I think the author has a valid point. 37signals's Highrise is a CRM that we are using--and after using it for several years, we still don't have pagination. We wait for 5000+ deals to load, including lost and won deals, yet something as simple as pagination (or even an archiving feature), which have sent feature requests, still won't be implemented. So instead, we continue to wait 5-6 seconds for our deals page to load.
If anything, Highrise hasn't grown in years. It's now feeling the plateau effect, and we are looking for alternatives to Highrise because it hasn't grown with us.
I agree that "Less is More," but when something as simple as paginating the deals can't be implemented, it makes me wonder why we pay 37signals every month. If it's not going to improving the software and improving workflow, customers will leave to a business that understands its customers. Even Apple, while they don't exactly ask for their customers' input, know what problems their customers face every day. 37signals looks as if they are becoming out of touch with their users.
Thanks for using Highrise. Sorry you're having a bad experience with deals.
We agree that the deals page needs pagination, but most people don't have 5000 deals. So while you're scenario is very real to you, it's not a common case. That's not to take anything away from your experience - we agree it's bad and we want to make it better - it's all just a matter of priority. We're currently working on optimizing for the common cases so we can improve the product(s) in areas everyone can enjoy.
Our development log is public, if your curious about the improvements we're making every day:
http://highrisehq.com/changes
Thanks, Jason. Appreciate the response and understanding of our frustration.
We have heavily integrated our business app with Highrise, including our Quote to Invoice app with the REST API. We've built reports around the Highrise data. And we love Highrise, for the most part, since it simplifies the sales process. And it's great to track where our sales are at.
But what made us love Highrise was that it was fast. And when we lose that speed, we are reminded of our experience with Salesforce.
The loss in productivity with Salesforce was why we came to 37s in the first place, because you offered us real value in simplifying our sales flow. But right now, we are fiddling with speed, and we understand while you have different priorities, going through our deals nimbly is important to us.
Yeah, I mean pagination is so basic and should have been there in the beginning. It makes everyone feel nice to be glad-handed but ... come-on, pagination?
It was basic frustrations like this that caused us to switch as well. In particular, it with the issue with tasks lists - we used Basecamp and Highrise, and even though the feature request has been made regularly for the last 4 years, there is STILL no way to get a common task list across Highrise and Basecamp.
So we went over to Zoho. In the time it has taken 37Signals to hem and haw over task lists, Zoho has created an entire ecosystem of apps, integrated it with Google App Engine, associated tasks across their apps, etc.
Sure, the apps aren't pretty, but they work. Jason would probably argue that our needs aren't the norm, that we've outgrown Highrise, but a counterexample is FreshBooks: we've been using FreshBooks since day one in our business, and we continue to us it because it's a great app that is growing with us. It focuses on simplifying things that are ordinarily complex rather than simplicity as an end goal.
Highrise has been less and less valuable to me (though I'll note that just by calling it a "CRM", you're already suggesting that you're asking it to do tricks; it's not a full-featured CRM). But Basecamp has gotten more useful to me over the past year or so.
If anything, Highrise hasn't grown in years. It's now feeling the plateau effect, and we are looking for alternatives to Highrise because it hasn't grown with us.
I agree that "Less is More," but when something as simple as paginating the deals can't be implemented, it makes me wonder why we pay 37signals every month. If it's not going to improving the software and improving workflow, customers will leave to a business that understands its customers. Even Apple, while they don't exactly ask for their customers' input, know what problems their customers face every day. 37signals looks as if they are becoming out of touch with their users.