Q: Hi, I am interested, but it feels like you have done a premature launch based on the review by Timothy_M.

I feel his review was constructive. I have a Tribe license and Peerboard license. Both are great products. I have also used Circle.so in the past.

The one thing is the main issue I am many others have is the constant need for companies to shove their branding into customers throats. If your customers love your product they will mention it. Like I have done here with Tribe and Peerboard. I guarantee it. They will go out of their way to tell people about it.

I know if I buy this now, I won't make full use of it for at least a year. Because I would be uncomfortable about putting a community of an important site on a platform that is not "yet" fully stable. Nevertheless I would still be interested in buying if I could get some kind of assurance that you will eventually white-label this and it will be included in the appsumo deal.

Take a look around, you will see that majority of SaaS products go down the white-label option. Sometimes reluctantly due to market forces. I do think your product has potential. But I am also keen not to waste time, buy and then refund. If I could get an answer on the above, then I would be in a way investing in your future success. Thanks.

RyanNApr 7, 2022
Founder Team
Murtaza_Heartbeat

Murtaza_Heartbeat

May 15, 2024

A: Hey Ryan — thanks for your message!

> The one thing is the main issue I am many others have is the constant need for companies to shove their branding into customers throats.

This is definitely not something we aim to do at Heartbeat. We want to keep your branding front & center and empower you, as a creator, to build a larger brand.

To do this, we've added features like:
- Custom domains (with notifications, invite links, and event links hosted on this domain)
- Custom logo & community colors
- Custom favicons for the community

There are 3 key areas where we have Heartbeat branding — purely due to technical limitations.

Here they are:
1/ Mobile & desktop apps. It's tough to provide custom mobile apps to each community & easily release updates to all these different apps as improvements are made to Heartbeat. We tried this early on, but found the impact on performance & development velocity was so noticeable, that it wasn't worth continuing. So all communities are accessed on mobile through the official Heartbeat app. We have to have our branding on the home screen (since we don't know what community you're accessing till you login), but once you've logged in, we remove all Heartbeat branding.

2/ Emails. Honestly, this is just due to the fact that we haven't released custom SMTP. We are hoping to do this soon, so all emails are sent from your domain instead of Heartbeat (aiming to have this out mid-Q3). Right now, we send email notifications from info@heartbeat.chat, but replace the "Name" field with your community name

3/ Non-custom domain-ed communities. There are certain areas in communities without a custom domain where it's tough to change the different branding elements (sign-in page, favicons, notification origin). Custom domains are included in all our tiers, so as soon as you set this up, you'll see even more Heartbeat branding go away.

> Because I would be uncomfortable about putting a community of an important site on a platform that is not "yet" fully stable.

While we're definitely committed to reducing Heartbeat branding more & more (and including all the updates into this AppSumo deal), I'd definitely say we're running an full stable. We host communities all over the world from a few hundred members to some communities with +10,000 members. We're running payments for many of them, and processing thousands each month.

So while there are some things I agree we can improve on white-labeling, I definitely wouldn't worry about hosting a fully-fledged community on Heartbeat today.

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If Heartbeat isn't a fit today, no worries at all! We're committed to building better tech for community builders & creators, and will keep improving till we can get you & your community on board 😉

Happy to chat more about this 1:1 — personal email is murtaza@heartbeat.chat

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Posted: Apr 7, 2022

Hi Murtaza, First, thank you for making the time to write a detailed. It shows you care and its important to you. I am working on a community right now, and some of the features you say you have would be perfect for me. You have convinced me to buy it and give it a try. Branding is still a concern, but some of it is understandable. Where you can remove it, please try to remove it. Thanks for sharing your email, once I try it, I will be able to tell you the areas where I think improvements could be made and you can tell me if can or cannot be done.

The email would be a good start. But I understand you are working on that. Thanks.

Thanks.
Ryan