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New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

monicahq.com

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Re: New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

#51

Post by robinhood »

setgree wrote: post #15
robinhood wrote: post #12

Author here. Super happy with this release. It took us 18 months of working on it "side project style". Almost every night and weekends actually. It's a full rewrite of the current project, with its own advantages and disadvantages of a rewrite. I hope people who used it before and didn't like it, will give it another try this time. I hope that current users who love Monica, will love this new version even more.

I just recommended this to a friend who uses a conventional CRM (Salesforce I think) as a personal CRM -- a PRM? (The "C" is no longer relevant) Question about: > the feature I’m most proud of is the ability to customize almost everything in Chandler: from the layout, to the modules you can enable, to the data you can enter about your life. Was this a customer-driven product decision? Based purely on past experience,…

This is based on the feedback we've received over the years. Basically, people want so many different things, and the only way we've found to achieve this is to let people use the software the way they want.

As a former PM I know that we should 1) avoid settings, and 2) avoid customization as much as possible because of the additional complexity, but this time, in the context of mapping your life, it should be entirely customizable.

Re: New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

#52

Post by sam_goody »

Thanks, I use Monica and it is very helpful.

Q1: Will you be able to upgrade from Monica once this is out of beta? I have a lot of data in a self hosted Monica instance, and can't imagine starting from scratch.

Q2: Are there any plans to make a multi user Monica? I would like to use it with my family, so that some users (such as family members) will be shared and editable by all, and others are private.

Q3: you have had that "Office Life" banner since forever. Is that abandoned? Is it advancing?

Re: New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

#53

Post by tough »

PaulHoule wrote: post #41
sneakerblack wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use docker because it's very easy to deploy home-server style. I don't care about dependencies.

Back when I had very slow DSL (as opposed to just slow DSL) I found it was almost impossible to install complex container layouts because the Docker client was not at all smart about caching and failed downloads. Later on I worked at a place that had gigabit Ethernet and got into an argument with the CTO who couldn't believe the build process (which built software packed it into containers and ran a system based on c…

Docker is for teams, not individuals

Like taliwindcss

and other stuff that gets a team to be -standarised- in how to do things

Re: New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

#54

Post by jmkni »

robinhood wrote: post #12

Author here. Super happy with this release. It took us 18 months of working on it "side project style". Almost every night and weekends actually. It's a full rewrite of the current project, with its own advantages and disadvantages of a rewrite. I hope people who used it before and didn't like it, will give it another try this time. I hope that current users who love Monica, will love this new version even more.

Congrats!

Also the name gave me a genuine chuckle

Re: New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

#55

Post by Mashimo »

ctvo wrote: post #50
Mashimo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they sell your data. I'm not asking why this cost money, I understand that. I'm asking why it cost 9 USD per month.

> I'm asking why it cost 9 USD per month. If you think it should cost less because of N reasons -- self host it. There's an option for that vs. other solutions. They don't need to justify their cost to you, ever, but especially when it's open sourced with an option to self host.

> They don't need to justify their cost to you, ever,

Correct. I'm just *wondering* why they choose that price. I don't want them to change it and they have every right to not talk about it.

I selfhost a lot of stuff. I don't understand why people think this is an attack.

Re: New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

#56

Post by robinhood »

Mashimo wrote: post #47
DandyDev wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume they did some research, a/b testing etc. and found out that this is a price people are willing to pay. Also, this is 2 beers. 1 if you have to pay US service fees and a tip

Could be. My first idea was they want to encourage people to self host.

The initial idea was for us to be able to work full time on it. Here was the rational.

I'm in Montreal, Alexis is in Paris. The cost of living in these cities is pretty high. We have families. So let's say we need to bring in $100 000 CAD per year.

9$ per month ~= 8$ after Stripe taxes. Then 35% off from the government. If I'm extra generous and lucky from the taxes, we get 5$ per subscription.

Then we need to substract the costs of hosting on a PAAS for 40 000 users. Let's say it's an extra $. So we have 4$ per subscription.

If we need to bring 200 000 $ CAD at least to live decently with our families, we would need 50 000 paying users. That is without the churn, right, which is pretty high currently at 8%.

7 years later: we don't even have 500 paying users

The dream of working full time on Monica is still there, but without VC money, I don't know how we could achieve this.

Re: New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

#57

Post by bombcar »

Mashimo wrote: post #19
blitzar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you think it should cost? More or less per month? Or maybe annual? Multi currency support? It is a genuine question.

A bit less. It just seems like a service that is "easy" to host, as in does not need much maintenance or ressources, thus allowing you to host tens of instances on a cheap VPS. But maybe I'm overlooking something. Hence me asking.

Cost of something just has to be higher than the cost to deliver. It should be much closer to the value provided than the cost to deliver, however, or your business will fail.

Re: New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

#58

Post by startupsfail »

robinhood wrote: post #56
Mashimo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be. My first idea was they want to encourage people to self host.

The initial idea was for us to be able to work full time on it. Here was the rational. I'm in Montreal, Alexis is in Paris. The cost of living in these cities is pretty high. We have families. So let's say we need to bring in $100 000 CAD per year. 9$ per month ~= 8$ after Stripe taxes. Then 35% off from the government. If I'm extra generous and lucky from the taxes, we get 5$ per subscription. Then we need to substr…

You may want to consider good old approach of trying to grow exponentially in a sustainable way. It seems that you have no pressure from VCs, you do have a user base and a runway.

You can try setting the thing up, so the costs are essentially static and do not depend on the number of users. This seem possible, since it doesn’t look like you store images or do anything heavy. You also do not need moderation, it seems.

Re: New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

#59

Post by ramones13 »

KMuncie wrote: post #40
robinhood wrote: post #12

Author here. Super happy with this release. It took us 18 months of working on it "side project style". Almost every night and weekends actually. It's a full rewrite of the current project, with its own advantages and disadvantages of a rewrite. I hope people who used it before and didn't like it, will give it another try this time. I hope that current users who love Monica, will love this new version even more.

My wife and I tried to use Monica for many months in the past but had to give up because of the incredibly buggy CardDAV implementation when using iOS. Now that this has come out it seems the issue ( https://github.com/monicahq/monica/issues/6175 ) was ignored likely because of all this work. Have improvements been made with this in the new version?

I also switched from Monica because of this. I love the features, but no iOS syncing was too painful of a gap.

Re: New version of Monica, codename Chandler, is available in beta

#60

Post by tenebrisalietum »

robinhood wrote: post #12

Author here. Super happy with this release. It took us 18 months of working on it "side project style". Almost every night and weekends actually. It's a full rewrite of the current project, with its own advantages and disadvantages of a rewrite. I hope people who used it before and didn't like it, will give it another try this time. I hope that current users who love Monica, will love this new version even more.

Want to say thanks! I really like Monica. I haven't upgraded to 4.0.0 yet (waiting for Debian bookworm to release so I can have PHP 8.1 supported).
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