[JimmyL]

I went though sendwithus zero as an unknowing participant in the experiment, and it sucked.

At the time, the company I was working at was looking for a service exactly like this - a service where our app could just fling events, and then we'd do all the logic to control what emails got emitted on the basis of those events on the external service (and A/B test them). One of our "growth hacking" guys found SendWithUs somehow, and introduced us. We had a few calls with them - the service seemed like it had potential, and we got beta access to it...which was really sendwithus zero, but sending basic email.

We got most of the way though setting up an integration with them, but every time we asked when the A/B testing framework - which was what sold us on the product - was coming online, we were told "it's coming soon, it's what we're working on right now." So we held on for a few more weeks, and gave them some time...but nothing came of it. I was skeptical at the time that they were actually building it, even moreso having read this.

The positive side is that while we were being strung along by sendwithus, we found Vero (https://www.getvero.com/). They're not perfect either, but we've been on them for 6-8 months, and they've done well for us. They're responsive to our issues, are willing to Skype or chat when we try and develop some sophisticated campaigns on their platform, and have (or so it seems) rejigged their roadmap a few times to add in small features that we ask for. ExactTarget is still a more full-featured package, but I'm happy with the price/value of Vero.

So well done, guys. You've got an interesting story about how you bootstrapped your business, and you're evidently doing OK. I wish you the best, but I can tell you that you won't be getting my business (or my recommendation) - at the time I thought you were small and were actually on the cusp of delivering what you had promised us worked; now I see that we were just one more data point for a feature set that you never planned on having ready when you claimed.

[mrmch]

Hey Jimmy, I'm sorry to hear that was your experience.

I don't know when you found us, but it did take us time to roll out our A/B testing; we never intended to string anyone along.

If you're willing to chat offline about your experience, please get in touch: [e-mail]

[thatthatis]

Bullshit. Your entire "zero" approach is stringing customers along. Which is fine. Just don't try to pretend like you weren't doing something you knew would upset your test subjects.

[yoseph]

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the "growth hacking" guys in this story.

Personally, I don't see this as an accurate description of what happened. We were seriously considering sendwithus and were looking at how to integrate their product. We talked a few times (maybe 4 times?) and definitely saw the value of what they were doing and where they were going.

We also were very transparent about the features we needed to move forward and they gave us a fair time range for when they could deliver them. Originally, we were comfortable with the timeline. Of course, you sometimes want things to be built yesterday and we happened to come across Vero which had all the requested functionality already built. That's what caused the switch.

Hope that clarifies things and honestly, I'm disappointed by the above comment. Anyone who's built something from nothing knows the hustle required and sometimes you have to risk annoying people to prove there's value in what you're doing. There are many examples of this. Here's the most recent one I've seen: HotelTonight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EER3rdWXbNk).