eb9b0ca94fe442e1b6f97d103b66f3beQ: Seems like you have a great PM app, but (sigh) just like every one of the dozens of PM apps I researched in ...
the last few months, Freedcamp also misses the boat on the most vital part of collaboration: COMMUNICATION.
It actually baffles me why the makers of PM apps seem to treat easy, instant, reliable communication as an afterthought, forcing the whole world to keep throwing their money at Slack just to provide this MISSING function that every app developer seems to fail at. Specifically in Freedcamp:
1. Why do you have 2 separate apps for mobile, the main PM app and a separate chat app? They are within the same app in both web and desktop.
2. Why do you hide chat in the web/desktop apps? They slide out on the screen as an afterthought that makes it seem that you consider communication a side dish - while it is of the main course in any team. The reason everyone in the business world keeps paying for Slack is that they put communication front and center instead of hiding it in a corner and making it disappear as soon as you want to see something else.
3. Why do you make it so hard to create a new group conversation? I have to add all participants one by one... why isn't there an "add everyone" option?
4. Notifications work great in the Chat mobile app. They don't work in the main mobile app. They don't work in the browser at all. They make a sound but don't badge the app icon in the desktop app, so the only way to know if I have any new notifications I missed is to check the app.
I am soooo hoping for a PM app to replace Slack + Trello, and so disappointed that literally no one realizes that ALL they have to do is actually combine the functionalities of the most popular SEPARATE apps in the world (e.g. Slack and Trello) and they would have an absolute, world champion winner of an app. Instead of just giving people a simple combo of what they already know and like, they would just want to have them together... every PM app creator seems to want to make something different that simple can't replace those separate solutions because they can't live up to their simplicity, but want to do things differently. The customers have spoken. They want apps like Slack and Trello, Asana, etc. the popularity of these SIMPLE app tells the whole story. I just wish there was a developer who listened...
Could Freedcamp be that app in the future and make it possible for me to ditch Slack and Trello for a combo that can do the same? At the moment, unfortunately, Freedcamp can't :(
Freedcamp
May 15, 2024A: 1. This is because we are a small team and Chat was an experiment. It will be merged into the main mobile app soon.
2. All navigation is on the left including chat. The navigation can be expanded. Unread messages bubble up. I think you are being unfair here.
3. Because we researched OUR users and immediately after launching chat were asked and added a toggle to disable it. Many customers think of it as a distraction or do not want people launching chats between their freelancers and customers. We do not also believe that communication==chat. Most of our conversations are in wiki, issues, tasks comments and discussions in Freedcamp. We also use Chat very lightly.
4. We only pay attention to our users and their requests to improve Chat. Main mobile app - see popint 1. The desktop app is a quick hack to wrap the web version into Electron. We do not have many requests to improve it - those who use it do not ask to fix chat notifications. In a 5 people team you operate very differently to Trello, Slack or Asana. You do not have 15 people in the marketing department and 100M VC money in the bank while running unprofitable business building a "world champion". You make daily progress by making existing customers stay and getting new paid customers as you go.
> I just wish there was a developer who listened...
There are no generic "have spoken" customers. If this would be the case, we will have one make of everything. One car model, one brand of a frying pan. We have been running our business since 2011.
I love your passion but I think you are very opinionated to the point "I am sure I know". I am personally "I think we should consider" type of a person myself :) and I hope you realised it from my answers. Igor
Fair enough. I think you are right to a degree. But I also think you are somewhat opinionated too, just in the other direction. You are talking about listening to your users, but not realizing that there are far more who never become your users (just check AppSumo feedback/questions for other PM tools - "can this replace Slack + Trello/Asana?" is a very frequent question. Those who are looking for that combo, which I know from those questions and comments, is not a small crowd, never become your customers so you never hear their opinions, they just walk away when they see that it can't.
There is a lot of wisdom to be gained from observation too, not just from asking your *existing* customers, which is an echo chamber - they are your customers because they like what you built. The vast majority is out there, using something else, not your app, but a combination of tools like Slack+Trello, specifically because there isn't anything that can replace both.That is an unserved market.
There isn't one truth, and I see your point, but unfortunately, while Freedcamp seems like a great app, it doesn't solve my problem, we are still stuck with continually having to juggle multiple apps in our team.
We developed Slack integration because many customers already use it and are happy with it but we also developed and launched our chat, iterated on customer feedback many times after launch and are happy to do as we go. In Slack, you switch workspaces if you are part of multiple teams. In Freedcamp we tried to keep it all in one interface so you can catch up with it all without switching hence some decisions like 'add all' are not there.