@_jacksmith They quietly announced the beta today via social media.

@BelleBCooper Probably not. My guess is that this is in direct response to startups offering simpler, lower-priced HelpDesk software that's easy to get setup in a few minutes.nnMost SMBs operate the majority of their communication from their email inbox, and don't need advanced support features like public Q&A, knowledge bases, etc. They just need a way to keep their email organized and make sure they didn't miss any threads.nnWe use HelpScout for Leadin and it works great for our two-person team. I signed up for Inbox and it seems to do almost the same exact thing as HelpScout, although with less features because it's new. I also received an automated onboarding email from Alex, the founder of ZenDesk, after signing up, so this doesn't seem like a side project from one employee and is probably more of a top-down initiative to differentiate the product offering by creating lighter, faster and easier to buy software.n

@AndyGCook At the bottom of the landing page, there is a link to a blog post with an interview with Zendesk co-founder and Inbox lead, Alexander Aghassipour, on why they built Inbox. nnDirect link: https://www.zendesk.com/blog/bri...

@AndyGCook Right. We use HelpScout too, for our two-person team. It seems to have all the same features so I don't know why you'd switch... unless Inbox works well on mobile. The phone image on the landing page insinuates that but doesn't make it clear. I generally reply to HelpScout emails from my own email client, but anytime I actually need to login to HelpScout, it's a really bad experience on mobile.

@BelleBCooper PM on the Inbox team here. We designed and developed Inbox as a mobile-first web app even though it's primarily positioned for desktop use. This helped us keep the feature set lean and the UI simple. We think we did a good job with the mobile UI, but I invite you to check it out and let me know what you think.

@briangreenbaum Thanks Brian, that's good to know!