Massive JibberJobber Announcement

On Friday I told my JibberJobber LinkedIn Group that I was going to make a massive announcement on the blog today.

We were going to do a release (that means, change the software on the server) last night and I was going to be ecstatic to to share what we did.

Alas, we didn’t make the release last night but should in the next week or two.  I wasn’t excited about postponing this release but we had a good reason to wait.

I’ll make the announcement anyway, though.  Instead of “here’s what changed last night” I’ll tell you what to expect in the next week or two:

First, we are moving most of the Premium features to the free (Regular) level.

I think this is going to be a significant boost to JibberJobber and to you (a rising tide raises all ships, right?).

For almost seven years we have had a bunch of bells-and-whistles that were Premium features.  We have identified just a handful of things to keep Premium and we are moving the rest to the free side.  The handful of features that will remain PREMIUM include:

• Limit of 250 Contacts and 250 Companies on the Regular level* (see footnote below),
• Email2Log to create Log Entries and Contacts,
• Importing in bulk (from Outlook, Gmail, etc.),
• Action Item reminders to email and text/sms

Features that will soon be on the free Regular level include:

• All of the reports,
• Exporting your data,
• Merging records from the List Panels,
• All of the icons under List Panel, including: merging, exporting, the two reports, managing Tags, etc. (very useful features!),
• Ability to add multiple email addresses and phone numbers on a record,
• Categories in the Interview Prep area,
• Features on the Action Item panel on the homepage, including RSS, the Calendar, etc.

There are others that moved from Premium to Free but they are less important.

There are two reasons for this change (here’s a peak into our business and strategy):

1. It is now a lot easier to understand the value proposition of the upgrade. I think before it felt like nickle-and-diming… too many little features here and there, and it was just too complex.  Plus, the features we kept as Premium are the features most people upgrade for (not many people said they upgraded because of the features that we are moving to the free side).
2. If you can’t upgrade, you will still get significant value out of using JibberJobber. I tell my team that I want more (a) signups, (b) users, and (c) upgrades.  If we make the free level of JibberJobber more useful to you then you are more likely to become a hardcore USER.  I want more of my signups to become users, and I this should have a significant impact on that.  (and, more users will turn into more upgrades – use it, love it, get hooked on it, and you’ll be more okay with paying for it)

If you upgraded for a feature that is now free, simply downgrade by clicking on Account and then clicking the button to stop your subscription.

Second, we are introducing the Duplicate Finder.

This is something I’ve wanted for years.  I have almost 6,000 Contacts in my system and I thought “how cool would it be if we could push a button, see a list of duplicates, and then easily merge dups?”

I’ll tell you: it is VERY cool!

We’ve worked hard to make this easy to use and not overburden the server as it sifts through tons of records.  It’s taken lots of development, tweaking, testing, and more to get it ready.  I hope you enjoy it and get good use out of it!

I’ll explain more when this feature is available. And yes, it will be in the free level.

More exciting changes are in the works as my programming team is moving forward quickly!

* Footnote: If you go from Premium to Regular, and you are over the 250 Contacts limit, what happens?

Let’s say you import 3,000 Contacts into JibberJobber during your 14 day Premium trial.  That is clearly over the 250 limit on the Regular level.

When your account switches to Regular you will still have those 3,000 Contacts in your system.  You can search for them, edit them, associate them to Companies, create Log Entries and Action Items, etc.  YOU DO NOT LOSE THEM.

We don’t hold your Contacts hostage.  (yes, I giggle inside when I write that line :p)

The only thing that will happen is that you won’t be able to add anymore, because you are over the limit.

At that point you can either upgrade or you can delete all the junk Contacts and get below the 250 limit.