This has been five years in the making. We didn’t know it at the time, but ever since we released our second pay product (Backpack) in 2005, we’ve been building up to this moment.
Today we officially release the 37signals Suite. The Suite is a bundle of our four big apps: Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire for one low price (starting at $99/month).
The core benefits
For the initial release of the 37signals Suite, we targeted three key customer requests:
- Big savings over purchasing each app separately. Basically you get four for the price of just about two. Depending on which apps you have, and which plans you are currently on, the savings can be significant.
- Simplified billing. Instead of getting charged separately for multiple apps, you’ll get a single charge from us on your credit card every month. You can update your credit card, upgrade your plan, downgrade your plan, or cancel all from one screen as well.
- Unified users across all your apps. Before the Suite, if you had Basecamp and Highrise, you’d have to create the same users in multiple apps. That was a pain. The Suite shares uses across all the apps. You can create and manage all your users across all your apps from a single screen. Much easier.
The plans
The Suite launches with three plans: Starter at $99/month, Pro at $149/month, and Elite and $249/month. Each plan is well equipped and generously stocked with plenty of file storage, Basecamp projects, Highrise contacts, Backpack pages, and Campfire chatters and conference call minutes.
Abolishing the “participation tax”
Basecamp never had a user limit. From the free plan to the most expensive Max plan, you could add an unlimited number of users to your Basecamp account. However, Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire followed the industry-standard “charge per seat/user” model.
We’ve never particularly liked the charge per user model. We call it the participation tax. The more people involved, the more you pay. That’s not the best way to encourage collaboration.
So with the launch of the Suite, we’ve abolished user limits on all our apps. When you upgrade to the Suite you get unlimited users on Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire. Invite all your employees/collaborators to your account and get work done without having to think about cost-per-user.
How to get the Suite
Currently the 37signals Suite is only available for people who already own a Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, or Campfire account. If you own any one of these apps you can upgrade to the Suite in less than 60 seconds. We will be offering the ability to sign up for the Suite from scratch down the road, but we just don’t know when yet. Note: If you don’t own one of our products yet, and you’d like to purchase the Suite, just sign up for Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, or Campfire and then follow the upgrade instructions above.
The team
We’ve been working on the tech and design to make this all work smoothly for many months. It may look simple from the outside, but it involved ripping out and reworking huge chunks of code in every app. We wanted to do this carefully, thoughtfully, and properly. We’re really happy with the results.
Credit for this project goes to Ryan, Jeff, Pratik, and Jamis. These guys were the core contributors to the project. Lots of other people were involved too. Jason Z and Jamie D made everything look great, and the whole sys admin crew (Taylor, Joshua, and John) made sure the team had everything they needed. Sarah, Michael, and Jason in support have been helping customers with any questions that have come up. Incredible teamwork from everyone.
The start of something great
Today the Suite saves people money, simplifies billing and account management, and unifies users across all the products. But that’s just the beginning. We have a lot of ideas for how to make the Suite even better. Stay tuned as we continue to improve.
Thanks for listening. We hope to see you on the Suite!
Michael
on 10 Nov 10Nice! You are absolutely right that user limits for CRM discourage collaboration. It’s harder to make it part of the company culture to keep up the db if some users have to be excluded.
Josh
on 10 Nov 10This is a great step! I was so excited yesterday when I saw this. I hope that this means 2011 will finally bring an integrated app between the systems as that would push everything over the top for me.
For now, we have already upgraded and we now get to use a product we weren’t using (campfire) for the same price we were paying! Great update.
Scott
on 10 Nov 10Awesome. I’m pushing the powers that be right now to get this into our enterprise! This setup makes it a no-brainer for us. Well, it was a no-brainer for us before but, sometimes you need to simplify it for the fellows who make the decisions. ;)
Matt Jankowski
on 10 Nov 10Well done guys. We upgraded yesterday and couldn’t be happier with how smooth the process, how helpful support was with the one question we had, and how we’re getting more for less after all is said and done.
Tomas
on 10 Nov 10A collection of productivity apps for use in a business … You should give it a snappy name!
How about OFFICE? ;)
Nicolas Sanguinetti
on 10 Nov 10Except you’re not abolishing the “participation tax” on campfire (so I can’t just drop a campfire chat as a support mechanism, for example)
Other than that, well done :)
Americo Savinon
on 10 Nov 10Bravo!
Matt Henderson
on 10 Nov 10This is great news. Thanks!
Any chance the “we have lots of ideas,” might include a Sortfolio listing and a couple job posts in these packages in the future?
Russ Thornton
on 10 Nov 10This is great and I know will be eagerly adopted by many users that I’ve seen ask for “bundled” pricing on the various 37s answers sites.
Based on what I’ve seen thus far, it looks like you hit another home run with an elegant design and integration for the “suite.”
Congrats on the launch
Maggew.com
on 10 Nov 10I wish 37signals 5 more years of good fortune.
Quick Question – Will I be able to apply promo codes to get a discount? For example, I’m a new (or return) customer and this suite looks promising…
I use code: 37SIGNL for 20% off or FREEUP for $10 off.
Again, I wish you guys the best of luck!
+Matt
JF
on 10 Nov 10Matt: No coupons or promos on the Suite.
ryan
on 10 Nov 10Congrats on the new launch of the apps! Looking forward to the upgrade!
ryan Poker Lessons
Blain Smith
on 10 Nov 10Ever since the combined 37signals ID this was just the next logical step for your products. Great work as always.
netfreak
on 10 Nov 10Great step forward. When i saw the note i got really excited. Although, i can’t “upgrade” to suite at the moment cause we don’t really need so much “stuff”, considered a luxury.
We’ll think about it as we grow over the next year.
Luneos
on 10 Nov 10Hello 37signals,
that’s great first step forward in integrating all your apps together. I especially like your unique unlimited user approach.
Could you publish the percentage of users, who use >1 application, or do you keep this information confidential?
Thanks for constantly bringing more productivity on the road…
John Hwang
on 10 Nov 10We’re considering using Suite, but when I go to the upgrade/pricing page, it states that upgrade process will create a new campfire account even though we already have a campfire account.
It says: We’ll create a new Campfire account for you
This makes us nervous about upgrading as we’d have to re create all our rooms and re-invite all the users to the rooms…
Darren
on 10 Nov 10I like the new user-to-suite management system. Focused. Though not sure if I’m a huge fan yet of the global administrator.
We use the suite in it’s entirety, and an admin for Basecamp/Campfire may not be appropriate as an admin for Backpack.
Darren Marshall
on 10 Nov 10Take that back—being able to set certain pages private in Backpack solves that problem.
Very cool.
Adam Sentz
on 10 Nov 10This is great. We signed up yesterday.
Derik
on 10 Nov 10@37signals
How does a huge project like this fit into your 2 week deployment model?
Jeremy Bise
on 10 Nov 10Thanks for this update—been wanting it for awhile and it works well!
Derik
on 10 Nov 10@37signals
To add more clarity to my last post, since you state:
How does a huge project like this fit into your 2 week deployment model?
JF
on 10 Nov 10Derik: It doesn’t fit. Occasionally we have to take on larger infrastructure projects that span multiple months. We still try to keep things tightly scoped, but some of these things run so deep and touch so many things that they take a long time.
Pascal Laliberté
on 10 Nov 10In the “Suite version” of Basecamp, can the ability to create projects be delegated to users in other groups (organizations?)
Here’s the problem: at our university, we’re looking for a collaboration solution that could suit the web developers and web content folks in the different schools and departments (over 100 of us). If only administrators can create project and grant user access, and administrators can only be in “Our company”, this means that Basecamp only makes sense on projects all of us collaborate on together. If each sub-group wants to manage their own projects, one option they would have is to get their own Basecamp setup. We already have this setup (3 or 4 basecamp setups on our campus already), but wondering if 37signals Suite (larger number of Basecamp users/projects) has a different way to handle project ownership/administration.
Thanks. Pascal
Paul
on 10 Nov 10Curious…I’m seeing this text on the upgrade screen (emphasis mine):
Was Skybox the codename for this project? :)
Jonathan Watson
on 10 Nov 10So, once we upgrade do the companies we have defined in Basecamp carry over to Highrise so that we can easily move between both apps?
Does this also mean if we create a company in Highrise it’s also created in Basecamp as a usable company?
I’m just trying to figure out how much data sharing is going on between the apps.
JF
on 10 Nov 10Jonathan: The apps don’t share data, they only share users that are part of your own company. So clients in Basecamp will not be part of Highrise, but any users in your own company in Basecamp will now have access to Highrise (and Backpack and Campfire).
JF
on 10 Nov 10Paul: Yes, Skybox was the code name for the project. We have other plans for that name now.
Jonathan Watson
on 10 Nov 10Thanks for the answer JF. I can definitely see a benefit to being able to share data between the apps in the future—then, we could easily take a won deal in Highrise and automatically create the project in Basecamp… I hope you guys look at that sort of interoperation in the future!
Adam
on 10 Nov 10Hey guys – thanks for doing this. We went from paying $198/mo yesterday to $99/mo today after the conversion to the suite. (Plus we got 2 more products for free.)
Losing 50% of revenue on existing customers is a big deal so I’m guessing I’m an edge case?
JF
on 10 Nov 10Adam: Hopefully ;)
Jimmy
on 11 Nov 10I am extremely excited to see the progression of the apps & the integration. We are heavy BC & HR users, and I am glad that we have upgrade to the suite today. However, I am really not into the global admin. We have BU managers that were BC admins, so that they could make projects, invite users, etc, but these managers were not HR admins. I really hope that you guys get the user accounts expanded.
jd
on 11 Nov 10Cool move.
Have you guys ever thought about giving your products more useful names? I still can’t for the life of me remember what service does what. Might be an opportunity to “get real”.
dw
on 11 Nov 10Let me be the one lonely voice of dissent: We (a two person-shop) currently have Highrise + Basecamp, rather smallish yet paid packages, plus free Campfire.
We would upgrade to the Suite if it cost US$49/month. But US$1188/year is a lot of money for a two person shop.
It seems obvious to me that, sadly, 37signals is moving away from the small businesses and towards enterprise (see also the “experimenting with the prices” – http://basecamphq.com/signup).
I understand – if one can make more money, it would take a saint to resist finally leaving the small (often more problematic) customers behind and heading for the big bucks.
Still – am I the only one saddened by this development? I had sort of believed there was some genuine humanity and yes, gasp!, “goodness” behind the the Getting Real approach. Maybe there was. But I feel it is slowly fading.
Dylan
on 11 Nov 10This is cool with really nice execution, but I’m sitting here wondering how 37signals can justify this from a financial standpoint. Discounting products only really makes sense if it pushes people from using 2 or 3 apps to using all 4. If you’re already using all 4…37signals takes a hit. Hopefully more people use more of the apps, I guess. Good luck!
Tony
on 11 Nov 10Outstanding! – upgraded immediately.
Very glad to see the ‘per seat’ model being wiped out – I think it adds a lot of resistance to using products like yours.
Well done Tone
David G.
on 11 Nov 10Great! Just upgraded! It will allows us to have more users on our Backpackit for the same price, as we were at the limit. And now maybe we’ll consider also using Highrise and Campfire.
BTW, removing the per-user economic model will expand your number of total users, and then your exposure, and at the end your business. Well done ;)
Andrew Watson
on 11 Nov 10Several comments express concerns about pricing and about 37s losing money on the bundling. David G makes a good point in response.
My own response is that this may also work as a defensive move. Clients using a couple of 37s products are now less likely to defect to other providers. First, their cost has just gone down. Second, they are likely to try the other products in the suite, and to get hooked on them.
Andrew ps my initial reaction to the suite: http://changingway.org/2010/11/10/37signals-one-suite/
GregT
on 11 Nov 10$1200 per year for software that prides itself on lacking functions and generally seems like its worth maybe 10% of that as a one-time cost? Capitalism at its finest!
jd
on 11 Nov 10People, 37signals is making plenty of money. It’s products are not cheap and it runs a very lean shop. No need to worry. In fact, everyone could take note of how they are doing things.
aaron
on 11 Nov 10Is it only unlimited users if you do the collab package? I am currently using highrise by itself and there’s still a user limit. Is this to be expected?
DHH
on 11 Nov 10aaron, yes, it’s only on the suite we’ve done away with all user limits.
David O.
on 11 Nov 10This is a great offer …long overdue but weill worth the wait !
Eric
on 12 Nov 10So with the launch of the Suite, we’ve abolished user limits on all our apps.
Anonymous Coward
on 12 Nov 10Eric
on 12 Nov 10The above anonymous coward was me…
Sam
on 15 Nov 10Great behind the scenes overview Jason! Not sure if you’ve already written about it, but you should talk about the idea of allowing ‘unlimited users’. Has offering this ever created an issue? Obviously a great marketing point.
This discussion is closed.