Highrise, the first 30 days

Highrise, the first 30 days Jason Apr 23

14 comments Latest by JF

This weekend Highrise had its one month anniversary. 30 days is a fun number, but we wanted to share some additional first-30-days numbers as well.

Over 500,000 contacts (people and companies combined) have been added so far
Just about 75,000 tasks have been added. That’s a lot of stuff to get done.
130,000 notes have been added
Over 7,000 cases have been created
About 40,000 emails have been forwarded into Highrise (email and Highrise get along great)
And just over 9,000 files have been uploaded so far as well

Those numbers, the uptake, and the fact that Highrise is our fastest selling product ever tells us we’re off to a great start.

In the first 30 days we also made some significant improvements:

Global search
Significant printing improvements
Significantly improved vCard import and email parsing
Public contact cards
Daily “what’s on my plate today?” task summary emails
Avatars for cases
Mass contact export and tagged contact export in single vCard, multiple vCard, and CSV file formats
And a bunch of small things to polish up the UI and overall experience.

We’re working on some more flexible importing features now and have some other great stuff planned this year. Stay tuned.

And remember, for a limited time if you sign up for a Max or Premium Highrise account you get Campfire Premium for free. This also applies if you upgrade to a Max or Premium plan from any other Highrise plan.

Thanks again for making the first 30 days of Highrise memorable.

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Over 1 million people use 37signals' simple web-based software to collaborate on projects, track contacts, and organize their business with an intranet.

14 comments so far

Kendall 23 Apr 07

Thank you for Highrise. It really hit me at the right time. I’ve been able to use it to keep track of a lot of new contacts I’ve made.

4point44 23 Apr 07

thanks for sharing your numbers.

Hank 23 Apr 07

@37signals

I thought the wisdom on Getting Real said that in the first 30 days, you have to give something away for free when you launch a product.

So … what is it that was given away for free?

Was it including Cases in every plan – since everyone complained so much about it when it originally was not included.

JF 23 Apr 07

This is what we say.

We’ve actually changed that and we now roll things out often during the first 30 days instead of waiting 30 days for the first big update.

paulo 23 Apr 07

I gotta tell ya. Highrise has made contact management/CRM fun again. Being able to simply email contacts and tasks in is just ingenious.

Martin 23 Apr 07

Well, email parsing does not cope well with emails forwarded from my german language Mail.app. I hope this will change some day and make it a useful feature for me.

Ismo Ruotsalainen 24 Apr 07

@Martin

Yeah, I have same problem too. First I edited message headers from finnish to english (From & Subject) before forwarding. That’s little bit slow and annoying job to do every time I sent something to Highrise, so I changed Mail.app’s language from Finnish to English (Applications, select Mail.app, Cmd+I, uncheck every language but English and restart Mail.app).

Thanks for great product. I have noticed Basecamp is too heavy for little jobs, like “Update contact information for ClientX website” or “Send some Important Information to ClientY”. (Basecamp is perfect, if I have already active project for Client. But if I dont have, it’s too slow to make new project or find-and-active archived project) Highrise have solved this problem and everything is archived by peoples/companies. This have helped me alot.

But why there are not Anyone-option at Who’s Responsible? -select in Highrise?

qwerty 24 Apr 07

It’s great that so many people added so many contacts. But I think you should make it easier to delete contacts. Currently adding and deleting are unbalanced and deleting requires too many clicks. Also, deleting all contacts in order to upload a new batch should be possible. Otherwise one ends up with annoying duplicates which have to be dealt with one by one.

JF 24 Apr 07

Currently adding and deleting are unbalanced and deleting requires too many clicks.

We believe that’s how it should be. The % of adds vs. deletes is unbalanced. 95% of the time people are being added. Deleting a contact is a rare occurrence so it should be possible, but it shouldn’t be as easy as adding someone.

The other primary reason is that deleting is destructive. Moving the action down a level means you are going to be less likely to click it by accident during routine usage.

Matt Lee 24 Apr 07

Highrise is very awesome. I believe I was the first public user to sign up, and I’m really enjoying using it.. I’ve been a little busy working on my own stuff lately, but it’s really really useful.

It’s a real aspirational application for me too, as I’m now working on my first web app.

Moving it down and having a confirmation dialog feels to me like wearing suspenders and a belt. I still would like to see deletions made easier but I appreciate the logic behind your design.

wtfShouldIDo.com 24 Apr 07

Thanks for sharing the numbers. I really appreciate how you guys manage your business in the public eye. It helps us would-be entrepreneurs gain some valuable insight.

Manny Hernandez 26 Apr 07

I’ve started using it a couple of weeks ago and I won’t let go. I am now an established user of Basecamp and with Highrise, you’ve hit the ball out of the stadium too!

JF 27 Apr 07

Thanks for the kind words, all! They make our day.

This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

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