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Show HN Remindlyo helps you remember to make important phone calls

remindlyo.com

8 pointszrail13 comments

I like that this will make the phone call for you, and connect the call for me, because yes, sometimes there are calls I know I have to make but are afraid to make.

So that's where Remindlyo could help a little bit more.

Let users (anonymously) post a phone call they have to make some days in advance. Let them categorize the phone call (make a date, withdraw from class, talk to lawyer, ...) and discuss that phone call and why they have to make it, what the upside is, what the downside is, and why they are afraid of making it.

And then let others gab about it, offering advice, alternatives, strategies, moral support, their own stories, etc.

And at the end of the phone call, we can all talk about how it went.

And for the Premium users, some select invitees can make that phone call together. Remindlyo calls Jane who posted the call, and connects her audio two way, and also connects with one way audio, those she invited, Bob, Karl, Cindy, etc., and let's them listen in, and offer her advice in real time in a chat window.

Perhaps you even record the call's audio or video for later (legal, tosh 2.0) presentation.

No really, actually I am serious.

Looks interesting. Since this is HN, I will allow myself to tell you what I think:

First thing, I had to go through two pages in order to discover that you were providing a 30-day free trial. Honestly, if that wasn't shown on HN, I would have closed the tab when I'd have seen the pricing page, because it implied that I would have to pay for something before I'm sure I like it, and most freemium businesses got me used not to do so. Therefore, I would suggest you to work on your front page. An idea would be to replace your "Start Today" CTA by something like "Try it, it's free!" or any copy that would let the user know he doesn't have to pay first.

Second thing, more subjective, your pricing seems a little expensive to me, have you considered a free tier ?

Anyways, congrats for launching and showing a functional product! Good luck to you!

Thanks so much!

I actually removed the free trial today but missed that bit of text. Offering a free trial is difficult because my costs with Twilio would get hard to absorb. Same reasoning applies to a free tier. Phone calls aren't free! :)

Thanks again, though. I really do appreciate any feedback.

Sure!

If you can't provide a free tier, you may work on your frontpage in another way, such as providing a slideshow, or even a short video explaining how it works. Having a visual or a functional clue about the product may give more trust to potential customers. The only thing the current image you put on the left lets us know is that the website looks good, which might not be enough for most people to pay. I have no data to prove it, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. More, you can still a/b test it if you want, and I'd be glad to hear about the results ;).

Makes perfect sense. I'll take some more screenshots tomorrow and see if I can get a little animated thing going. I have some ideas but I've been focused on building out the product.

I took some more screenshots and also updated the pricing to include a free tier. What do you think?

The good point:

I really like the website; it's well done and look professional. I'd be confident enough to pay for the service.

The bad news:

I really don't see a reason to use this service. There's already a thousand calendar event reminder thing that will remind me when I need to call back someone. And, even if they all sucked and I wanted to use yours, I'd hate to be able to press "1" to call.. I'd prefer to call it on my own when I want during the day.

So, you say you spent 8 weeks on the project. It's very well done and seems like you thought about lots of details. BUT, imho, too much time have been spent on useless details (Like using all those jquery plugins on the signup form) instead of talking with clients that'd pay for this service. But then, I hope I'm wrong and if so, I apologize.

Fair points. I bought a theme on themeforest that had all of that jquery stuff built in :) Most of the time I spent learning rails, learning the twilio API, etc etc. I have talked to a few potential customers, but probably not enough.

Thanks!

Hi HN,

I've been working on this thing for a good eight weeks now. I've written a little bit about it on my blog[1] as well. If you'd check it out and give me your honest feedback I would really appreciate it. Everything is fully functional, so if you want to sign up and give it a whirl that'd be great too.

[1]: http://bugsplat.info/2011-10-08-remindlyo-is-a-go.html

Nice work and a nice idea, but I'm struggling to see how it's worth $2 per month when it offers very little over a reminder in Google Calendar.

Have you thought about tying up with Google Calendar's appointment slots and automatically connecting your user to the recipient during a free appointment slot in that day?

That's a great idea that I hadn't even thought about, actually Does the gcal api let you see that kind of thing?

Looks cool. What major element differentiate you from say http://www.appointmentreminder.org/ ?

Appointment Reminder is a great service but it's for businesses to automatically remind their clients about things, whereas this is for people who can't remember to call their mother regularly :)

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