Looking for early users to try my app
Hello tilderinos,
I'd like to launch my tab manager soon and to ensure a smooth launch, I'm looking for early users who would be willing to try my app as part of the private beta.
For those who would actually need this product, I'm happy to offer one year free (or more!), but even if you don't need it, I'd really appreciate the help.
I don't really need anything fancy, I'd just like to have some people install the app and try it to know if it works properly for them or if any unexpected issues come up, especially major ones. I'd like to make sure that the actual launch will be smooth, especially considering that I've been working on this project for four years now. It'd be a shame if it all went to waste.
Thanks a lot in advance!
PS - I wasn't sure in which group to post
Can't try it because I'm not using Chrome, but I can't see how it's different from what Zen Browser or extensions like Sidebery offer.
I don't mean to say your product is useless or has no advantage over existing ones—I'm sure it does. But your website doesn't explain it, and when you're offering a subscription-based product in a niche with existing open source offerings, I think it's very important to clearly explain on the front page how yout solution is better.
Fair enough, I totally agree. I initially started this project to answer a personal need, the desire to monetize it came a long time after that. At the time, Zen Browser didn't exist and I only discovered it recently. As for Sidebery, it isn't available on Chrome.
Regarding the advantages, one is that my extension continuously synchronizes your tabs and bookmarks, making it easy to switch from a bookmark to a tab and vice versa. This means you don't have to save your tabs at the end of the day, they're already saved and categorized as bookmarks in folders. This way, you don't end up with multiple folders for session 1, session 2, session 3, ... which would have a lot of duplicates in common, while some bookmarks are only in some folders, and not necessarily the last one. With my app, you always have a single up-to-date snapshot of your bookmarks. No duplication like that.
There's other things too, workflows become almost friction-less. Need to save an entire subtree of folders and tabs? It's only one click. All your tabs? Also one click. No need to go through menus. People don't save their tabs as bookmarks because of that friction, but here, the friction is gone. So you can turn off your computer instead of keeping it on for years. And when it crashes, your tabs are saved as bookmarks, so you're less likely to lose them.
You can also easily save tabs for later. So you don't have 50 tabs at any time, but you can save 45 of them in one click and reopen them later, when you actually need them. You just keep the remaining 5 open, because you need them now. And again, it's just one click, no need to hop through menus.
With the folders, you can break down big tasks into smaller ones, the medium into small ones, etc.
Another big one is that you can focus on one task at a time, by displaying only a current folder. This means you don't have to navigate numerous tabs/bookmarks as it can quickly get crowded. You just see what you need.
At first glance, Zen and Sidebery don't seem to offer these advantages, but I haven't played with them enough to know for sure.
Not to mention that I have other plans for the app in the future. I'd like to make it more than a tab manager and add a social component to it, where one can share collections of bookmarks with others, etc.
I'll be honest, I don't think this is worth any amount of recurring charge, especially not $72 a year. I don't deny it took time and effort to develop, but I think the cost just doesn't add up w.r.t the current feature set.
Social features will be a hard sell, especially when you're competing with "just share the links to someone". Not to mention there's already a social bookmarking storage site, it's called Pinboard, and it costs $22/yr, a fraction of your offering.
People who aren't tech savvy won't even know this is something they could want or acquire; regardless of if they'd like it or not. People who are tech savvy might find it, but they'll look at it, gawk at the price, then find one of the open source alternatives and call them good enough. I really just don't see a market for this.
To be fair, are.na is another "social bookmarking" service (with some elements of Pinterest) and it is $70/year, so it's definitely not an unheard of price
I've spent close to 4000 hours on this project, I'm basically $150'000 to $200'000 deep into it assuming a relatively low hourly rate for software development. One cup of coffee per month sounds like a reasonable price to me, not to mention all the future updates.
The issue is that what you think is a fair compensation for your work is not always the same as what the users think is a fair payment for the product
While true, there is only one real way to find out and that's to set the price and see how it goes.
From what I hear it is almost always impossible for this kind of business to raise the price after the fact while lowering can work quite well.
Just a quick heads-up- I gave the site a read-through, and not once on the primary page is the browser or platform mentioned (unless I have somehow missed it). It would be a good idea to make it immediately obvious which are supported, and how (browser addon, mobile app, et cetera).
Hey sorry about that, it's mentioned in the waitlist. It will be clearer after launch with the download buttons for Chrome, Edge, etc.
It's a web app working in conjunction with a browser extension.
I’d give it a shot if it were Firefox.
Hi, thanks a lot. I'd like to support Firefox in the near future, but I'll need to make a few changes here and there.
I don't think I am the audience. But even if I was, I wouldn't like the lack of screenshots. The video is a fun addition, but it moves too fast to really show what I'll be getting.
This also might be just my preference. But you have a lot of the sleek corporate "startup" vibes going in your website. Correct me if I am wrong, but I get the impression you are a solo developer doing this. I personally tend to give solo developers the benefit of the doubt in trying software compared to a faceless corporate website. At the very least I'd expect a bit more of a personal about section (not asking to dox yourself, but more than there is now).
I am also not entirely sure what I'd be paying for. As in, is this all stored somewhere and is searching done on your server? I was trying to figure this out from your privacy policy but that seems to link to an external website which generates it for you. So no luck there.
Basically at the moment I'd have too little information to make a call on trying it.
Edit:
Also, browser extensions imho shouldn't be called apps. Being an app implies it does standalone in my book (even if it is a PWA), but that might just be a semantic nitpick.
Yes, I'm still working on the screenshots with the designer, but I'll eventually add them. An About section is definitely needed, you're right.
Currently, the app/extension stores data locally in your browser (the bookmarks and IndexedDb), so search is performed locally. Your browser might save your bookmarks into the cloud though.
My project is a composed of a website, a web app, and a browser extension. The web app is served in the browser's side panel through an iframe. Originally, it was a pure browser extension, but I had to move to a hosted web app model to comply with the licensing requirements of some software that I am using under the hood.
Some random feedback on the website itself. Disclaimer that I'm a tech person, not a qualified product owner, UX or marketing. But I do keep SaaS apps running, so I've seen plenty how our own landing page flows.
One landing page I like - the Todoist homepage. Simple, colorful, body text isn't wordy, showcases what you can do with the tool, with a persistent "start for free" button as a call to action.
This is some really solid feedback. Great suggestions all around.
Thanks a lot for the advice! The home page does need some more work.
For the pictures, I plan to add them, I'm still working on that with the designer.
It's not something I'm in the target audience for, but I do have some recommendations:
Thanks for the advice.
I agree with you that the artificial limits might repel some users. I may increase the quotas if they're too low. Maybe I'll get rid of them if entirely if they seem to cause more harm than anything.
I agree with your point about syncing and mobile apps, however I have yet to develop these features, so I cannot monetize that for now.