Sorry for my low quality post but Outlook is just fine. It's crappy, crashy and bloated...but it's just fine. This outfit and app won't exist 365 days from now, I guarantee it.
Good thing they have 9 years of burn in the bank right?
Front (YC S14) Raises $66M
51–60 of 86 posts
Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M
#52Yikes. At ~60/u/mo for enterprise email & collaboration I would drop the "Replace Microsoft Outlook" line... unless you want people to start looking at what else they get beyond Outlook/Skype for Business from Microsoft for $20-$35/u/mo (E3 or E5 O365 license).
They are expensive, and we'd be paying already had they been closer to 10 mo/user. But it seems they're going the customer service tool route, and this is a pain point businesses are willing to pay for. In this area I'd say their #1 rival is zendesk, which does a better job of justifying their pricing on their site (which had me return to Front for what they do better). But Front won't be replacing anyone's free web…
I'm the co-founder at Missive[1], an email client for teams. Our vision is to become the communication hub for any business, by both replacing email client and chat app.
A lot of people compares us to Front, but we are more focused on the email/chat experience than customer support experience.
Thus our pricing reflects this vision, where we charge ~$8-$12/seat/month.
Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M
#53Does anyone have feedback on the product itself? I'm an old person, and still use Outlook for Mac as my main email program, though I keep webmail (Google Apps) open at all times for searching mail. I'm still a hardcore believer in standalone desktop apps for email, and I'm not particularly excited about Outlook, and I have a busy office full of people, so this is interesting. Is it any good? Who is it ideal for?
I’m not an aged codger but beyond that I agree with you wholeheartedly: I expect, nay demand, desktop and mobile native applications for email in particular, and just about anything in general. All this “go through a browser” stuff with its lack of locata storage, overlaid interfaces (browser chrome above web-designer's UI), and muli-tasking metaphor breaking (switch between apps to go to browser, and then select the tab you want) drives me insane. Yes, it's a uniform platform and it needs to exist in case somebody wants to access through the web, but they shouldn't be forced to use only the web-interface.
Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
We pay for office365 basically because Excel has no serious alternatives. Founders use Powerpoint. And that's about it. Also, Microsoft have gotten stupid and lazy with Office. Each app eats 2 gig disk, all from non-shared Resources/Fonts/crap. Users who just clicked default install ended up with 9g of disk space gone. Why is this a big deal? Apple's extortionate pricing on mbp disks and the inability to upgrade them…
For basic spreadsheets, I've pretty much switched over to Google Sheets. Haven't touched Word in nearly two years and couldn't be happier about it
I adore Google Sheets, but it isn't as powerful as Excel. It doesn't have all the same functionalities and can't handle really big sheets as well.
Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M
#55Yikes. At ~60/u/mo for enterprise email & collaboration I would drop the "Replace Microsoft Outlook" line... unless you want people to start looking at what else they get beyond Outlook/Skype for Business from Microsoft for $20-$35/u/mo (E3 or E5 O365 license).
They are expensive, and we'd be paying already had they been closer to 10 mo/user. But it seems they're going the customer service tool route, and this is a pain point businesses are willing to pay for. In this area I'd say their #1 rival is zendesk, which does a better job of justifying their pricing on their site (which had me return to Front for what they do better). But Front won't be replacing anyone's free web…
While they have a few similarities, I'm not sure I'd put Zendesk as Front's main rival. They're doing similar things, but approaching them in totally different ways. Front is fully backing the shared inbox, while Zendesk's main messaging is to get away from that concept and move more towards Ticketing for a larger support team.
Good to see more competition in the space though.
Disclaimer: I work at Zendesk
Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are expensive, and we'd be paying already had they been closer to 10 mo/user. But it seems they're going the customer service tool route, and this is a pain point businesses are willing to pay for. In this area I'd say their #1 rival is zendesk, which does a better job of justifying their pricing on their site (which had me return to Front for what they do better). But Front won't be replacing anyone's free web…
I'm the co-founder at Missive[1], an email client for teams. Our vision is to become the communication hub for any business, by both replacing email client and chat app. A lot of people compares us to Front, but we are more focused on the email/chat experience than customer support experience. Thus our pricing reflects this vision, where we charge ~$8-$12/seat/month. [1] https://missiveapp.com/
If you had said you were replacing outlook, I'd be less surprised. You seem more email focused.
Front's front page slogan is "The shared inbox for teams." I'm always puzzled when they attack modern email in their PR. They should just stick to "universal team inbox".
When I see missive, I see "team email with chat." Well, we chat on Discord already, so that's not the pain point.
Front's main appeal to me at least was their multi-channel inbox. Customer support these days is not just email but social media and even texting. It can all be done through email, and even that can all be done through gmail, which is what we're doing now, and what I suspect a lot of people are doing.
But removing inefficiencies in this day to day process immediately cuts costs when you're paying people for this work. Hence zendesk and their no free plan position, except, they're not multi-channel, and I was never impressed by them being on the customer end of a zendesk using company. I'd always think "crutch" when I saw an email from a business that didn't bother to re-brand their zendesk (assuming it's possible, if not, I guess they did well for themselves and my impressions were unimportant).
PS. Your logo reminds me of men's underwear. I thought twice about mentioning it, and I know others would too. Not that I'd hold it against you, but (I do logo design, is my excuse for mentioning it).
Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you cut your staff by 90%? Or did you devote their time to other activities?
Neither – we grew our customers by 10x and didn’t hire any more support people.
Approximately what was your original rate of customer acquisition and how large are the customers?
Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M
#58We have been using Front since 2014 at Le Wagon. The goal was to be able to handle our contact@lewagon.com inbound email as a team (3 seats in 2014, 7 now). I considered Zendesk but it felt a bit too overkill for our usage.
You can view Front as a shared Gmail Inbox where you can assign messages to teammates and have private discussions on top of email threads.
They recently added Front Chat which we used to replace the Intercom Chat on https://www.lewagon.com - This way the team only uses one tool (Front) to handle incoming chats or emails.
We've been a customers for 3+ years and are really happy! Congrats on the Series B!
Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M
#59Sorry for my low quality post but Outlook is just fine. It's crappy, crashy and bloated...but it's just fine. This outfit and app won't exist 365 days from now, I guarantee it.
They've already been around for years. $66M is a lot of runway.
Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm the co-founder at Missive[1], an email client for teams. Our vision is to become the communication hub for any business, by both replacing email client and chat app. A lot of people compares us to Front, but we are more focused on the email/chat experience than customer support experience. Thus our pricing reflects this vision, where we charge ~$8-$12/seat/month. [1] https://missiveapp.com/
If you had said you were replacing outlook, I'd be less surprised. You seem more email focused. Front's front page slogan is "The shared inbox for teams." I'm always puzzled when they attack modern email in their PR. They should just stick to "universal team inbox". When I see missive, I see "team email with chat." Well, we chat on Discord already, so that's not the pain point. Front's main appeal to me at least was…
> When I see missive, I see "team email with chat." Well, we chat on Discord already, so that's not the pain point.
Pain point here is when you start to have those internal conversations spread across many silos.
There is beauty and simplicity to manage all your conversations whether email, chat or mixed of both in a one convenient place.
> PS. Your logo reminds me of men's underwear.
Firs time I hear that one. :)