Update at bottom
I love the Freshbooks platform and software. It looks amazing, I was practically ready to sign up for their limousine service, and get running on the Freshbooks platform… so why am I not a Freshbooks customer yet?
After calling to ask about their service, I was informed that to get my client’s login customized to match my company look and feel (even if I provided a CSS coded template, which I already have), it would cost $279. Is that a lot of money to spend on a business-related system like this? No, and if I was just providing a page for them to emulate that’d actually be a pretty good deal… but it’s not the money, rather it is a matter of principle. When I inquired why it would cost so much when I was providing a page that was already CSS / html coded, I was given various silly reasons (like “hosting” for example).
At my day job, we build complex applications on a regular basis, so I know how easy it is to set up your app to allow a few lines of code to be dropped in for a login. I have a hard time believing that with how slick and polished Freshbooks is that they have a long, complex process to add a login form to an existing coded page.
So as it sits, they are losing at least $270 a year by not having me as a client, possibly more as the limousine plan would likely be outgrown before the year’s end (I’m merging with another business and taking at least one full timer).
At the end of the day, this comes down to a serious customer service issue. I completely understand that the concern might be that the code I’m going to provide is complete garbage and unworkable. It’s not, but where’s the harm in saying, “Well, we’ll take a look and if it’s going to make things easy on us, we’ll work something out…” or something to that effect. Instead they end up with an alienated customer who feels like someone just tried to rip him off.
I get really bothered about customer service issues, mainly because it’s such a huge part of my business. Web Design / Development is a huge industry and it can be difficult to stand out in the crowd. Our attention to customer satisfaction has really made the difference - customers feel like they are being treated as people and not just dollar signs when you are somewhat flexible with the small stuff, or at least have a legitimate explanation of your fees… When I was given “hosting” as one of the reasons they charge for a custom login page design, he lost me.
Update: Just wanted to thank Mike for taking the time to talk to me on the phone. I think what I appreciate most was the fact that he didn’t just placate me, agreeing with everything I had to say while he didn’t agree… just trying to get me a customer. He was honest and upfront about Freshbook’s position, and the challenges that face them in offering this service. Without going into too much detail, I really feel that there is a room for a lot optimization in the process they have to go through for the service (or eventually they will have to get rid of it, as Mike had said might be the way they go) because as it is right now, I can see the existing process becoming a significant burden as they grow.
June 27th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Ohh you didnt know? Hosting a 10kb css sheet is $27 per kb.
I fully agree. There is no reason why this needed to be a $270 fee. There are about 10 other projects, services, and tools I have tried to use that were the same way.
June 27th, 2008 at 6:22 am
Hey Dave,
There’s nothing quite like an honest perspective; and I’m with you - you have to honor your your principles.
That said, I want you to know where we are coming from with this offering. The way it works when someone orders a customized login page is they send us to a web page they want copied. Whether you email us a file or send us a link, it does not matter much to us because neither one saves us much time.
Once we have the file, the work begins. What work? We review the HTML, we review and download all the image files. Then we upload the image files to our servers and we further audit the HTML that’s been sent (security). After it looks okay, we put our source code inside (ie the login box) and around your code (headers footers, etc). Note this is now a stand alone page on our servers that is unique to you and can’t be altered the way we can with our standard login pages from a single file.
So…as you can see there is human overhead to review, upload and integrate your page…let’s call that one hour of our developers time. Then we send you a note to makes sure it’s okay and ready for prime time - call the communication and further edits .5 hours. So, 1.5 hours of people time. The next consideration is, “what happens if you change a link in your navigation and need it reflected in your customized login page?” The answer is, we make changes like that at no charge. So between some new emails and opening your file and getting sign off, let’s call it 2 hours.
Then there is that overhead of maintaining these pages from a technology stand point. Ideally we would not offer this service - it makes us less nimble. But we started it a long time ago, so we continue. The consequence? To edit our standard login pages we need to now account for customized login pages. To edit our directory structures, we need to take these pages into account. As you can imagine, the list goes on. What’s the cost? Days of dev time spread out across many pages. No doubt a non-trivial cost per page.
Anyway…all I am trying to demonstrate here is that there is cost to us for these pages…at least 1.5 hours of dev time…at $80/hour…that’s $120, not including indirect costs listed above (directories, etc) or changes to your page if you need them, or the opportunity costs of spending our time in this way, and it’s important that we don’t lose money on these pages because, well, that’s not the point of them.
So…in a nutshell, we perhaps should offer a more technological answer to this problem, but it’s a legacy service and more likely than not we’re going to just kill it off. With that said, we’re the only people who offer something like this. You don’t need to order it, but for those who want it they appreciate the offer and the value of it so they purchase. For those people, our decision to remove the service [it gets more likely when we read posts like this ;) ] is sub-optimal as they may not possess your design and development skills and therefore not look at the cost the way you do.
That’s a long winded way of saying, I hope you understand our take on this a little better now and in that understanding you become a little more sympathetic to our position on the pricing of the service.
I welcome you to drop me a note (I looked for your phone number, but could not find it) to discuss this in further detail and I would be happy to try to work something out that works for you in hopes we can overcome this stumbling block and as a way of saying we value your feedback.
- mike
Mike McDerment
CEO FreshBooks.com
416.481.6946, ext 222
http://freshbooks.com/team/mike
1) People time
- people time
- no one offers this
- management time
- tweaks and changes (navigation, etc)