Userlist is a customer messaging tool that helps you onboard and engage your SaaS users after they sign up for your product. It’s much more efficient than building an in-house solution, and way less complex than Intercom and other enterprise tools.
Hello everyone 👋
I'm super happy that we are finally out of beta and on ProductHunt today. 🎉
Please don't hesitate to post your questions and comments. We'll be around for the next couple of hours and are more than happy to answer them all!
Have been following along since your inception folks. Exciting to see you finally launch it. It looks like a solid 1.0! Congratulations and all the best, see you next MC!
@andrewmason Hey Andrew, great question! It's much more focused/faster/simpler (and also more affordable which we agreed not to mention). We're also planning on in-app messaging, but never on chat — which, in our books, can increase support load for no good reason.
@andrewmason@uibreakfast Interesting take on chat here! One thing I like about chat is the informal, conversational style often leads to more valuable dialogue (vs. a less human, form-based ticketing system, for example). Especially for B2B SaaS (with no freemium), an increase in customer conversations has usually been a good thing.
What sorts of negatives of chat have you experienced? How do you all handle support? Do you see Userlist customers using it for messaging alongside an in-app chat tool?
@andrewmason@conarro Great question Kyle! We're mostly relying on our customer conversations for that anti-realtime-chat sentiment (and share it ourselves from past SaaS experience). I'm pretty sure there's no single right answer and it mostly depends on the nature of the product 🙂
For smaller companies, realtime chat == unrealistic response time expectations, extra stress, and resources that can be better spent elsewhere.
@andrewmason@uibreakfast Thanks for the reply! I've used chat at 3 B2B SaaS companies now (ranging from 2-40 people) and have found it very valuable. Sometimes I would *rather* spend time elsewhere, but that doesn't mean the support conversations are any less important. I've also noticed that customers are content with slower response times (even with the real-time "feel" of chat).
It's also nice to have in-app messages that can easily turn into 2-way conversations. I see your planning in-app messaging -- any plans to incorporate 2-way messaging as part of that?
I’ve integrated Userlist into one of my client’s apps, and it’s working very well! Was super easy to integrate into Rails and JS.
The thing I want the most is in-app messaging! Not necessarily chat, but basically an API I can pull a certain category of messages from and show them in my UI. Primary use case for this is product feature announcements and updates.
I love what Jane, Claire and Benedikt have built here, and I'm jealous of the kickass team they form. I've been following their journey' for a while now and though I've not yet had an app that needed user messaging just yet, I'm sure when I will I'll be turning to Userlist! Congrats on the launch folks 🚀
Hey everyone, and thanks Charlie for hunting us!
It’s been a long journey, and we’re incredibly excited to be here on Product Hunt. We started Userlist in 2017 as an alternative to bulky enterprise software, built it into a focused product, and polished it with the feedback & support of early customers.
We believe SaaS founders deserve quality tools that make the startup journey simpler & more enjoyable; we hope that Userlist can become such a tool for you.
As a team with @benediktdeicke and @clairesuellen, we promise a warm welcome, personal support & lots of materials to fuel your inspiration 💛
@b_wleung Thank you Beatrice! It doesn't include chat (nor planning on it), and also doesn't include pre-signup leads. All of this allows for a truly clean, straightforward user experience focused on someone who runs a SaaS.
Thanks @charlieirish for hunting us :) So happy to be going publicly "live" with Userlist today! As @benediktdeicke mentioned above, we're here to help with any questions folks have 👋👋
I've worked with so many SaaS companies who are stuck using tools with more features than they could ever need or want - so much so that they don't really use the tool at all!
Userlist solves all of that (finally!) and provides a well-rounded solution for powerful customer messaging that truly provides connection.
The very best part is that customers get the messaging they need, when they need it. No more cookie-cutter onboarding or unneeded emails junking up customer inboxes. Just simple, straight-forward messaging that they need in that moment.
Userlist is a BIG DEAL. There's nothing else like it out there (and as a customer messaging pro, I've used them all) and I'm so glad it's finally out of beta and ready for the world to start putting into place.
Congrats on the launch @clairesuellen@uibreakfast!
Userlist is young but has been carefully designed. What I like the most is that you can define an event when a user enters a campaign as well as an event where they automatically exit it and move on to the next campaign. Every campaign is linked to each other and tight to goals.
If a user completes the key goal of the campaign they’re in (for example, use feature x), they jump straight to the next campaign, so communication is optimized and kept as relevant as possible. We all receive too many emails.
Why do I bother to write so much about it? Because I read all the emails you shared while you were building Userlist and they were immensely valuable. Keep them coming :)
@clairesuellen@enthusiausted Thanks for following our journey Marco and for all the nice words. It means a ton for us and maybe we can all make the email world better 💛
@celeste_grupman I'd be happy to discuss high-volume pricing with you. Would you mind sending a short email to support@userlist.io so we can pick up the discussion there? Thanks!
It's way too expensive. At least given that 1 user = everything, also trial users. There are many SaaS out there with a pretty low ratio free vs. paid users. If we're talking about paid users, I'm okay with the pricing though.
@and_php We get that and discussed this multiple times internally. On our side, a free user needs the same resources and causes the same expenses as a paid user. We also cannot identify who's a free user and who's a paid user, so unfortunately it is what it is right now. 🙂
@benediktdeicke Thanks for your reply. :) Yes, I understand that a separation is technically not possible, but even though you could still allow it from a legal perspective. Not all license terms are technically secured. I mean, it heavily depends on the service. Some services don't have free users at all (e.g. only a very limited trial period), thus the pricing seems justified for this. Other services have 95%+ (or even 98%+) free users and then the pricing seems way too steep. I still bookmarked your service and wish you all the best for the future as the product looks great, but my opinion regarding the too expensive pricing for free users remains.
@benediktdeicke@and_php Thank you for the nice words and for legitimate reasoning!
Decided to chime into this conversation with my thoughts, too. Well, not exactly mine, but the common knowledge that freemium is a customer acquisition channel. So these communication expenses are essentially your marketing costs. And then every business decides what monetization model fits them better :)
@benediktdeicke@uibreakfast Well, that's an interesting point, actually. I mean, to see the onboarding as part of the marketing costs. I never really saw it from that point of view, but it's definitely a legitimate argument. An interesting discussion for sure. :-) Maybe we'll try out your product.
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