicely. The colors are perfect. Interface is crisp and balanced. Icons are clear, the meanings are obvious. you never get lost.

Good job. Really good job

Jeff Judge 20 Mar 07

Thanks for launching this today, I was just discussing CRMish options with my biz partner yesterday and we came to the decision to wait to make any moves until we get a chance to review Highrise. We have been reviewing SugarCRM and Salesforce.com, both of which had a little too much of what we don’t need (plus clunky interfaces and expensive pricing). Highrise seems like it will work perfectly for our needs. I love the email integration – it’s a very useful feature.

Ah…while typing this comment I just realized we could use the company RSS feed to integrate account notes within our application. That’s pretty exciting.

PabloC 20 Mar 07

Thanks JF for your rapid feedback.

Would be very interesting to see how u prepared for this day. How you watch your servers? are you prepared for adding and extra server on the first day? is DHH tailing logs all the day? :)Just a little curious about the infrastructure thing.

Kent McKeaigg 20 Mar 07

I am so glad that i don’t work with all of you who are complaining about what you get for free… 37… you have offered a lot of free stuff.. I pay for some and I use some for free… Thanks for both. And by the way… you can have a grateful heart and still have a lot of ideas about how to improve things… Be grateful.

Justin 20 Mar 07

Is there any way to remove multiple contacts at once? In my excitement I skimmed over the 25 contact limit on the free account and uploaded a vCard of my address book, so now I have the first 24 contacts rather than the 24 most useful contacts and it’s like 4 clicks/pageloads per contact to delete them.

erwin blom 20 Mar 07

@ JF

I am personally a paying client since day one of your products and our company is a paying client as well.

So let me start of with saying there’s a lot of things we like about your products.

But … everytime you release something new i find you too sensitive about reactions on prices / products etc by people that are willing to invest in your products.

There’s very often this ‘well, you don’t have to use it’ reaction and it seems you find it very difficult to say ‘you’re right’ about criticism. People say those things because they care.

It gives me an arrogant impression.

And that’s a shame. I like your products, but it doesn’t feel that you’re open to criticism by your customers, with or without Highrise.

Thomas Davies 20 Mar 07

Hmm, I am going to add my two cents to a couple of things here.

ep // I read somewhere in the past: “less software”. All I see from 37s is more and more. We need integration now.

I think you have understood the philosophy of ‘less software’. I, myself took it as less software in one product. Integration creates more software.

Nathan // I was thinking more along the lines of establishing consistent UI conventions that users can come to rely on.

You also mentioned Macs having a unified UI, but I think that concept is exaggerated. Apple’s software is all very similar, yet another company will look similar only due to Apple’s rules on UI design. If you look at MS’s applications, they look completely different to products designed by Apple. As long as companies create a unified UI for their products, like 37S, then that is great.

Everyone // Pricing Issue

While I expect 37S thought long and hard on pricing, they would have been unaware of what everyone would have thought. Admittedly Cases might have been a nice addition to all paid options, but sometimes it might not be appropriate to do so. Even so, you have all got a 100% feature trial for 30 days to have a go.

Overall, I think it is a solid piece of software. Minimal learning is required which is fantastic. I, myself am using the basic option because I am just me, and using it for personnel use.

Thomas

Craig 20 Mar 07

There’s very often this ‘well, you don’t have to use it’ reaction and it seems you find it very difficult to say ‘you’re right’ about criticism. People say those things because they care.

Ummm… Why does 37signals have to agree with your criticism? Because you (or someone) else said so? What if you don’t agree with theirs? Does that make you arrogant?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The idea that someone is arrogant if they don’t agree with criticism is silly. Criticism is a point of view, nothing more. No one agrees with everyone’s point of view nor should they.

Des Traynor 21 Mar 07

I think it’s admirable how much you guys tolerate the discussions here on your blog, I get pissed off if I get 3 or 4 people heavily disagreeing with me. You guys get 50-100 every time you talk about charging money for providing a service.

I think people here should read this, maybe it should be mandatory reading before you’re allowed comment on pricing…

http://www.ericsink.com/bos/Product_Pricing.html

Here is the key point….

After seven years of running a small ISV , I have come to the following conclusion: No matter how low we set the price, someone will complain.

If I lowered the price, I would merely attract the attention of someone for whom it is not low enough. If I gave the product away, someone would complain that I am making them buy more disk space to install it. If I paid each user a hundred bucks to use my product and sent Salma Hayek in a bikini to personally install it for them, someone would complain that they prefer blondes.

Long Time Listener - Repeat Caller 21 Mar 07

Customisable colours, like in Basecamp would be nice. And maybe throw it into that “eventual” Backpack upgrade for good measure?

Michael @ SEOG 21 Mar 07

Been checking out Highrise today, I really like it so far and it seems like it will be useful for managing my core contacts in my position as marketing director and help me to focus on the main contacts my team needs to track, separate from the large number of general records we have in our internal CRM .

Three Suggestions/Questions:

1. Moveable Task Priority: In ta-da list you can drag and drop to move tasks and order the list. Currently, Highrise orders tasks by Time Period in which it is due and the time it was entered. It would be a nice touch to be able to move the task up and down. Lets say I entered a task in for tomorrow later in the day but it really needs to be the first thing I need to look at. I would like to be able to move it to first place and order priorities as it goes along.

Or also to drag an item into a today/tomorrow/this week/etc pile instead of having to click/edit. Small but would make the experience a bit more fluid.

2. Expand the Max Plan to More then 50,000 Records: Our current internal CRM system is similar to Highrise in that it has case histories per record and assignable to-do list and follow up. However, for our sales force the number of records of possible prospects is far larger then 50,000 records. Many of these are data sources for them to prospect to and I can imagine there are other customers out there would like the ability to load their data into an application like Highrise and offer their sales force the ability to call remotely. 50,000 might be too small a number of companies with larger databases of potential prospects.

3. CSV /Custom Import: While the Vcard import is nice, for companies with existing databases and CRM systems it might be easier to export to csv format and then import it. You could specify that the CSV has to be in a certain format but that would be a nice touch for businesses that want to take their existing system and move it to a web version. Since essentially Highrise is a database with certain contact fields, it seems it would be possible to enable such a feature. This would speed up the process for companies or even individuals who have kept contacts in an excel file or some other form of database.

That is what came to me today, like the product overall and your goals of simplifying business solutions. Keep up the good work!

Michael @ SEOG .net

Duncan Macintyre 21 Mar 07

Congratulations! Count me in!

In my business, people and projects are like bread and butter or even white on rice, so as I start using Highrise, my yen for integration will only escalate. And for our multilingual applications of your applications, the API will take things to another level.

I only want to manage 10,000 to 15,000 contacts, but I may need more storage. Any thought of letting us pony up higher rent for more space?

Duncan

Eric Anderson 21 Mar 07

The one thing I see missing with this application is the ability to integrate the data with my Email application.

80% of the time I need to look it my address book it’s to get an email address. I do this by the fact that my email (Thunderbird) is integrated with my address book (built-in address book for Thunderbird). But if I start using Highrise as my address book I loose this integration I currently have. I will have to do one of the following:

Copy and paste the email everytime I want to send a message to someone I am tracking in Highrise. Maintain my contacts in both Highrise and my local address book. This of course starts to defeat the purpose of using Highrise.

The solution seem that offering a LDAP interface to my contacts that I can configure in my local address book application. This way contacts that I add to Highrise are available in my email application also.

Other than that everything looks great. I hope a future version offers that feature. Until then I will stick with my local address book. It may not be as nice but better than maintaining two contact lists.

william 21 Mar 07

Regarding pricing, I pay for all 3 of 37s other products. I was signing up for this without hesitation and before even using it for the $24 plan, based on the previews and reputation. Then I saw the table that said it was without cases and that fact really turned me off. I just spent 20 minutes reading through the comments and suspect the REAL paying customers are the ones voicing their concerns, while the fanboys arguing the other way are those w/ freebie accounts. You guys say you listen to your customers and I believe you. Looks to me like they’re saying this one is a bit off the mark.

Dead 3.0 21 Mar 07

JF, do you have plans to integrate Highrise into Basecamp? I wrote about it and the two seem perfect for each other. Integration between your products would make them that much more useful.

David 21 Mar 07

Gret product guys. Have been playing with it all morning.

1. RSS feeds not working in Safari. Not sure why. 2. Why no RSS feed for contacts? 3. I think a Company Tab would help.

4. Note that you’re using S3 to store attachments. Any latency issues – seem pretty fast to me so far. Are you also storing client data there? Is there an opportunity at some point for clients to backup data or copy data out of S3 directly?

5. I know I cn import a vCard from Apple Address book – what about syncing back the other way? Any plans?

Scott Handsaker 21 Mar 07

Signed up for a paying account today, after being a Basecamp user for greater than 12 mths. Looks great..feels great…but some suggestions for you.

Keep in mind I have only had an hour on your product, so I might be completely off here… hehe

1. Too many steps to delete a contact – should be a one step process

2. Photos are irrelevant (to me) – how many of my clients are going to volunteer to let me take their photo, and why would I bother uploading? The layout choice for contact is therefore too “full”, and I cannot quickly scan my data to easily see a name. Sure I can search, but I prefer to scan.

3. If entering a new contact to an existing company, the address field should auto populate with what I have already entered for their company details.

4. I find it annoying to have to enter the same country each time. Everyone lives in a specific country….and 90% of contacts will come from that country, so why not let me set a default option?

Otherwise, it rocks.

Greg 21 Mar 07

Can I not upload a picture of the contact person on the Free plan of Highrise?

If not, why does it give me the option to do so?

Ryan Allen 21 Mar 07

Re: Servers. You’re hosting with Rackspace yeah? If you don’t mind me asking what are the specs of your dedicated Highrise server? :)

Aaron Bailey 21 Mar 07

I love the logo. Nice Chicago touch!

js 21 Mar 07

sounds like a small deal but it will be a deal breaker to me…

I work on Capitol Hill so the “company” will be “Office of Rep. Firstname Lastname” but a company search for “lastname” won’t find the “company.” However, a search for the “lastname” of a person WILL work. I’m wondering why the two searches are different.

Dhrumil 21 Mar 07

JF: Most people who are happy with something never speak up on blogs or public forums.

Here to say that I’m so incredibly happy to have access to this tool.

Thank you

Dhrumil 21 Mar 07

JF: Most people who are happy with something never speak up on blogs or public forums.

Here to say that I’m so incredibly happy to have access to this tool.

Thank you

Wilco 21 Mar 07

I just got to Bascamp two weeks ago, and have a 12dollar account. I is good, works great. I would like to go to the 24account, but the problem is that I need much more diskspace, 400 Mb isn’t much to store projects.

I was waiting for Highrise, watched your website every day. It looks very good, but I can not afford 49 dollar to have cases. I would have taken a 24 D-account if it would have had cases. And again another problem is the 400 MB.

I know a lot of people, all one-persons companys who I would like to advise to get Highrise and who would get hooked to it, i’m sure. But it’s no use, the will not pay 49D a month for it. I think they would pay 24 D a month if they had cases an if they had more than 400 MB space.

It’s a pitty, I have to put Highrise out of my mind and go back to the software.

Wilco

BadSlacks 21 Mar 07

Nice job, guys…. Here’s my “day 2” review that breaks down the 6 reasons why Highrise from 37signals is the right solution for 90% of the CRM market. Includes an interesting Flash visualization of the main advantages of the application:

http://www.badslacks.com/6-reasons-why-highrise-is-very-likely-to-be-a-success/

Sean F 21 Mar 07

I’m also a paying basecamp user who is annoyed at the lack of cases in the lower accounts. I would likely have a total of 3-5 people using this and would only need the $24 account to satisfy my needs except for cases. I still can’t decide if I want to double my investment just to get cases. Seems iffy at the moment.

Mark 21 Mar 07

Just a feature request that I’m sure you’ve already gotten queued: Batch actions. Delete companies (easy to see after some cleanup which have (0) contacts), Delete contacts (scroll through, check off contacts and hit Delete), and batch tagging (Apply a tag to all selected contacts).

I’ll tell you where this is applicable to give you a little more usage feedback: I exported all my LinkedIn contacts (~80) to .vcf and imported to Highrise. The only option from LinkedIn was one massive export (no filtering). I’ve since had to go through and delete contacts I don’t need in Highrise, one at a time, delete companies I removed contacts from, one at a time (there’s no merging for companies either), and I’d like to tag about 2/3 of these as “include in announcements.”

Aside from that - which is probably underway - I’m quite pleased with what Highrise is providing me.

Sean F 21 Mar 07

Just a suggestion for the photos for contacts, companies, etc. The photo process is a bit onerous as I would have to grab a photo off the web, save it to my computer, and then upload it. How about allowing users to put in a URL and have the server grab the image for use? Using ImageMagick to resize would be a nice touch as well.

The photos would be nice to use, but I’m not sure that it would be worth the time otherwise.

Don Schenck 21 Mar 07

I love the product but am hesitant because I admit: I’m cheap. I have to get over the hump to spend $49 (okay, $98 because I want Basecamp, too) a month in order to support my well-paying customers.

It’s a psychology hurdle for me. Could it also be the same for some others? I think nothing of spending $10 for a decent cigar.

And Des … I WILL NEVER complain about Salma Hayek in a bikini. Never. NEVER ! Send her over to install Ubuntu! :)

js 21 Mar 07

I’m going to make this more simple to understand

if you put the company of Fred Smith as The New York Times and then you search for “New York Times”, nothing comes up. Why?

If you search for the person “Smith”, Fred Smith and Sally Smith and all the other Smiths come up.

Anonymous Coward 21 Mar 07

Highrise is a steal compared to every other comparable product from 6 Reasons Why Highrise Is Very Likely To Be A Success.

Sean F 21 Mar 07

A couple more suggestions while I’m kicking the tires.

If a person does not have a photo, but their company does, use that instead of the blank image. Or allow us to turn off the images.

I like the e-mail integration. One way to really take to the next level would be to allow the sender of the e-mail to add some tags like.

CO:New York Times name:Tom Friedman email:tf@nytimes.com when:nextweek task:Write about latest column

etc.

This will speed entering of data.

Third, allow some way to make the date due as WaitingFor, so that way I could easily track what I’m waiting for my contacts to do for me. Unpaid invoices etc.

Rahul 21 Mar 07

JF said: “That requires centralizing all the billing for all the apps which we’re working towards, but not there yet.”

Given that you guys only develop software that meets your own needs at any given time (Basecamp from client work, Writeboard from Getting Real, Campfire from remote working, and now Highrise from growth/annoyance with LinkedIn), I wouldn’t be surprised if the next product you end up releasing is related to budgeting/money management. Certainly a complex problem that scales from business to households and could use a simple and effective product to keep everything together.

Or maybe not?

Ken Rossi 21 Mar 07

Ken, one day we’d like to offer that, but we’re just not set up to do that yet. That requires centralizing all the billing for all the apps which we’re working towards, but not there yet.-

Thanks for the response Jason. As always I am impressed with yet another cool product. I hope my revenue keeps up my ability to pay for all your products. :-) Hopefully with centralized billing comes universal logins/accounts …

Here’s to your continued success…..b/c if you went out of business losing the organization of a myriad of information I have on about 3-4 basecamp accounts (clients now want their own accounts) ... 1 backpack… several writeboards… a tadalist that is becoming overwhelming…. would basically cause me to have a heart attack at the tender age of 30.

Cheers.

js 21 Mar 07

i’ve been using this more today and I’m not that impressed—it’s so promising but the kinks aren’t ironed out.

The first email I forwarded from Outlook bounced back and it’s a problem that will reoccur whenever I forward from Outlook. (it’s because my version of Outlook doesn’t include the email address of the “FROM” on a forwarded message, just the name). The company search doesn’t work well, and you can’t search for anything, just company and names. I was so looking forward to this release that when I find seemingly basic things wrong with it - and granted this is an ambitious project - I’m kind of left scratching my head.

Netdiva 21 Mar 07

I have read all the comments and let me chime in here briefly with Kudos & Concerns.

Some background first. Briefly: I am a university professor who also happens to be a department chair. I have a myriad of projects and to-dos for my various roles. I have not found the perfect software or system to deal with everything that comes across my desk professionally and personally.

I am a paying customer of backpack, but I also have free accounts at basecamp and tadalists. The main thing I use at backpack is the reminders. I don’t use much else at backpack because it doesn’t quite suit me. Enter Highrise!

Kudos – Highrise is a wonderful product. Very nice design, fairly easy to maneuver around, etc. I like it. I especially like the fact that Highrise seems to fix a limitation in Backpack that causes me not to use 80% of it. Moving text/tasks around from page to page. In Highrise, I can move things around using Cases and that would solve some issues for me.

Concerns – Put me among those who are concerned about the price. There is no way I can pay $49 a month just for the use of cases when I’m already paying for backpack. As mostly an individual user, this price point doesn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t need a lot of contacts, and perhaps not a whole lot of space, but the functionality of Cases would be very helpful.

Spencer 22 Mar 07

I was excited to see this app, but was very disappointed in the features and the price is way to steep for what it offers. And where is the implementation between all of 37signals apps? I like the way you can layout things in backpack, but this functionality is non-existent in the messages of basecamp, and the CRM is useless to me without linking it directly to my projects, why does it have to be completely separate. I know that after three months of using basecamp I will not be paying for another month as it offers too little for the price. If they were to combine all three basecamp backpack and highrise together, they might have a quality app, but these single apps are becoming more of a headache to use by themselves.

d 22 Mar 07

First of all, thanks for another great service. I wonder if..

1. it would be possible to have tags on tasks too besides ‘categories’? and related tags in companies? -that way we can have tags that group companies, contacts and tasks, like a ‘folksonomized’ case.. maybe displayed in a simple list that displays all the items in a simple linear way -not the fancy way of cases . i think it could be a way for categorization and grouping that can be effective or maybe is a mess, just a wild thought . what about machine tags?

2. what happened with the favicon for highrise?

3. i know it’s silly, but maybe isn’t a bad idea one simple case in the personal account. seriously.

4. ajax-spiced autocomplete in textfields? the 20th time that i must repeat a country or city is a little bit, huh, anti-DRY?

5. custom css for color scheme/fonts/branding? i know, i know

6. app-trigger links for skype, gtalk, IMs links, phones?

7. mobile integration with south american carriers? -is complicated? what can be done?

thanks again for the inspiring work and the most elegant web-based tools ever.

WDC 23 Mar 07

Congratulations guys! :)