Doorbell, the first product from Candian startup Smibs, is now commercially available after over a year of private and public beta testing. The service is “sales software for non-sales people” meant to help small businesses complete sales tasks without having to assign dedicated personnel to the role, and competes with other CRM services like Highrise.
The service has changed pretty significantly since we first covered it last June. The most obvious change is a complete UI redesign, which ditches the drab colors in favor of something much sleeker and more intuitive. Founder Peter Urban says that the site has a strong emphasis on using AJAX to decrease load times and increase efficiency, and has adopted more of a webtop control panel. The site has also added a new feature that allows you to ‘attach’ Emails to certain contacts by including a special Doorbell address in your mail client’s BCC field, and will be adding more social features, like the ability to monitor your contacts’ Twitter conversations, in the near future.
Anyone has been able to sign up for Doorbell for the last few months, but Urban says that it was still undergoing tweaking and was still in public beta. Now, the service is ready to make its full professional debut and drop the Beta tag (incidentally Google Apps did the same thing this morning — not bad company to be with). With the Beta tag gone, Smibs will also begin charging for the product, though it will offer it for free to teams of up to two users and 250 contacts. Paid plans start at $19 per month.
Doorbell isn’t the only Smibs product in the works: the company plans to have another application out this August, and we’ll also begin seeing third party applications appear on the Smibs platform in the next few months.
An entire YEAR of public testing is a little much. By then, the hype for the product will have slowed dramatically.
(tech)
We took our time deliberately to create a great product. I believe in making really great stuff as being the best ‘hype’ machine.
Looks like its launch season, first Viralheat.com and now Doorbell. Going to try this out.
Let me know how it works for you and how we can improve. You can connect with me on the Smibs network
The Smibs team got so excited about the launch we decided to form our logo with our bodies (observe @ http://blog.smibs.com)... if that’s not dedication I’m not sure what is. Thanks so much to TechCrunch for their support.
Just love it when people make it so difficult to find the free account registration link to test the product. Reminds me of late night informercial.
The Smibs team got so excited about the upcoming launch that we formed our logo with our bodies (check it out @ http://blog.smibs.com) – if thats not dedication I don’t know what is… Thanks so much to TechCrunch for their support.
ugh sorry about the re-post, the first one wasn’t showing up in my browser. anyone else experiencing commenting technical difficulties? I may just need to go back to sleep….
“Canadian” not “Candian”
Any compelling reason that would entice someone to use this instead of Highrise?
Multiple accounts with a single login, network integration, integration with future apps, and a slick interface.
full disclosure: forrest has build the thing
Smibs is a great product that I have been using since the beta phase! I would recommend it for everyone.
It helps keep me organized with my potential leads thereby increasing my efficiency and success.
Great job Smibs team!
Have looked into this product and it appears to be a complete copy of Highrise.
The pricing page is designed almost identical. the pricing itself is almost complete identical
The url naming conventions.
The features.
I see above where Forrest put some reasons… they really don’t appear to be that compelling… especially if you want people to believe your innovating (which multiple accounts with single login) fail to do.
Here’s an idea… have the product sync with Google Contacts through their API. That way small companies who use Google Apps for domain don’t need to manage 2 separate contact directories.
Anyone else ????
If you’ve looked into it you’ve probably found that we’ve taken a completely different UI approach which we think is key to efficient contact and deal management. CRM and sales software always circles around contacts, tasks, opportunities and leads so the innovation is in how efficient you can go about dealing with them.
Obviously we are very open to suggestions so thanks for the idea. We do plan to integrate with a variety of API’s and Google is high on the list.
What’s more important to you if you have to choose: Mobile integration or API integration to other systems for your contacts?
Looks great guys. Been following it for a while now, I have a couple of projects that I think it will be great help with.
@StephanieDixon I love the people logo!
anyone heard of heap? very solid…and $5 per month, per user. http://heap.wbpsystems.com/
(i dont work there or know anyone that works there…but i do use their product)
oh yea…fully integrated with google api, too.
not yet, but soon
Doorbell is a great product. It’s really improved through the beta stages, and is definitely worth checking out.
Interesting.
As we are preparing to launch our beta (the first round of invites go out July 31), we like to keep an eye on what’s out there.
And since today is “beta day” on TechCrunch (or “not beta day” I suppose is more accurate), we’ll be releasing the final 1.0 in just a few months — not years!
I wish Smips good luck. Looks like an interesting new product. In the meantime, though, feel free to sign up for our beta at http://bloomapps.com.
Chris from Bloom Apps
The new interface is really fun to work with…
I use Highrise, and have done so for the past year. Doorbell looks nice, but doesn’t really do enough to conside moving.
It also seems like a missed opportunity. Highrise has a few big flaws that haven’t been addressed in this product either…
which features do you feel are missing?
Obviously this is just the start for Doorbell – lots of good things to come.
From one Edmonton startup to another: Congratulations to Peter and the Smibs crew on your launch. Just beginning to try Doorbell out now. So far it looks promising and I love the freemium option for very small businesses and individuals.
Looking forward to seeing more. I’ve also added Doorbell to our ontology for those using our product that are looking for yours.
Can we really trust our data to canada?
our data is hosted in the USA
I have been using Doorbell for nearly a year now and have watched it grow and change the entire time. One whole year is a long time to be in beta but I feel like these guys deliberately took their time and made sure they (and their users) were perfectly happy with the service before they pushed it out to the world.
The real strength of Doorbell is the network integration. As the community grows it allows you to extend your reach as a small business and discover new contacts and opportunities. It’s a productivity tool and a business community mixed together.
Doorbell helps me save time and make up time I waste on Twitter. I can’t wait for that app! Has helped me reach a new audience as a designer.
A year of testing…
Look at the URL argument for each ‘OK Sign Up’ button link (&doorbell_plan).
HINT: 2/5 are wrong..
Javelin CRM (www.javelincrm.com) is better than this and Highrise – support for sales cycles, cases, custom fields, and integrated apps like Xero and MailChimp.
I’ve been using Doorbell for almost a year to organize my small non-profit. It makes things a lot easier.
I just signed up, and it looks good at first glance…
One thing I think will stop allot of large business from using it, is that it tries to do the social thing… That is great for small start ups looking to get business, but from a business perspective I don’t want’ to encourage employees in our CRM to try to get other job offers… It’s like handing a tool to my employee, that in turn helps them find a different job…
I think this will mostly be used by startups/freelancers… I can’t see medium or large companies using this CRM, for the reason listed above.
Also your sign up form the captcha does not load in IE8
They should offer two versions, one that is strictly the CRM and one that is the CRM tied into the socail network as it currently is…
Thanks for the heads up about the IE8 recaptcha bug. It’s already fixed.
Thanks for the feedback. Actually you don’t have to tie in Doorbell into your network. Each company you create in your account has its own data bucket and if you as the account owner don’t want anyone on your team to share any of the data in your companies Doorbell account, you don’t have to. So you can drive it very much ’solo’.
Second on keeping the social network and the doorbell service separate. When signing up for the doorbell service it wasn’t clear that I also created a new profile on another social network until registration was complete. When one signs up for a service and gets roped into something else not clearly outlined on the sign up product page it raises questions about trusting the service enough to continue using it.
Good point. We’ll fix that, make it more clear and give options upon signup. Will take a few days.
Nice user interface seems easy to use.
While I use Highrise and have played with other CRM tools, my issue always boils down to having to manage a separate directory of contacts. I leverage Google Apps for the domain, and it is my central king of contact directories. With most of the intriguing crm web-based apps, they require me to continue to manage another directory. I would find the compelling reason to switch if there were syncing between multiple directories (Google apps only in my case). That is the one big “fix”.
can you explain in more detail? Send it to support at smibs . com
Not to plug my own product but Heap CRM does import/export Google Contacts.
Also SalesForce integrates with contacts if that’s more your style.
Going to try this out.
Great service – It is an interesting testimony for the change in business software. Like it.
Axel
http://xeesm.com/axels