Comments on: Being 37signals for free

By: AnotherIdiot?

AnotherIdiot? — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:17:31 +0000

“Only an idiot would write an article like this.” Huh? It makes great sense to me. Are 37signals the only people in the world who can make a simple interface?
By the way, there are many alternatives on the web now, which is probably why they are trying out more new things now. Google have launched a similar product too.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:47:13 +0000

Only an idiot would write an article like this.

Basecamp is good because the user interface is awesome. It’s not the features that count here, it’s the ease of use. I have yet to see an open source appication that has a very good interface. This is where open source fails.

There are quite a number of open source project management systems, but they all suck because it’s so difficult to use them. Commercial products focus on ease of use and functionality. Open source products focus on code beauty and functionality.

By: web design company

web design company — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:27:52 +0000

Unlikely to happen because spoiling someone else’s business isn’t an interesting goal to most developers. If developers were unhappy with the products and thought they could do them better, that would be another thing, but I don’t see evidence of that here. It’s just pissing in the soup.

By: Julian

Julian — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:29:10 +0000

Our solution is called http://www.ProWorkflow.com – project management software and we have many thousands of users in the 1-100 user level. I can tell you from experience that copying the code and building a similar tool is only a small part of it. Think about 37s’s overheads, backend management systems, networks, marketing commitments (paid and social), security, support, sales, backups, billing, 24/7 requirements, load balancing, monitoring etc. All this comes at a cost to 37s (or in our case, to us).

You’re fooling yourself if you think you can put all that in place and then offer it for free. Serious companies like us and Basecamp & others, put great infrastructure in place to protect customers’ precious data and provide great service offerings.

I see some people in this list complaining about the cost of the service. Remember that it’s a ‘Service’, not a ‘product’. You can easily replicate the product, but to recreate the service requires infrastructure and this comes at a cost.

On the point I said about people complaining on price – wanting free tools… We charge $15 per user per month for ProWorkflow. This amounts to 0.50 cents a day! Small price for efficiency I reckon. To be completely honest, if a company can’t afford 0.50 cents a day to pay for project management software to create efficiencies (and save money/time), then the problem isn’t the cost of the solution (Basecamp, ProWorkflow etc). The real problem is that your business is either not making any money, or you simply don’t think the solution provides value.

Think about this for a sec. Would you rather spend 0.50 cents a day for a robust solution to protect your important data? or for the sake of 0.50 cents, look for a free tool, but run the risk that the solution may let you down, go under, perform badly, not be backed up etc!

How much do you value your business? Some people on this list obviously don’t think their own businesses are worth a few cents a day! Sheesh! ;-)

By: Jason Pontius

Jason Pontius — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:24:11 +0000

Yep, agreed with Phil. Great idea back in April 2006, but it seems like 37signals is still alive. And the $55/month they get from me is money well spent in my book. But if any of you guys did actually build the Basecamp killer, let me know.

By: Phil Hodgen

Phil Hodgen — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:09:40 +0000

The reason 37 Signals is successful is the same reason that Apple is successful: there’s an opinionated bastard in charge who has great judgment. You can’t clone that. 37 Signals could open source their code and in 24 months their stuff would STILL be better than anything else out there.

I pay them $99/month for BaseCamp and $5/month for Backpack. There’s much not to love about the price and the software. But I keep paying because it gets the job done. Well.

By: Ryan Cross

Ryan Cross — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:56:23 +0000

For anyone interested, there is an opensource fork of activeCollab at Project Pier. It has multiple developers (Ilija was the only real developer on aC) so it will remain open and free. Note that is has just released a new version and is being actively developed to include a plugin architecture as well and many of the most requested features like time tracking.

By: Franky

Franky — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:39:18 +0000

Keven, check their blog archive. They are going for a dual license.

By: Keven Ages

Keven Ages — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:39:19 +0000

@Avi

Where did you read this?

I can’t seem to find that info…

By: Avi

Avi — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:06:03 +0000

I don’t nkow if you noticed but the next version of ActivCallab (the one with the really important features like time tracking) will be a paid version. Kind of reminds me of MovableType starting to charge money and WordPress appearing. I wonder wats the next activeCollab clone will be.