The Mac and iPhone experience, with the convenience of the Web.
Some people love business Web apps because of the sharing conveniences. Some people love business Mac and iPhone apps because of the way they feel and work.
Imagine you could have the best of both worlds. Imagine you could launch a desktop app and use it right away, with no login, no wait, and no network connection required. Imagine if that same app automatically synchronized your data securely the next time a network connection is available. Imagine not having to worry about servers and networking, or having to make a large upfront investment.
Imagine no more.
Announcing Billings Pro 1.5 with Marketcircle Cloud
It’s been a long time coming and we’ve been dying to tell the world what we’ve been up to. We’ve been thinking about what is now called “the Cloud” for a few years, but we were dissatisfied with the available options. Everything at that time pointed to Web apps. We were bothered by the fact that although computers keep getting faster and more powerful, we’d be designing applications that limit themselves to network connections and the way Web apps feel. Why? It didn’t make sense to us.
What we wanted was the best of both worlds. We wanted a system that gave our users the conveniences Web apps afford as well as the feel of a proper desktop application (Windows users have a hard time appreciating the difference, but Mac and iPhone/iPad users know there is a huge one). People prefer the experience of a native app – the success of the iOS App Store and Mac App Store speak to this fact.
Those real apps are great for single users, but they become difficult to leverage in a multi-user, multi-device collaborative world. Marketcircle Cloud has solved this problem for the kinds of business apps we strive to create.
Getting started
When you download the new beta of Billings Pro (by invitation, see below), you’ll be greeted with the following screen. If you already have an account, put in your credentials and off you go. If you don’t, you can create an account and add some users in 60 seconds. The additional users will get an invitation via email with the necessary details to get started.
Once completed, the award winning Billings interface will appear. Our Billings product family has received many awards, including the recent MacUser Editor’s Choice award, an Apple Design Award and more.
Manage your account online
You can add or remove users, wipe device databases and more using a simple Web interface.
Flexibility: Cloud or Self Service
If you prefer to manage your own server and networking, no problem. Simply purchase permanent licenses and install Billings Pro Server on a stationary Mac. If you prefer not to worry about servers, the upfront capital costs, networking, backups and all the things that come with server administration, then use our Cloud service for a reasonable monthly fee.
*Pricing page is not currently live on our website
Pricing
To keep things simple, we’ve opted for one price that includes everything. You get the full desktop Mac application, the iPhone application, and our Web based time tracking app, Timecard, for any number of devices with no limitations for US$19.95 per user/month. If you prefer to keep the data on your own server, you can purchase permanent licenses on a per-user basis (see store, major upgrades not included). You can migrate from self service to the cloud at any time – and you get a 30 day free trial at the beginning either way.
*During the beta there will be no cost for the service
Some Testimonials
We’ve had a number of companies using this system for a few months now and this is what some of them have to say:
“We migrated our data across and forgot about it. It all just works – no more worries about dedicating a machine to be the server, having static IP addresses, slow DSL connections and firewalls etc…”
– Stephen in the UK. Creative Director, SpottyPaws.com
“Billings Pro with Marketcircle Cloud has made my life much easier. I’m all the way in Pakistan and the performance has been very good.”
– Khalid in Pakistan. Director, Dexterous Pvt Ltd.
“This new system has been great and simple for me. I’ve been able to do my time-tracking and invoicing from anywhere using a real Mac app and share that data with my colleague without any complications or IT stuff. It just works.”
– Lu in Canada. Director of Photography, Photagonist
Which is for you?
If you’re technical savvy with networks and servers, the self-service option might be best for you. If you just want to get down to business and skip all that technical stuff, the Cloud option is the way to go.
So what’s next?
We are conducting a brief “By Invitation Beta” program prior to full release. Should you wish to apply for an invitation, please fill in the form below.
Update: The public beta is now available here.
We believe this key piece of the puzzle will help us take advantage of the rising popularity of MacBook Air, iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
Our Billings family of products is looking much more complete now. As a single user, you can purchase Billings and Billings Touch.
With multiple users, you can purchase Billings Pro, Billings Pro Touch and Billings Pro Server (which includes Timecard).
Or if you prefer we manage the server bit, you will now have the Cloud option with Billings Pro, Billings Pro Touch and Timecard.
Until next time…
AJ
Sean says:
Very nice – when is this going to happen for Daylite?
AJ says:
One step at a time
mike mattioli says:
We use daylite now and are moving most of our data and project content to Box now that daylite can interface. It would be most advantageous if Daylite would be cloud based as well. If the transition is soon we will hold off and wait otherwise we have a lot of pressure to move to another platform like Salesforce….our sales team is now about 20 and will double in size within this year. Can we be considered as a beta test site so we can move sooner…network connections are very difficult bandwidth wise when using daylite remotely in our application. Please give us some consideration to beta testing daylite in the cloud.
JRP says:
Not everything or everyone as the need or interest in moving to the cloud. I’d like to see MC concentrate the same level of effort on improving the flagship desktop product, which imho has languished. I can only hope that we will see some long-sought, long-anticipated improvements in bringing this fine product more up-to-date in some design aspects, information presentation, task handling, pipelines, etc. I like and use this product daily; I want to like and use it more easily for all of my business needs in conjunction with the brilliant Billings.
Stephan says:
@JRP. Full Ack.
We use Daylite in our company. 4 Users, 1 server. An improvement of the daylite interface would be massively appreciated by us.
What I’d like to see: a dashboard view containing 6 or 9 boxes with my next tasks, appointments, next steps to do in my projects, some report views of my opportunities and so on. Daylite really lacks these features. I have to open single views for it or have to generate timeconsuming reports.
A mor proactive behavior of Daylite would be VERY nice.
Also very appreciated: a much better integration with Billings. We LOVE Billings for its ease of use, but the export / import bla is horrific. I’d like to create opportunities in Daylite, containing estimates automatically imported to Billings for invoice creation. No export import stuff. Just workflow please
Stephan says:
Our employees often asked: Why isn’t Billings integrated into Daylite? Why two apps for one business workflow? So: We’d also love to have it ALL IN ONE
This combination would be amazing. It would contain everything needed for professional business without the bloatware of massive ERP systems for mega-companies.
AJ says:
@JRP. Noted. Thanks.
AJ says:
@Stephan. One of the reason the apps are separate is because we want to prevent the bloatware feel (and associated problems), but we understand the general angle you are coming from and we’ll work on that in the future.
Jorge N says:
I agree w/ AJ here – applications that try to be anything and everything always either end up 1. never satisfy their users because they consider all features “incomplete” 2. become too complex to use, and/or 3. turn out to be more expensive with less real functionality (they become ‘Jack of all trades, Master of none’).
I much prefer separate programs with tight integration – that way I can concentrate on what I’m doing rather than deal with a complex program, and choose the exact functionality I need – why pay for something that has CRM *and* accounting when its CRM part suits you just fine? If I need the accounting part later on, just add that specialized part in.
Kevin J says:
One of the challenges of making software, especially for smaller, independent companies, is how to fund the costs of development sufficiently well that the development cycles can be kept relatively short and end-users kept happy with the pace of advancement, especially in the increasingly competitive marketplace. Daylite is a case in point – the forums contain many user requests for this feature or that, some requests date years and years back. But the licensing model of Daylite3 may cost a user just $189 for use of software for going on 4 years now. True, Marketcircle may be adding more and more NEW users, but probably not enough to sustain rapid development. Meanwhile, more and more companies, both existing and new, have adopted the SaaS (Software as a Service) model and are charging anywhere from $10 to $50 or more for Mac-compatible CRMs, such as Ntractive.com’s Elements CRM. Elements CRM even uses the combo cloud-desktop model that AJ says Billings is about to adopt. Ntractive charges users $25 to $70 per user per month for their CRM! That is a LOT of working capital to fund rapid development. I am HOPING that Marketcircle will not go that high on their pricing or cut out features for normal users, though!! And I concur with AJ that users should at least have the option to outright purchase licenses if that suits their needs. But I do understand the economics of the situation, and if users really want Daylite to evolve very fast, as the rest of the market seems to be doing, something is going to have to change. I leave it to AJ to work out the optimum balance that benefits everyone.
Cire says:
Excited about the cloud possibilities for DAYLITE more so than Billings. The iphone app still struggles to open often and we only have 1/4 of our contacts in the sync…I agree some coding on the flagship products to streamline them would be WONDERFUL, otherwise we are just waiting 40 seconds for our app to open so we can wait a minute so it can sync to the cloud (all while a client wonders what we are waiting for to enter a note.)
can u hire someone from OmniGroup… my omnifocus app has a HUGE amount of data in it, yet opens in a blink and syncs even faster…wonder what their secret is?
That being said. Monthly cloud storage for DAYLITE is welcome YESTERDAY…we are ready! Let us know when your testing…
Paul says:
I’m with Mike M… After using Daylite for many years now and wanting it to work so badly, I find the sluggish nature of using it with multiple users causes our employees to groan. I LOVE Daylite, and would love to see a cloud version. Even if a linux/windows version of the server software were to be created so that it could be installed on a super fast cloud server… I would assume that would help speed things up yes (in relation to our rather sluggish mac and slower bandwidth)? Not sure what the ultimate solution is, but I’m sure MC is all to aware of its competition and I’m hoping the MC cloud is the first step towards dominating the CRM market.
AJ says:
@Kevin. Keep in mind our solution is different. It’s not a hybrid app on the desktop per se. It’s a full native app — which we think is better.
AJ says:
@Cire. That slowdown is not related to the number of contacts. It is related to having too many repeats to calculate on launch. This typically happens when (sometime in the past) Sync Services duplicated (thousands of times) the repeat entries. Open a support ticket and our team can sort that out for you.
AJ says:
@Paul. Please open a support ticket and mention this slowdown. There are many things you can do to speed things up right away.
Scott says:
I love this approach, and even as a solo will likely move from Billings to Billings Pro hosted just so I can use it on any of my devices without workarounds (e.g., iMac and MacBook Air were ‘sharing’ a Billings database symlinked to Dropbox).
So, the next thing is – when will we see an iPad optimized version of Billings Touch Pro? I’d love to have it on my shiny new iPad2!!
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Cire says:
Regarding my above comment, AJ was right and the team fixed my problem quite quickly, (same day) once my trouble ticket was submitted…. my love affair with daylite continues, now lets see about that cloud service….Thank you again 2 Preeti on the support team 4 your help!
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