[fixie]

We actually ran into the exact same problem while juggling multiple projects and ended up creating Taco - https://tacoapp.com. Taco aggregates your Basecamp, Trello, Asana and 35+ other services into a single screen so you can prioritize your day across multiple services. Works especially well with a new tab Chrome extension.

Haven't found the best way to consolidate applications for real time services. Although, I've found that it hasn't been too difficult to get people to hop on the Slack train. I've been in the same problem with video chat - Google Hangouts, Facetime, GoToMeeting, Skype, etc. Would love to hear what other people use.

[dabeeeenster]

Just some feedback - it drives me nuts when services aren't clear what their pricing is. If it's free, fine. If it's paid, fine. If it's free now but you plan on charging later for premium features, fine. But IMO you have to be upfront about it.

There's nothing on the homepage, no pricing page, nothing. It makes me nervous to sign up without this information.

[buro9]

This, a million times over.

I went looking... it's not on the site, not in the knowledge base, not on the blog.

There is absolutely no pricing information.

Does Taco not charge anyone? If you do charge, give me a ballpark, a range even... it doesn't matter so long as you give it.

Am I signing up for something without that info? Er... no.

[fixie]

Taco is free for now, but we expect and hope to charge $5-$10/month at some point - cheap enough be a fantastic value for anyone who uses it even occasionally, but also not a free service that you rightly don't want. We're still figuring out when we should flip the switch but in the meantime, you are right, we need to do a better job of explaining possible future pricing.

[tudorw]

So the plan is to generate an initial spike in demand from a group of people marginally interested in something they can get for free, then alienate your core users, who would have been happy to pay from the outset, by introducing a fee, but only once the service is sufficiently overburdened supporting free users ? Well they say any plan is better than no plan... but....

Turn this upside down now, think about 100 users paying $50 a month for something they depend on, I bill $100/hr, if you can save me an hour a month I'm winning, once you have $5000 a month every month think about the next 100, keep going, sounds like your product has a use, don't make the free mistake, it's been highlighted here many times, good luck!

[tracker1]

+1 on this... I'd say do a 30-day trial period, then around day 25 ask for billing information... If you have tracking/analytics in place you know how many users are returning once signing up, and you have a better indication of conversion after use.

If you're going to have a free tier, I'd say limit it to N service integrations (3-5), but definitely make your core users paying close to the start.

If I had a need for something like this day to day, I'd definitely pay... Actually, I'd suffer for a while, then try it, then suffer again, then pay... but that's me and I'm kind of cheap/frugal. Most people will start paying once they see and feel the value.

Also, it's much easier to field requests from a few hundred paying users than thousands of non-paying ones. It's very hard to do conversion from free after the fact... many businesses have failed, burned, burned out, and left their best (paying) users in a lurch following this model.

[tudorw]

+1 for all that although I'd be tempted to get the billing info on sign up and offer a 'throwaway' good deal for the uncertain, so, say $50 a month, or try 10 days for $3

[fixie]

You're absolutely right. Right now, there is none, which sucks. As Aral Balkan says well and as I'm sure you know, free is a lie [1]. People should pay for services that they use, and services which get used should be paid. We'll get there. But to answer questions about pricing, it's free until we are comfortable enough to charge.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldhHkVjLe7A

[dabeeeenster]

Put that on your homepage then!

[turaw]

I don't use it, but have you tried out Sameroom [1] for real-time chat? They seem pleasant enough. No idea what to do for video chat, though.

[1]: https://sameroom.io

[kawera]

A similar one but as a native client app: http://meetfranz.com/

[fixie]

This is great, thanks for the link!

[morgante]

Wow, this is exactly what I've been looking for. I can't wait to give it a spin.

[cauterized]

Hmmmm.... I'd be much more likely to take the time to sign up to use this thing if there were a handful of screenshots showing what it's like to use.

[ncallaway]

Yea, this looks interesting. We've managed an internal sprint board with JIRA and treated the customer-facing task tracking systems as inputs and outputs of our sprints.

It'd definitely be nice to replace our internal system with something that was lighter-weight than JIRA and had integrations (bidirectionally) with the customer-facing task tracking systems. I'll run this by the team and we may give it a try.

One question: I don't see pricing or a paid version anywhere on the site. What's the business model for this product?

[fixie]

Great to hear, I actually use Taco as a lightweight JIRA UI myself (along with GitHub Issues, a few Wunderlist lists, and starred GMail emails).

Response on pricing above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565896

[tedmiston]

I'm really starting to think a startup that solves Jira's UI/UX problems would work.

[quickpost]

That's awesome! I've been needing this type of tool for a while - will definitely give it a whirl.

[fixie]

Great! Would love to hear what you think!

[ShakataGaNai]

Trying it out myself. One suggestion for your Chrome App - don't ask for permission to gibberishasdfasdf.cloudfront.com - that stuff is easy to whitelabel. Permissions scare users, especially when there is gibberish.

[dpcan]

Taco looks pretty slick, I'm definitely checking that out, thank you!

[lukeholder]

Put a slack bot interface in front of this and I will love you forever.

[fixie]

Actually, we are in the works of releasing a Slack connector. Star a message or DM in Slack and see it as a task in Taco. Taco only asks for and obtains access to your starred messages (on https://api.slack.com/docs/oauth-scopes, "stars:list" and "stars:remove"), not all archives. Shoot us an email at [e-mail] if you'd like to help us test it out!

[vladnyc]

Any plans to add redbooth.com?

[fixie]

We'll gladly consider adding Redbooth. Shoot us an email at [e-mail]. We'd love to hear how you are using it.