6 ms·

Notifo (YC W10) Will be Shutting Down

231 points by jazzychad 15y ago

artursapek 15y ago
That's a bummer. Any chance of a public release, to keep it alive? Also, Hacker news will need an update now.
- mahcuz 15y ago
  I was just thinking this. It seems incredibly selfish to put software into its grave simply because the current developer can't afford to continue working.
robbiet480 15y ago
Will you think about open sourcing the backend? Or selling it?
- seany 15y ago
  There is a similar type thing at www.notify.io which existed before notifio was around anyway.
  - anotherjesse 15y ago
    it is still around. just using it today to prototype webhooks with openstack
  - kermitthehermit 15y ago
    Here are the bad news: it's also owned by another twilio employee and the single person behind it doesn't listen to the community, nor cares about it.
- andrewljohnson 15y ago
  I second selling it. I've been surprised what a random website might get on Flippa, and Notifo has some recognition and cache. Might as well see if it can hit a reserve price - passing the service on at whatever price is probably good for the founders and users.
- brndnhy 15y ago
  or licensing it?
there 15y ago
sorry to hear, chad. i relied on the android app to send notifications from various things to my phone without sms. anyone know of a free android alternative that uses c2dm?
dmpayton 15y ago
What a bummer. I integrated notifo into my (as yet unreleased side-) project, and it was really easy to get going. The main purpose of my app is to send alerts, and I'd planned to highlight notifo integration as one of the features. Good luck on your next adventure, Chad!
decadentcactus 15y ago
Definitely sucks to have to shut something down. Best of luck in the future, and I'm sure having to do this will help then too.
klinquist 15y ago
Sorry to hear this. I am a technologist at Cisco and I enjoyed showing the capabilities of Notifo in tech demos (for example, having a virtual assistant send links to my phone).
jonursenbach 15y ago
Them shutting down is going to have some interesting side effects with their Github integration. Wish Github would buy them up and continue running the service.
- jdg 15y ago
  Boxcar (http://boxcar.io http://boxcar.io) offers Github notifications. We would love to have you as a customer.
  - jonursenbach 15y ago
    Yeah, signed up yesterday at the request of a coworker.
benatkin 15y ago
Sucks to see this happen, and to see Convore (which jazzychad wrote an iPad app for) floundering as well.
- zacharyz 15y ago
  What indication is there that Convore isn't doing well? What is the measure for success for it?
  - teej 15y ago
    Two of the three founders left to do a new startup.
    - zacharyz 15y ago
      Ahh all good reasons, I figured they were still chugging along with Leah still being involved.
    - rokhayakebe 15y ago
      Source? (Edit: I believe you. I am just curious what they are doing now)
      - jubbam 15y ago
        http://boilerplateinc.com/ http://boilerplateinc.com/ http://cantwa.it/about/ http://cantwa.it/about/
  - samstave 15y ago
    Active users? I had totally forgotten about convore.
  - benatkin 15y ago
    A few months ago the UI became noticeably slower. At about the same time, anecdotally, multiple channels that I frequented saw a drop in participation, or at least, not much growth. These channels include the GitHub channel, the Changelog channel, and the Rails channel. https://convore.com/feedback/convores-ui-is-very-slow/ https://convore.com/feedback/convores-ui-is-very-slow/
jasonmccay 15y ago
Seriously bummed. This was a reliable and (very) useful service for all of our environments on EC2. We had it tied in with Nagios and it worked quite well to alert us of issues. Since this is official, we will probably start relying on PagerDuty now.
amirmc 15y ago
Sad to see this go. On a more positive note, I'm really impressed with this shut down notice. It gives a brief explanation of the situation, clear indication of what might happen next and alternatives that people might consider. I've had to draft one of these before so I know it's difficult. Especially the part where you mention alternatives because there's no going back after that. The only thing I'd have done in addition is to email the same message to all users (but that might already be in progress - Edit: It is). Kudos and thanks for the service so far.
- johns 15y ago
  I received an email with the same text shortly after reading the post.
- jazzychad 15y ago
  Thank you. I worked very hard to make sure that the announcement was as 'professional' as possible. I've seen too many other companies get railed for poor interaction with their users when shutting down, and I wanted to avoid that. I sent an email to all service account owners with the same information to make sure that they read it, since they will be impacted the most by having to switch to a new solution.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - cdh 15y ago
    I'm curious, have you considered leaving the site online, but charging a small amount per month for personal access? I'm guessing there might be a fair number of people (myself included) who will miss it, and it might at least provide you a little extra income on the side without too much effort or expense.
    - nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
      Agreed. I too find the service useful enough that I would be willing to pay for it.
DanielRibeiro 15y ago
The founder's post: http://blog.jazzychad.net/2011/09/08/fouling-out-moving-on.html http://blog.jazzychad.net/2011/09/08/fouling-out-moving-on.h...
qeorge 15y ago
Damn. Notifio was one of the more immediately awesome ideas I'd heard. Sad to see it wasn't able to become a thriving business. Good luck Chad. Excited to see what you make next. High hopes.
PedroCandeias 15y ago
Kudos for the perfect message. Sad to see it go, though. It works so well and it's so easy to integrate. I'd gladly pay for the service, even the basic level, simply for the ease of use. Why can't we save notifo?
- kilian 15y ago
  Very sad to see it go, Notifo is probably one of the most frequently opened apps on my iphone. I'll second the sentiment: I'd gladly pay for the service.
tastynachos 15y ago
Thats a shame, it was a cool service, although giving it away for free was probably where he went wrong... I'm just sayin...
the_mitsuhiko 15y ago
What killed the service for me was the lack of .io domain.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
arctangent 15y ago
I'm sorry for the founder that this didn't work out. However, I always find it a bit crappy when services just suddenly shut down. Was there not the option to ask users for more money and/or donations? Perhaps just being naive here and I admit I know nothing about Notifo... but it does seem like there's a systemic problem with innovative startups suddenly shutting up shop after running out of cash when perhaps they could have turned things around if they'd admitted to their customers earlier that they were short of cash. Any thoughts?
- unshift 15y ago
  the economics might not work out. if it brings in $30k a year, it's not worth the long days and exhaustion of keeping the service running. i'd be comfortable paying about $10/yr for my account (since i don't use it a ton) but at that rate it's hard to make a living and justify the time and effort. notifo is really handy but it's not something many people want to pony up for.
  - jazzychad 15y ago
    Yes, exactly. As a consumer product the numbers would not add up, sadly. There are other factors on the publisher side that led to this; I'll be doing a more in-depth post mortem at some point.
    - arctangent 15y ago
      So basically it's the business model that failed, rather than you personally. You had an idea that seemed good enough to spend time on but the market just wasn't there. No shame in that. Better luck next time!
    - richardw 15y ago
      Maybe there's a foreign HN'er who would manage the day-to-day hassle for you and for whom $Xk would be great money? Alternatively, sell (all or some of) it. Someone could well be keen to take it up if they think they can make it work.
ilamont 15y ago
Chad, I am sorry to hear about this. I understand the frustration and other negative feelings associated with shutting down something that you've put a lot of effort and hope into. I have a question. You mentioned that Notifo never gained enough traction with publishers or consumers. Can you share with us some of the metrics around this, in terms of targets and actual usage? Also, what are some of the things you tried to do in terms of marketing when it was clear that word of mouth and the other methods weren't working?
maxklein 15y ago
So what am I going to use for my HN replies notifications and my retweet notifications now? I always liked notifo, and this is a sad day for software.
- jdg 15y ago
  Boxcar (http://boxcar.io http://boxcar.io) can send you retweet notifications, and I'll be reaching out to pg here shortly to add Boxcar support for HN notifications. We would love to have you as a customer.
  - nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
    Is there any chance you'll support Android devices in the future? That was one of the huge selling points of Notifo, that it actually worked on more than just Apple products.
    - jdg 15y ago
      Yes, definitely. If you have an android device and would like to beta test it, email me (boxcar.io/about) and I'll send you a link. Please help spread the word in return. :)
zbruhnke 15y ago
Sorry to hear that Chad, I've already mentioned it to ya many times but keep working hard, lots of us out there recognize and appreciate the work you've put in (and enjoy reading your code). You'll make it one day even if it was not as easy as you imagined
angryasian 15y ago
anyway we can get a post mortem, about what you learned, could of done better or different, things like this ?
- jazzychad 15y ago
  Yes, I'm planning on doing this at some point, but it might be a while.
PStamatiou 15y ago
It was a great ride! Have fun with Twilio and come by for a drink after your first day. :)
marcamillion 15y ago
Wow...kudos on having the balls to a) admit this finally - especially given the implicit pressure you must feel being a part of YC with PG's "perseverance is everything" mantra. and b) admit it so candidly and publicly. Why could you just not leave it running (on Heroku's free plan for instance) and not maintain it for a while and see what happens? Or did you do this already and realized that it needed you hands-on daily to work? Or is there some pre-text to have taken money from YC and Yuri Milner that you basically have to officially kill it and liquidate everything?
- jazzychad 15y ago
  Well, I didn't get the Yuri money (that started two batches after mine), otherwise the runway would have been much longer. The system is too custom to run on any of the Heroku-like services out there. I'm exploring other potential options, but I'm not one to give out false hope.
  - patio11 15y ago
    Just my opinion, but there's no shame whatever in killing it dead, and it is probably optimal for both you and your users/customers. I take a salary to be the on-call ops guy for my services. If Notifo isn't paying the bills, the heck with that. A server dying at 3 AM in the morning is your problem if and only if you are getting compensated to worry about that. You have a life to lead, at Twilio (or wherever) and all the parts of your life that are more important than working. The Notifo chapter is over. Much love to users from those days, but they don't get a moral claim on your time until doomsday because you happened to write some code that one time. It's also maximally in their interests to be clear about this: Notifo is going away. It will not be improved, it will not be maintained, it will not be supported, it will probably not be turned into whatever some does-not-do-this-for-a-living person thinks is an ideal way to continue providing service to them for free to far-too-cheap. If your notification needs matter to you, start transitioning now.
    - whatusername 15y ago
      Patrick -- are you going to change the name of Appointment Reminder now? I think I remember you posting that you had notiphone.com registered for it - but went with the boring name option instead of clashing with a new yc company.
samps 15y ago
This is a shame. Notifo was a great service, and to add insult to injury, I just finished adding Notifo support to my side project (http://loglet.radbox.org/ http://loglet.radbox.org/) yesterday. https://github.com/sampsyo/loglet/commit/4b6923f7aaf9b076cdc404988216a23014577172 https://github.com/sampsyo/loglet/commit/4b6923f7aaf9b076cdc... I found the API straightforward and intelligible and signing up a new service was a breeze. I hope one of the alternatives is similarly well-designed.
jonhohle 15y ago
I'm the author of Howl (http://howlapp.com http://howlapp.com), another alternative for general push notifications. Howl supports notification icons, stores notifications locally for offline viewing, and is a universal app. There is an official Growl plugin, and API for integration elsewhere.
- re_todd 15y ago
  Love the name "Howl", whoever came up with that should get a bonus.
dlevine 15y ago
Good luck, Chad. A while back, I hit a point where I felt like my startup wasn't going to make it. I needed a change. I took a job with an established startup, and about a year later, I was ready to move on and do my own thing again. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and you have quite a while to make your mark.
bane 15y ago
Sad to see it go, but good on you for having a solid go at it. No shame at all. Something to be extremely proud of for seeing the entire life-cycle of a company from the inside...something you can't learn any other way.
nitrogen 15y ago
Sorry to see this go. "Create a Notifo plugin for automation platform" has been at the top of my second-tier TODO list for quite a while. I hoped to be a big commercial purchaser of Notifo services. There's definitely a need for a unified notification system, but I respect that you need out and need a way to pay the bills. I only hope that the other services are as easy to interface with and support as many platforms as Notifo. Good luck in the future! Edit: if there's any way for a paid option to keep Notifo going as a zombie process, please let us all know.
dholowiski 15y ago
Sadly, my own project 1pix.me, which is based on Notifo will probably shut down when Notifo shuts down, as I probably won't have the time to change over to a different service. But thank you for the great service - it was great while it lasted (I got your email earlier today).
- dholowiski 15y ago
  I do want to add that as a developer who used the API to send 37916 (and counting) notifications, I fully expected to get an email one day asking for money. I never did, and that makes me sad.
meric 15y ago
Sorry to hear this. I'd like to know, though, how many users did the service get?
alwillis 15y ago
I really like this service; I use it everyday. I'll be sorry to see it go.
mortenjorck 15y ago
Notifo always seemed like a perfect acquisition for a number of the services it integrated with. I would have imagined Twitter snapping it up well before Bagcheck – it's a real shame no one ever bit. Chad obviously knows his stuff, though. I'd imagine he's learned an enormous amount from the experience, and I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes next.
Splines 15y ago
Thanks for the work - I loved notifo and have it hooked up through Growl to ping me when important things happen. It pains me to need to search for a replacement when it worked so well, but after all, nothing is permanent. Good luck with your future endeavours.
trocker 15y ago
One of the most inspiring comments on this post - 'Sad news. Congrats on what you achieved though. Much respect. Best wishes on your next project.' Seriously, chad, Congrats. :)
ctek 15y ago
It's sad to see Notifo shut down, but this is beginning to feel like 2000 all over again. There are simply too many startups.
- jwr 15y ago
  I think there are too many startups that don't even try to charge users. If the word "free" is all over your web page, I'm immediately worried. As we can see from this discussion, there are people who would gladly pay -- obvious question is how many and whether they would support the business.
  - StavrosK 15y ago
    Yes, but it's sad that they didn't even try to charge...
joelhaasnoot 15y ago
A shame, I actually use this. Not as much as I'd want, but Github and Pingdom notifications are very very handy. Any other simple Pingdom notification systems for Android?
jvandenbroeck 15y ago
Damn, that sucks. But why don't you try to make money in a different way? When I look at http://notifo.com/pricing http://notifo.com/pricing I can't see you making (immediatly) money with this strategy. I think you'll have to become really big before services will pay for it. I read in the comments that people like the github notifications, why not focus on developers & try to ask eg. $27 a year for it? I think if you look for low hanging fruits, you can certainly make a living from it. And once you do that, grow, grow,.. :)
jwr 15y ago
I've been using Notifo for almost a year now (I think) and I always liked everything about it except the fact that it was free. I couldn't see how the company stands to make money without charging users. So I always suspected this moment would come and I always wondered — why not simply charge people? I would have gladly paid, say, $20 a year — just for the limited amount of notifications I receive. It's a valuable service that appeals to an audience that values their time. Sure, you can hack your own notification system, but why bother if someone already did it for you? I use Notifo with github, my monitoring systems, my backup systems and a bunch of other things. Again, charge me on the order of $20-$30 a year, and I'll pay.
- StavrosK 15y ago
  I will also pay this, just for HN reply notifications.
- mibbit 15y ago
  I think the problem was they couldn't find enough people who wanted to use it for free, to bother trying to charge some of them with a premium package.
drdaeman 15y ago
That's sad. I've used Notifo to be notified about HN replies and I'd say it was very useful. GitHub integration was useful, but I've actually used it only once or twice. What was a major turn-off to me is lack of GNU/Linux client and client API. Thanks to HTTP notifications, I were able to hack my own desktop client, but it was a kludge far from being convenient.
fHbjKlf6 15y ago
FWIW, I'd have paid $50 p.a, I don't have many notifications setup but those that I do are important enough to actually prefer to pay for the service. Thanks team Notifo! Anyone know of anything similar that works with Android?
trin_ 15y ago
why dont you just ende the free service and start charging?
kermitthehermit 15y ago
Have you considered releasing the code as open source and turning the current notifo service into a paid service or something like that? I'd happily contribute to the source. I've given both notifo and notify.io a shot, but they both lacked a lot of features along with an extensible API. It looks the only way to do it is to either extend something other than notify.io or write something like this from scratch. Whatever your decision might be, I hope notifo will continue to exist under one form or another.
rdamico 15y ago
I've been a heavy user of notifo myself, and will be sad to see the service go. Also agree that the notification was very professional and should set an example for other services.
marchdown 15y ago
It was great while it lasted.

231 points by jazzychad 15y ago

artursapek 15y ago

That's a bummer. Any chance of a public release, to keep it alive? Also, Hacker news will need an update now.

mahcuz 15y ago
I was just thinking this. It seems incredibly selfish to put software into its grave simply because the current developer can't afford to continue working.

robbiet480 15y ago

Will you think about open sourcing the backend? Or selling it?

seany 15y ago
There is a similar type thing at www.notify.io which existed before notifio was around anyway.
- anotherjesse 15y ago
  it is still around. just using it today to prototype webhooks with openstack
- kermitthehermit 15y ago
  Here are the bad news: it's also owned by another twilio employee and the single person behind it doesn't listen to the community, nor cares about it.
andrewljohnson 15y ago
I second selling it. I've been surprised what a random website might get on Flippa, and Notifo has some recognition and cache. Might as well see if it can hit a reserve price - passing the service on at whatever price is probably good for the founders and users.
brndnhy 15y ago
or licensing it?

there 15y ago

sorry to hear, chad. i relied on the android app to send notifications from various things to my phone without sms. anyone know of a free android alternative that uses c2dm?

dmpayton 15y ago

What a bummer. I integrated notifo into my (as yet unreleased side-) project, and it was really easy to get going. The main purpose of my app is to send alerts, and I'd planned to highlight notifo integration as one of the features. Good luck on your next adventure, Chad!

decadentcactus 15y ago

Definitely sucks to have to shut something down. Best of luck in the future, and I'm sure having to do this will help then too.

klinquist 15y ago

Sorry to hear this. I am a technologist at Cisco and I enjoyed showing the capabilities of Notifo in tech demos (for example, having a virtual assistant send links to my phone).

jonursenbach 15y ago

Them shutting down is going to have some interesting side effects with their Github integration. Wish Github would buy them up and continue running the service.

jdg 15y ago
Boxcar (http://boxcar.io http://boxcar.io) offers Github notifications. We would love to have you as a customer.
- jonursenbach 15y ago
  Yeah, signed up yesterday at the request of a coworker.

benatkin 15y ago

Sucks to see this happen, and to see Convore (which jazzychad wrote an iPad app for) floundering as well.

zacharyz 15y ago
What indication is there that Convore isn't doing well? What is the measure for success for it?
- teej 15y ago
  Two of the three founders left to do a new startup.
  - zacharyz 15y ago
    Ahh all good reasons, I figured they were still chugging along with Leah still being involved.
  - rokhayakebe 15y ago
    Source? (Edit: I believe you. I am just curious what they are doing now)
    - jubbam 15y ago
      http://boilerplateinc.com/ http://boilerplateinc.com/ http://cantwa.it/about/ http://cantwa.it/about/
- samstave 15y ago
  Active users? I had totally forgotten about convore.
- benatkin 15y ago
  A few months ago the UI became noticeably slower. At about the same time, anecdotally, multiple channels that I frequented saw a drop in participation, or at least, not much growth. These channels include the GitHub channel, the Changelog channel, and the Rails channel. https://convore.com/feedback/convores-ui-is-very-slow/ https://convore.com/feedback/convores-ui-is-very-slow/

jasonmccay 15y ago

Seriously bummed. This was a reliable and (very) useful service for all of our environments on EC2. We had it tied in with Nagios and it worked quite well to alert us of issues. Since this is official, we will probably start relying on PagerDuty now.

amirmc 15y ago

Sad to see this go. On a more positive note, I'm really impressed with this shut down notice. It gives a brief explanation of the situation, clear indication of what might happen next and alternatives that people might consider. I've had to draft one of these before so I know it's difficult. Especially the part where you mention alternatives because there's no going back after that. The only thing I'd have done in addition is to email the same message to all users (but that might already be in progress - Edit: It is). Kudos and thanks for the service so far.

johns 15y ago
I received an email with the same text shortly after reading the post.
jazzychad 15y ago
Thank you. I worked very hard to make sure that the announcement was as 'professional' as possible. I've seen too many other companies get railed for poor interaction with their users when shutting down, and I wanted to avoid that. I sent an email to all service account owners with the same information to make sure that they read it, since they will be impacted the most by having to switch to a new solution.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- cdh 15y ago
  I'm curious, have you considered leaving the site online, but charging a small amount per month for personal access? I'm guessing there might be a fair number of people (myself included) who will miss it, and it might at least provide you a little extra income on the side without too much effort or expense.
  - nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
    Agreed. I too find the service useful enough that I would be willing to pay for it.

DanielRibeiro 15y ago

The founder's post: http://blog.jazzychad.net/2011/09/08/fouling-out-moving-on.html http://blog.jazzychad.net/2011/09/08/fouling-out-moving-on.h...

qeorge 15y ago

Damn. Notifio was one of the more immediately awesome ideas I'd heard. Sad to see it wasn't able to become a thriving business. Good luck Chad. Excited to see what you make next. High hopes.

PedroCandeias 15y ago

Kudos for the perfect message. Sad to see it go, though. It works so well and it's so easy to integrate. I'd gladly pay for the service, even the basic level, simply for the ease of use. Why can't we save notifo?

kilian 15y ago
Very sad to see it go, Notifo is probably one of the most frequently opened apps on my iphone. I'll second the sentiment: I'd gladly pay for the service.

tastynachos 15y ago

Thats a shame, it was a cool service, although giving it away for free was probably where he went wrong... I'm just sayin...

the_mitsuhiko 15y ago

What killed the service for me was the lack of .io domain.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

arctangent 15y ago

I'm sorry for the founder that this didn't work out. However, I always find it a bit crappy when services just suddenly shut down. Was there not the option to ask users for more money and/or donations? Perhaps just being naive here and I admit I know nothing about Notifo... but it does seem like there's a systemic problem with innovative startups suddenly shutting up shop after running out of cash when perhaps they could have turned things around if they'd admitted to their customers earlier that they were short of cash. Any thoughts?

unshift 15y ago
the economics might not work out. if it brings in $30k a year, it's not worth the long days and exhaustion of keeping the service running. i'd be comfortable paying about $10/yr for my account (since i don't use it a ton) but at that rate it's hard to make a living and justify the time and effort. notifo is really handy but it's not something many people want to pony up for.
- jazzychad 15y ago
  Yes, exactly. As a consumer product the numbers would not add up, sadly. There are other factors on the publisher side that led to this; I'll be doing a more in-depth post mortem at some point.
  - arctangent 15y ago
    So basically it's the business model that failed, rather than you personally. You had an idea that seemed good enough to spend time on but the market just wasn't there. No shame in that. Better luck next time!
  - richardw 15y ago
    Maybe there's a foreign HN'er who would manage the day-to-day hassle for you and for whom $Xk would be great money? Alternatively, sell (all or some of) it. Someone could well be keen to take it up if they think they can make it work.

ilamont 15y ago

Chad, I am sorry to hear about this. I understand the frustration and other negative feelings associated with shutting down something that you've put a lot of effort and hope into. I have a question. You mentioned that Notifo never gained enough traction with publishers or consumers. Can you share with us some of the metrics around this, in terms of targets and actual usage? Also, what are some of the things you tried to do in terms of marketing when it was clear that word of mouth and the other methods weren't working?

maxklein 15y ago

So what am I going to use for my HN replies notifications and my retweet notifications now? I always liked notifo, and this is a sad day for software.

jdg 15y ago
Boxcar (http://boxcar.io http://boxcar.io) can send you retweet notifications, and I'll be reaching out to pg here shortly to add Boxcar support for HN notifications. We would love to have you as a customer.
- nuclear_eclipse 15y ago
  Is there any chance you'll support Android devices in the future? That was one of the huge selling points of Notifo, that it actually worked on more than just Apple products.
  - jdg 15y ago
    Yes, definitely. If you have an android device and would like to beta test it, email me (boxcar.io/about) and I'll send you a link. Please help spread the word in return. :)

zbruhnke 15y ago

Sorry to hear that Chad, I've already mentioned it to ya many times but keep working hard, lots of us out there recognize and appreciate the work you've put in (and enjoy reading your code). You'll make it one day even if it was not as easy as you imagined

angryasian 15y ago

anyway we can get a post mortem, about what you learned, could of done better or different, things like this ?

jazzychad 15y ago
Yes, I'm planning on doing this at some point, but it might be a while.

PStamatiou 15y ago

It was a great ride! Have fun with Twilio and come by for a drink after your first day. :)

marcamillion 15y ago

Wow...kudos on having the balls to a) admit this finally - especially given the implicit pressure you must feel being a part of YC with PG's "perseverance is everything" mantra. and b) admit it so candidly and publicly. Why could you just not leave it running (on Heroku's free plan for instance) and not maintain it for a while and see what happens? Or did you do this already and realized that it needed you hands-on daily to work? Or is there some pre-text to have taken money from YC and Yuri Milner that you basically have to officially kill it and liquidate everything?

jazzychad 15y ago
Well, I didn't get the Yuri money (that started two batches after mine), otherwise the runway would have been much longer. The system is too custom to run on any of the Heroku-like services out there. I'm exploring other potential options, but I'm not one to give out false hope.
- patio11 15y ago
  Just my opinion, but there's no shame whatever in killing it dead, and it is probably optimal for both you and your users/customers. I take a salary to be the on-call ops guy for my services. If Notifo isn't paying the bills, the heck with that. A server dying at 3 AM in the morning is your problem if and only if you are getting compensated to worry about that. You have a life to lead, at Twilio (or wherever) and all the parts of your life that are more important than working. The Notifo chapter is over. Much love to users from those days, but they don't get a moral claim on your time until doomsday because you happened to write some code that one time. It's also maximally in their interests to be clear about this: Notifo is going away. It will not be improved, it will not be maintained, it will not be supported, it will probably not be turned into whatever some does-not-do-this-for-a-living person thinks is an ideal way to continue providing service to them for free to far-too-cheap. If your notification needs matter to you, start transitioning now.
  - whatusername 15y ago
    Patrick -- are you going to change the name of Appointment Reminder now? I think I remember you posting that you had notiphone.com registered for it - but went with the boring name option instead of clashing with a new yc company.

samps 15y ago

This is a shame. Notifo was a great service, and to add insult to injury, I just finished adding Notifo support to my side project (http://loglet.radbox.org/ http://loglet.radbox.org/) yesterday. https://github.com/sampsyo/loglet/commit/4b6923f7aaf9b076cdc404988216a23014577172 https://github.com/sampsyo/loglet/commit/4b6923f7aaf9b076cdc... I found the API straightforward and intelligible and signing up a new service was a breeze. I hope one of the alternatives is similarly well-designed.

jonhohle 15y ago

I'm the author of Howl (http://howlapp.com http://howlapp.com), another alternative for general push notifications. Howl supports notification icons, stores notifications locally for offline viewing, and is a universal app. There is an official Growl plugin, and API for integration elsewhere.

re_todd 15y ago
Love the name "Howl", whoever came up with that should get a bonus.

dlevine 15y ago

Good luck, Chad. A while back, I hit a point where I felt like my startup wasn't going to make it. I needed a change. I took a job with an established startup, and about a year later, I was ready to move on and do my own thing again. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and you have quite a while to make your mark.

bane 15y ago

Sad to see it go, but good on you for having a solid go at it. No shame at all. Something to be extremely proud of for seeing the entire life-cycle of a company from the inside...something you can't learn any other way.

nitrogen 15y ago

Sorry to see this go. "Create a Notifo plugin for automation platform" has been at the top of my second-tier TODO list for quite a while. I hoped to be a big commercial purchaser of Notifo services. There's definitely a need for a unified notification system, but I respect that you need out and need a way to pay the bills. I only hope that the other services are as easy to interface with and support as many platforms as Notifo. Good luck in the future! Edit: if there's any way for a paid option to keep Notifo going as a zombie process, please let us all know.

dholowiski 15y ago

Sadly, my own project 1pix.me, which is based on Notifo will probably shut down when Notifo shuts down, as I probably won't have the time to change over to a different service. But thank you for the great service - it was great while it lasted (I got your email earlier today).

dholowiski 15y ago
I do want to add that as a developer who used the API to send 37916 (and counting) notifications, I fully expected to get an email one day asking for money. I never did, and that makes me sad.

meric 15y ago

Sorry to hear this. I'd like to know, though, how many users did the service get?

alwillis 15y ago

I really like this service; I use it everyday. I'll be sorry to see it go.

mortenjorck 15y ago

Notifo always seemed like a perfect acquisition for a number of the services it integrated with. I would have imagined Twitter snapping it up well before Bagcheck – it's a real shame no one ever bit. Chad obviously knows his stuff, though. I'd imagine he's learned an enormous amount from the experience, and I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes next.

Splines 15y ago

Thanks for the work - I loved notifo and have it hooked up through Growl to ping me when important things happen. It pains me to need to search for a replacement when it worked so well, but after all, nothing is permanent. Good luck with your future endeavours.

trocker 15y ago

One of the most inspiring comments on this post - 'Sad news. Congrats on what you achieved though. Much respect. Best wishes on your next project.' Seriously, chad, Congrats. :)

ctek 15y ago

It's sad to see Notifo shut down, but this is beginning to feel like 2000 all over again. There are simply too many startups.

jwr 15y ago
I think there are too many startups that don't even try to charge users. If the word "free" is all over your web page, I'm immediately worried. As we can see from this discussion, there are people who would gladly pay -- obvious question is how many and whether they would support the business.
- StavrosK 15y ago
  Yes, but it's sad that they didn't even try to charge...

joelhaasnoot 15y ago

A shame, I actually use this. Not as much as I'd want, but Github and Pingdom notifications are very very handy. Any other simple Pingdom notification systems for Android?

jvandenbroeck 15y ago

Damn, that sucks. But why don't you try to make money in a different way? When I look at http://notifo.com/pricing http://notifo.com/pricing I can't see you making (immediatly) money with this strategy. I think you'll have to become really big before services will pay for it. I read in the comments that people like the github notifications, why not focus on developers & try to ask eg. $27 a year for it? I think if you look for low hanging fruits, you can certainly make a living from it. And once you do that, grow, grow,.. :)

jwr 15y ago

I've been using Notifo for almost a year now (I think) and I always liked everything about it except the fact that it was free. I couldn't see how the company stands to make money without charging users. So I always suspected this moment would come and I always wondered — why not simply charge people? I would have gladly paid, say, $20 a year — just for the limited amount of notifications I receive. It's a valuable service that appeals to an audience that values their time. Sure, you can hack your own notification system, but why bother if someone already did it for you? I use Notifo with github, my monitoring systems, my backup systems and a bunch of other things. Again, charge me on the order of $20-$30 a year, and I'll pay.

StavrosK 15y ago
I will also pay this, just for HN reply notifications.
mibbit 15y ago
I think the problem was they couldn't find enough people who wanted to use it for free, to bother trying to charge some of them with a premium package.

drdaeman 15y ago

That's sad. I've used Notifo to be notified about HN replies and I'd say it was very useful. GitHub integration was useful, but I've actually used it only once or twice. What was a major turn-off to me is lack of GNU/Linux client and client API. Thanks to HTTP notifications, I were able to hack my own desktop client, but it was a kludge far from being convenient.

fHbjKlf6 15y ago

FWIW, I'd have paid $50 p.a, I don't have many notifications setup but those that I do are important enough to actually prefer to pay for the service. Thanks team Notifo! Anyone know of anything similar that works with Android?

trin_ 15y ago

why dont you just ende the free service and start charging?

kermitthehermit 15y ago

Have you considered releasing the code as open source and turning the current notifo service into a paid service or something like that? I'd happily contribute to the source. I've given both notifo and notify.io a shot, but they both lacked a lot of features along with an extensible API. It looks the only way to do it is to either extend something other than notify.io or write something like this from scratch. Whatever your decision might be, I hope notifo will continue to exist under one form or another.

rdamico 15y ago

I've been a heavy user of notifo myself, and will be sad to see the service go. Also agree that the notification was very professional and should set an example for other services.

marchdown 15y ago

It was great while it lasted.