Comments on: How to Alienate Your Vocal Supporters http://www.legalandrew.com/2009/04/24/how-to-alienate-your-vocal-supporters/ law for the rest of us Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:49:36 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: My Custom Business Management System « Legal Andrew http://www.legalandrew.com/2009/04/24/how-to-alienate-your-vocal-supporters/comment-page-1/#comment-64755 My Custom Business Management System « Legal Andrew Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:06:15 +0000 http://www.legalandrew.com/?p=1293#comment-64755 [...] April, I wrote that I wanted to integrate my main systems. It’s done now, and this post explains [...] [...] April, I wrote that I wanted to integrate my main systems. It’s done now, and this post explains [...]

]]> By: EchoSign Customer Service To The Rescue! « Legal Andrew http://www.legalandrew.com/2009/04/24/how-to-alienate-your-vocal-supporters/comment-page-1/#comment-64208 EchoSign Customer Service To The Rescue! « Legal Andrew Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:44:49 +0000 http://www.legalandrew.com/?p=1293#comment-64208 [...] Friday at 11:53pm, I wrote this post about EchoSign not giving small users access to their API. I wanted to integrate their e-signing [...] [...] Friday at 11:53pm, I wrote this post about EchoSign not giving small users access to their API. I wanted to integrate their e-signing [...]

]]> By: Andrew Flusche http://www.legalandrew.com/2009/04/24/how-to-alienate-your-vocal-supporters/comment-page-1/#comment-64197 Andrew Flusche Sun, 26 Apr 2009 04:19:43 +0000 http://www.legalandrew.com/?p=1293#comment-64197 Michelle, Thanks for stopping by to say hi. I appreciate it! Being a small business can be pretty tough. We really have to work for maximum efficiency. That's why I'm so pumped about integrating my applications! Andrew Michelle,

Thanks for stopping by to say hi. I appreciate it!

Being a small business can be pretty tough. We really have to work for maximum efficiency. That’s why I’m so pumped about integrating my applications!

Andrew

]]> By: Michelle Riggen-Ransom http://www.legalandrew.com/2009/04/24/how-to-alienate-your-vocal-supporters/comment-page-1/#comment-64196 Michelle Riggen-Ransom Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:43:21 +0000 http://www.legalandrew.com/?p=1293#comment-64196 Hi Andrew - thanks for the shout-out and so glad you share our love for the solopreneur/micro-business! We think the future belongs to small businesses and are excited that our product will help them to succeed. And it helps being a very small business ourselves :) Thanks again and keep on keepin' on out there! Michelle Riggen-Ransom Communications Director & Customer Service Bon Vivant Hi Andrew – thanks for the shout-out and so glad you share our love for the solopreneur/micro-business! We think the future belongs to small businesses and are excited that our product will help them to succeed. And it helps being a very small business ourselves :)

Thanks again and keep on keepin’ on out there!

Michelle Riggen-Ransom
Communications Director & Customer Service Bon Vivant

]]> By: Andrew Flusche http://www.legalandrew.com/2009/04/24/how-to-alienate-your-vocal-supporters/comment-page-1/#comment-64194 Andrew Flusche Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:33:09 +0000 http://www.legalandrew.com/?p=1293#comment-64194 Jason, First of all, thank you for the prompt and thorough reply. You guys definitely have outstanding customer service. I definitely understand the risk of abuse with the API. I certainly wouldn't expect you to allow a Pro user to send thousands of documents per month, regardless of the interface being used. You have a great product, and it definitely costs money on your end to process all those transactions. You need to be compensated appropriately for different volumes of use. I don't understand what you mean in your last paragraph about integrating EchoSign "for your app's users and use EchoSign credentials." My rusty programming knowledge might be failing me here. Perhaps this option you're mentioning would fit my needs. I would use my current EchoSign credentials, and the app would only be for my use. Thanks again for the quick response. I look forward to discussing this further with you and your team. Andrew Jason,

First of all, thank you for the prompt and thorough reply. You guys definitely have outstanding customer service.

I definitely understand the risk of abuse with the API. I certainly wouldn’t expect you to allow a Pro user to send thousands of documents per month, regardless of the interface being used. You have a great product, and it definitely costs money on your end to process all those transactions. You need to be compensated appropriately for different volumes of use.

I don’t understand what you mean in your last paragraph about integrating EchoSign “for your app’s users and use EchoSign credentials.” My rusty programming knowledge might be failing me here. Perhaps this option you’re mentioning would fit my needs. I would use my current EchoSign credentials, and the app would only be for my use.

Thanks again for the quick response. I look forward to discussing this further with you and your team.

Andrew

]]> By: Jason M. Lemkin http://www.legalandrew.com/2009/04/24/how-to-alienate-your-vocal-supporters/comment-page-1/#comment-64193 Jason M. Lemkin Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:11:41 +0000 http://www.legalandrew.com/?p=1293#comment-64193 Thanks Andrew. We appreciate the feedback here. EchoSign is primarily focused on SMBs as a % of our user base and I agree with all the spirit of your post. One goal of an API is to allow both integration into other apps and access to your data. In terms of data, EchoSign as you know has absolutely no data lock. In terms of integration, as you may know, we provide out-of-the-box integration at no cost to leaders such as Salesforce, Box.net, HR Block Rocketlawyer, Zoho Writer, eFax, and many others. For our customers, the reason we generally have to limit API access to our Ent edition accounts isn't the data side -- it's your data - rather it's the transactional nature of our product. A Free account (which is a smoking deal) is limited to 5 transactions / month. A Pro account is extremely inexpensive, but by design must thus be limited to a SOHO/individual user. By contrast, almost all our API customers are high volume, high transaction users which align with an Enterprise ($299) account. Allowing them to send 5,000 transactions a month through a Free or Pro account I am sure you will agree would violate the spirit of those accounts as well as their terms. Contrast this to most API integrations with paid products, where the goal really is to access data, not as the primarily vehicle to use the product. With EchoSign, you already have your data. Limiting it in this fashion minimizes the chance for abuse, which in turn, maximizes the quality of our customer experience. Having said there, there is absolutely no charge to use the API if your application simply wants to integrate EchoSign for your app's users and use EchoSign credentials. This eliminates all the gaming issues above, and is exactly what Box.net, Zoho, DigitalBucket, and Sosius do for example. Please let support know you want to do this and they'll get you access promptly. We should make this clearer on our website under the partner section and will in our next release, which will be an exciting one. Thanks again for the feedback and support. Jason M. Lemkin, ceo & co-founder Thanks Andrew. We appreciate the feedback here. EchoSign is primarily focused on SMBs as a % of our user base and I agree with all the spirit of your post. One goal of an API is to allow both integration into other apps and access to your data. In terms of data, EchoSign as you know has absolutely no data lock. In terms of integration, as you may know, we provide out-of-the-box integration at no cost to leaders such as Salesforce, Box.net, HR Block Rocketlawyer, Zoho Writer, eFax, and many others.

For our customers, the reason we generally have to limit API access to our Ent edition accounts isn’t the data side — it’s your data – rather it’s the transactional nature of our product. A Free account (which is a smoking deal) is limited to 5 transactions / month. A Pro account is extremely inexpensive, but by design must thus be limited to a SOHO/individual user. By contrast, almost all our API customers are high volume, high transaction users which align with an Enterprise ($299) account. Allowing them to send 5,000 transactions a month through a Free or Pro account I am sure you will agree would violate the spirit of those accounts as well as their terms.

Contrast this to most API integrations with paid products, where the goal really is to access data, not as the primarily vehicle to use the product. With EchoSign, you already have your data.

Limiting it in this fashion minimizes the chance for abuse, which in turn, maximizes the quality of our customer experience.

Having said there, there is absolutely no charge to use the API if your application simply wants to integrate EchoSign for your app’s users and use EchoSign credentials. This eliminates all the gaming issues above, and is exactly what Box.net, Zoho, DigitalBucket, and Sosius do for example. Please let support know you want to do this and they’ll get you access promptly. We should make this clearer on our website under the partner section and will in our next release, which will be an exciting one.

Thanks again for the feedback and support.

Jason M. Lemkin, ceo & co-founder

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