Basecamp Breeze officially launched

I admire the effort, but I don't think the mental effort required to create a Google Group is so high as to pay $10 for this service. Google Groups really aren't that hard; from a college kid's perspective, all students and teachers are already familiar with the ecosystem to the extent that even 60+ year old professors don't need to ask a student to help them after class just to set one up.

Frankly, it takes more effort for me to grab my credit card from my wallet and input the payment information than it does to set up a Google Group.

Still, best of luck to the 37signals team! I love the idea of one-off services like these.

If this sells then I am have to reconsider the complexity of problems I try to solve for people. Is it really that hard to setup a email list?

Wow. When I first saw it, I thought "huh? Isn't this just a mailing list? Is this an actual product?"

Then I did a quick search for "setting up a mailing list" ... and I got Google Groups (not the same), a bunch of address book hacks for Outlook and then GNU Mailman.

They found a really good market with something really obvious.

I don't understand the pricing though.

Why just a one-time fee?

Why a limit of 50 people and no other pricing plans?

Why no custom domains?

Personally, I have no need for this product. They solve a problem I don't have. They list the flaws of email as:

1. You have to remember each person’s email address -- Gmail has a groups feature, so I just need to make a mailing list once and never worry again. Alternatively, Facebook groups are easy for informal communication.

2. If someone doesn’t “reply-all” when responding to a group email with multiple email addresses, then it all falls apart. -- Eh, sometimes not every single message needs to be sent to every single person. I like the flexibility of being able to choose reply-all or just reply to one.

Perhaps this would be useful for someone who's not very good with email, but if my mom can't figure out how to send an email to a group then I doubt she's gonna sign up for this product (or even know to look for a tool similar to this)

This arrived the day before I needed to create an email list for a small group of friends I'm involved with where we email each other once a week or more. $10 for literally 90 seconds work to get us a list was a no-brainer really. We have no need for a web GUI, and google groups piss me off every time I try and login to see anything there anyway. Perfect service for what we wanted!

I find it very interesting how so many people commenting here are shouting "This is so stupid! It's so EASY to setup a mailing list, I can do it in 2 seconds! Even a monkey could setup a freakin' Google Groups list!"

Seems to me they don't understand just how technical they really are compared to a large portion of the people in their everyday lives.

I can think of 1 single person in my family who knows what Google Groups is. But I can think of at least half a dozen people who might need to be able to email a group of people without needing to know technical things.

2013 must be flying by, it's already April 1st...? ;)

Jokes aside, I don't understand why they are making such a big deal about this? I understand they have an existing large client base already and if they wanted to add this to their product list quietly that would be one thing, but why try to turn it into something bigger than it is...?

Also, I would say (based on what I've seen) that most of the Basecamp clients are somewhat "tech smart", meaning they could easily see there is next to no value in this for a price. There are countless free alternatives that anyone with a basic "tech smart" savvy could figure out. Not to mention a lot of those alternatives would be much more flexible. I'll even go as far to say that the average person (like my parents, family, etc.) knows about even easier alternatives (for free) like Google Groups or Facebook Groups. And both of those would include all of the functionality (plus more) presented by Basecamp Breeze (and again, for free).

I typically associate 37signals products with intuitiveness and creativity/originality, this seems like neither. I'm quite disappointed.

I won't get into the usefulness of or need for the product. That's a different debate. But this product does raise a couple of questions for me:

1) Why was the Basecamp brand attached to this product?

2) If Sortfolio was deemed expendable, why did this product pass muster?

EDIT: Also, the basecamp.com homepage is now a lot less focused then before. I'd be curious to see how or if this affects Basecamp conversion rates.

$10 one time doesn't seem that profitable long term.

This product is either supposed to be a loss leader that brings more customers into the 37Signals fold (to use Basecamp, etc) or there are more features and functionality planned for the Breeze product.

My guess it's the later and its why Breeze wasn't just incorporated into Basecamp.

Folks folks folks. The primary issue with Google Groups is that it's ugly all around, not just the signup process. This is an issue that this community (keen on fixed width fonts and cli) doesn't usually care about. But I promise you that my wife cares about something being not ugly.

I could see the monetary value in the email domain grab, but is breeze123.com such a great domain to begin with? I don't think that's worth paying for. Their video and splash page just seems to be showcasing the different emails you can get, at breeze123.com.

"our-interns@breeze123.com"

"awesome-book-club@breeze123.com"

That just sounds like a password. And it's all they're offering. I guess they think Google Groups isn't catching the entire market that would have a use for this.

Another problem I see is they say "pay once, use forever" when I've found that I always lose the need for a certain group email list after a while. A project ends, a team breaks up, a meetup stops happening.

Maybe a better product would be something that makes it easier to set up and throw away these more temporary email domains.

I love to share things with small groups of people through email, I use Google Groups, it's free and it works great.

What fascinates me about this is that there really is (for me, at least) a 'go to' place for setting up a simple email list. And how the gap is so big, they can charge for it.

I.e. the kind of thing you'd recommend your mother or father to go sign up for and manage themselves. Or in other words, their target audience.

If i understand this correctly all this does is creates email groups? Is this seriously a paid feature?

Ok, this is beautiful. First of all, Hacker News readers are not the target audience.

Looks like a perfectly implemented simple version of the core of basecamp, communication. Priced to match.

Note: only group members can email the group, so it's private.

And I thought email was obsolete. Do this with SMSs and it would be HN-worthy :-)

Pretty genius pricing--if the lifetime cost of your customer really is that low (which I'm sure that is), I bet their signup rates will be much better than something silly like "$2/year".

This looks like a great way for someone junior at 37Signals to prove themselves, by developing a small product from start to finish.

I'm not 100% convinced 37Signals hires 'someone junior' though.

I could see this being appealing for people who use GroupMe. "I wish I had GroupMe but only on email."

I'm curious how/why 37signals decided to make and sell this product.

Is there a way to set this up with a custom domain?

at this moment it seems like a very simple solution to simple problem (for some people. reply-all or signup and other services). i think people are concerned about $10? but looking forward to what will be next in breeze?

So, it's a mailing list?

>> Email is the universal constant of communication.

Hyperbole.

Mailing list for dummies.

This has to be a joke.....