16 ms·

Show HN: I built a self-hosted Basecamp alternative. Try the demo

367 points by 23andwalnut 13y ago

_k 13y ago
Feedback : - An overall calendar would be good. - Software updates would be good, including what you're about to update and what type of php version the updates need. - Is it possible to change the text in the html ? I'm thinking about using another language because I live in Europe. - Not sure I understand the concept of using the timer. When I click on something else, the timer stops, and when I go back, it starts again, and eventually I end up with a list of numbers. Also, the timer stops at 99 minutes, is that right (didn't check it) ? The site's not loading right now. Is the customer able to see the timer ? If so, give us the ability to remove it. - Not sure you should stay on Codecanyon for this if you plan on giving support. - Make sure you offer good support, even if it comes at a price. - It's not really loading very well right now but that's probably because of HN. I now see 2 screens underneath each other. I will have to come back and give it another try. - Make How To videos.
23andwalnut 13y ago
I've wanted a nice looking project/client management system that I could host on my server for quite some time. Unfortunately there are very few options that fit this criteria so I created my own. I would love some feedback - good or bad.
- dhimes 13y ago
  What is required to host?
  - 23andwalnut 13y ago
    Just PHP 5.3 and mysql. Any shared host will do.
- brianfryer 13y ago
  Gorgeous. Love the concept, love the price, love the Stripe integration <3 Since you're asking for feedback, I thought this one thing was a little odd: * Click on a Project (http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/1 http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/1) * View the calendar tab (http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/1/calendar http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/1/calendar) * Click on a different Project (http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/2 http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/2) * The calendar tab is no longer being displayed. Is there a way to view an overall calendar -and/or- switch between projects without leaving a calendar view?
  - 23andwalnut 13y ago
    Yes, I struggled with how that should work. I ended up deciding that the default 'project tab' should open whenever you navigate between projects, regardless of what tab you were viewing before. I'm definitely open to changing it if enough people think the current implementation is awkward. There isn't an overall calendar. I thought about adding one. I wasn't sure how valuable it would be though.
    - brianfryer 13y ago
      >There isn't an overall calendar. I thought about adding one. I wasn't sure how valuable it would be though. I totally understand. You've put together a great product where you can (and should) build more features based on customer feedback (rather than trying to build every feature imaginable and never launching). Kudos!
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  Just out of curiosity - your site doesn't seem to mention whether customers would receive product updates or not, or even if there will be any. Is this something you have planned out?
  - 23andwalnut 13y ago
    Yes, customers receive all updates for free. I should probably add that to the landing page.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
      You should, it would make people more confident in it. By the way, you point out that people get the full source-code so they can edit it. Have you figured out how well this would work with updates? It might be wise to add some customisation methods you have more control over (like a box to add custom styles), since otherwise people might edit the source and then break things come updates.
    - saddestcatever 13y ago
      Fantastic! That's nice to know
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      This would be a good price differentiation point - people have said they'd pay $45 to buy it just to try and others are suggesting $250 as a reasonable price for businesses. So why not ~$50 with no updates, then $250 with updates for next n months, $500 lifetime and then add support options, or something along those lines.
- cmelbye 13y ago
  This looks great. One bit of feedback I have is that this seems needlessly more complex than Basecamp (especially new Basecamp), which could limit its usefulness for some people. One of my favorite features of Basecamp is that it's not opinionated towards one form of project. It gives you the ability to add anything to a project, whether it's dates, tasks, files, discussions, etc., but it doesn't show features unless you're actually using them. If you don't have any discussions in a project, it doesn't show a "Discussions" section on the project overview; just a small link to "add the first discussion" if necessary. Perhaps hide the more specialized features such as Reporting, "On Schedule" indicators, Clients, Invoices, due dates for projects, etc. until the user needs them for their type of project. This would make your product more universally appealing without sacrificing underlying functionality if the user wants it.
thehodge 13y ago
This is excellent and I love the single price rather than a monthly fee (it's one of the reasons I bought amaon)
- brianfryer 13y ago
  What is "amaon"?
  - JosephRedfern 13y ago
    I think he means https://amon.cx/ https://amon.cx/.
    - brianfryer 13y ago
      Ahhh, thank you! I tried googling, but kept getting asked "Did you mean amazon?"
  - JosephRedfern 13y ago
    I think he means https://amon.cx/ https://amon.cx/.
- dpcx 13y ago
  Was not familiar with Amon before-hand. What makes it better than munin, or the like?
- kilian 13y ago
  Does anyone know of more such 'hidden gems'? I really want a self-hosted website uptime (http status code) checker but I can't find one.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
    Why? That's an hour's work or less to write.
  - biot 13y ago
    Nagios: http://www.nagios.org/ http://www.nagios.org/
tfeldmann 13y ago
Very nice. Is it possible to recover deleted files / projects?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Nope. That's a good idea, but not sure whether I'll add it. I will definitely be adding archive functionality within the next week or two though. So you can archive a file/project, which gets it out of your way until you want to see it again.
  - tnorthcutt 13y ago
    How will you handle updates for people who have already purchased?
    - michaelbuddy 13y ago
      he said earlier, updates are free.
holic 13y ago
Looks great! I noticed the website uses Foundation while the actual app uses Bootstrap. Any reason? Having used both, do you prefer one or the other?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Thank! I use both fairly often. I have a strong preference for Foundation, but bootstrap has a lot more components, which is useful when I'm building web apps. Foundation is great for websites.
  - brianfryer 13y ago
    > bootstrap has a lot more components What are your thoughts on Bootstrap vs Gumby Framework (http://gumbyframework.com/ http://gumbyframework.com/)?
  - michaelbuckbee 13y ago
    That's a really good way of characterizing the Foundation vs Bootstrap split. At this stage, it just seems weird to start a new web project and not use at least some framework. As to the difference in number of components - the Bootstrap ecosystem is massive -checkout: http://www.bootstraphero.com/the-big-badass-list-of-twitter-bootstrap-resources http://www.bootstraphero.com/the-big-badass-list-of-twitter-... I've been slowly collecting links for a similar Foundation list and it hasn't been going so well.
EvaK_de 13y ago
There's already at least one "beautiful self-hosted Basecamp alternative" out there: Collabtive ...and it's free (FOSS).
- vog 13y ago
  Indeed, it would have been better if the author had mentioned Collabtive (http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/ http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/), or even better: did a short comparison.
- canthonytucci 13y ago
  Beauty is subjective.
- kyro 13y ago
  That is considerably less beautiful than OP's product, if beautiful at all.
- aioprisan 13y ago
  I think most would agree that this version is cleaner and smoother.. You know what they say about beauty..
arc_of_descent 13y ago
Clean looks. I immediately checked out the task timer feature which does not work as expected. If you start the timer and then go to the dashboard (I should expect to see all "active" tasks here) and back the timer is stopped. I currently use TaskCoach to keep track of all my tasks and invoice my clients on a hourly basis.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Yes, you need to keep the task open for the timer to continue to run. You would want it to keep running in the background? It seems like it would be easy to forget about if it's implemented that way...
  - arc_of_descent 13y ago
    Yeah. That why I use TaskCoach (desktop app) so the timer icon is always shown in my notification area. But you can use the dashboard for this. A year back I had started building a web based time tracker using HTML5 background workers and stuff. But I lost motivation. :(
    - actionscripted 13y ago
      Why not just have a start/stop toggle and record time segments so you don't have to worry about a "running" timer?
  - tnorthcutt 13y ago
    If it kept running, I'd think you'd want to have a "global" timer widget/area that is always displayed, on every page, if a timer is running.
scrapcode 13y ago
When trying to access the demo in Firefox 20 it throws an error for LESS: A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: http://www.duetapp.com/demo/client/js/libs/less-1.3.0.min.js:9 http://www.duetapp.com/demo/client/js/libs/less-1.3.0.min.js...
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  It definitely has something to do with the current load on my server. I didn't adequately plan for it at all. I should have at least compiled my less files and minified/concatenated my js files.
scrapcode 13y ago
Did you use a PHP framework to build this? If so, which?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  I actually didn't use any frameworks (server or client). They always feel to heavy for what I'm trying to accomplish, especially php frameworks. I rolled my own MVC implementations for both the client & server. I've been thinking about porting the entire thing to Laravel + Backbone, to see if I like it better, but I haven't made any decisions yet. If I do, it will probably be a month or two before I get started.
  - lopatin 13y ago
    Nice job on the app. Regarding frameworks, Backbone is very light weight and server side MVC is worth the weight IMHO.
  - wise_young_man 13y ago
    It seems a bit ironic to use a front-end framework, but not a back-end framework. You should look at http://fuelphp.com http://fuelphp.com, another alternative to Laravel and is a light weight PHP 5.3 framework.
mikegreen 13y ago
server overloaded? website crawling...
jbrooksuk 13y ago
Server is down for me.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Yeah, I have a support ticket open with my host. The demo is hosted on a vps with liquidweb. I thought it would be enough. I was wrong. :/
  - TallboyOne 13y ago
    is it a storm VPS? Just resize it yourself...
- noloqy 13y ago
  Same. I hope I'll remember to check in later to the demo in action.
  - brianfryer 13y ago
    I was fortunate enough to play with the demo before things went down. 10/10; would demo again. I, too, hope you remember to check back :-)
    - jbrooksuk 13y ago
      I definitely shall be, since I'm after something to replace Basecamp after my trial expired.
rjv 13y ago
What type of license does it come with?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  I'm selling through codecanyon, so it comes with their regular license: http://codecanyon.net/licenses/regular http://codecanyon.net/licenses/regular
matthuggins 13y ago
Saw this on reddit a few days ago. You could make a lot more money with it by making it a hosted solution and charging monthly/yearly.
- debaserab2 13y ago
  Then you are competing directly with Basecamp with no obvious product differentiation. It's going to be tough to get traction going this way. The fact that it can be purchased and installed is the differentiating factor and may target a market audience that's largely ignored. While there is usually the potential for higher sales with a SaaS approach, that doesn't mean it's always the correct fit when entering a market.
  - UVB-76 13y ago
    Why not price as the differentiating factor? Basecamp is expensive for what it is. You could undercut Basecamp by a sizeable margin and still turn a nice profit.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      I imagine the sort of people who's primary requirement for project management software is that it costs less than $20 per month to host 10 projects are not going to make the best customers with the highest retention in the long run.
      - UVB-76 13y ago
        Granted, but at $20/month you only need them for two and a bit months before you're earning more than with the $45 one-off fee sales model.
        neogodless 13y ago
        Income yes, but profit no. Hosting is not free. You can, of course, work towards minimizing hosting costs, but time spent on that may cut into other priorities. Of course, as mentioned above, saving time not having to support customer installations could (easily?) offset hosting costs.
rsobers 13y ago
Beautiful product! Just be aware of the support nightmare that comes along with people trying to install your software in many different environments. I will never, ever create installable software ever again.
- speg 13y ago
  The same could be said about people trying to use old web browsers.
  - davej 13y ago
    Not really the same because you can say "We don't support IE version x" and be done with it. There are much more variables at play in a server setup: PHP, MySQL, web server, OS etc.. Each of these can be running different versions and each instance (of PHP for example) can be configured completely differently from the next.
- zimbatm 13y ago
  We really need a way to easily distribute web-apps on a single-server scale for start at least. If someone is interested to build something with docker.io please contact me :)
- todd3834 13y ago
  I've been thinking about this and I like the idea of building the software to run on Heroku (or similar). For those that want a self hosted plan you just tell them where to host it and if they want installation outside of that you charge them a decent hourly rate to make it worth it.
  - cacois 13y ago
    That only half solves the problem. A lot of shops that want self-hosted literally want to host it themselves, to keep data in their datacenters. if you built something deployable to EC2, you could make sure it works on a local Eucalyptus/OpenStack deployment or something. Or you could try to build for OpenShift and tell clients them have to have their own OpenShift cloud. But there's no real easy solution.
blackdogie 13y ago
Wow, It's not just a task tracker. I must say i was happy to see that it can take care of the invoicing side of things too. This would be a great solution for webdesigned or other contract workers. Looking at the invoicing system, it's hard to figure our all the options. But if it's good I may decide move from http://freeagent.com/ http://freeagent.com/ to host my own. Are there any more plans to extent the financing side of the app ? Or any particular roadmaps for the product ?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Yes, I have a ton of plans for the app. I would have loved to build them all, but I probably would have never shipped if I tried. Right now I'm just gathering feedback and then I will start adding the features that people want most in a couple of weeks.
spoiledtechie 13y ago
What platforms can it be installed on?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  The only requirements are php 5.3 and mysql (pdo).
  - jamroom 13y ago
    Speaking from years of experience with a self hosted PHP application, I'd recommend a "recommend hosters" section in your FAQ. Setup an affiliate program with them - most of your users will be happy to send you the referral to know that you recommend and have a good experience with them. Ones to really watch out for are Godaddy shared hosting (note that updates to .htaccess files can take many hours to actually show and performance is frequently abysmal) and "Hostgator" (they do something funky on some of their shared hosting servers that breaks custom user session support if you use that). You'll soon find there is a huge difference between quality and cheap shared hosting.
    - tmzt 13y ago
      Do you have more details or a forum link on that Hostgator thing?
emehrkay 13y ago
The demo doesn't appear to work in Webkit nightly. syntax error: unexpected token '/' in less.js
matthewj 13y ago
That's a really nicely designed sales page! Congrats on putting it together.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Thanks! I actually did the sales page in 2 days. Foundation is great for putting together nice looking sites in a short amount of time.
fsckin 13y ago
Constructive tone: When I try to print, it looks really bad.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Admittedly, I did not even think about printing. I will probably need to create a print stylesheet. Thanks for the feedback.
  - yesimahuman 13y ago
    IMO, that's one of the things that "Just Doesn't Matter" at this point, if ever.
    - scott_karana 13y ago
      I'd almost always agree with your sentiment, but since Duet allows you to generate invoices... ;)
      - yesimahuman 13y ago
        Ah, I thought you were talking about the home page only. I agree invoices should print nicely :)
- jasondavisfl 13y ago
  I have never thought about this feature for an app like this however now that you mention it, this is something I could see myself finding very useful, especially printing the Tasks list
tonyoconnell 13y ago
Great work. It's very elegant and delightful to use. Is there any way to duplicate/clone a project?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Not yet. It's a highly requested feature though, so it will probably be among the first that I add. Along with the ability to download pdf invoices.
tempi35 13y ago
Could you please tell more about the development process? What was used: icons, jquery and so on. Great product!
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  I rolled my own MVC implementations for the client and server. The backend is in php. The client MVC implementation uses Backbone events and the backbone router, but everything else is custom. jQuery of course, Twitter bootstrap, IconJar, some free icons I found on 365psd, glyphicons.
  - tmzt 13y ago
    You built the PHP router too?
cmalpeli 13y ago
Nice work! At $49 you are seriously undervaluing this product. I'd think you could easily charge $395 or more. If I'm looking for a self hosted option for project management, I'm likely in an org w/ some security restrictions, etc - AKA the Enterprise. $49 may even lead me even think it's "too small" to buy if i'm the Enterprise purchaser...
- mbreese 13y ago
  And you probably want to make sure it has enterprise features, like LDAP/AD integration, etc. (didn't check the features to see if this is there already).
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  When I first decided to start building this product, I had just started my freelance career. I seriously considered ActiveCollab which is in the price range you're talking about, but I just didn't have the resources to buy it. I want this to be accessible to as many people as possible, even those people just staring their business. But I agree, I will definitely lose out on some customers because they think it's too small. Perhaps as the product evolves and includes more features, I will consider raising the price.
  - tudorconstantin 13y ago
    You could take out some existing features from the current version in order to sell the full one to a higher price. You are in a competitive market...more money means more dev power.
  - biot 13y ago
    $295 with an early-adopter offer for $95 sounds better than charging $45 "because it's limited".
  - beernutz 13y ago
    I would make the point that it might make sense to leave the initial price point low, and add plugins perhaps or a marketplace, and support options at higher price points. You can sell the "infinite" (the bits) for low price (price IS different than value), and sell the "scarce" (your time on customized plugins, install time, training, etc...) for more, and the customer will often be very happy with this arrangement. As well, this should get you more sales, and a larger community. This is an important point to consider, as an active community can often make or break a product like this. As a side note, I am considering purchasing this for my own consulting use. At that price, it becomes almost an impulse buy. Thank you for making this an option! Just my 2c.
thoughtcriminal 13y ago
I'm wondering if there are easy to follow, step-by-step instructions on setting it up on my own PC. Can Joe Sixpack set this up without too much grief? I'd like to use this for my own projects, but I'm way out of practice doing this stuff.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  It comes with an installation script that's pretty simple to use. You just need your database credentials. I can also install it for you if necessary.
  - TylerE 13y ago
    Joe Sixpack may not know what "credentials" means in this context, or how to create a database account.
    - michaelbuddy 13y ago
      "Joe Sixpack" isn't using this software. This is a self-hosted project management tool. "Joe Sixpack' isn't in this equation. They call a pro. By your logic, WordPress is challenging to install without Softaculous, and even hard to understand by "Joe Sixpack" with Softaculous. Keep it in perspective of who this is for.
  - tmzt 13y ago
    I'm working on a third party installer for installing web applications on cpanel, get in touch at my email on profile. (This isn't for cpanel addons, it's for installing packaged applications directly to a user's cpanel-based hosting account.) It would be PHP-based and might work as an installer, user just needs their control panel login username/password from their webhost. (Too bad cpanel doesn't do oauth2). I've already tested with some of the major web hosting providers.
rapcal 13y ago
Just a heads up, maybe you could rename twitter-hogan to something else. I'm getting ´ReferenceError: Hogan is not defined´ and a blank page because "twitter" is blocked on my corporate network. (http://f.cl.ly/items/2o2p3c2X173Z3u2t1F2j/bug.jpg http://f.cl.ly/items/2o2p3c2X173Z3u2t1F2j/bug.jpg)
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Whoa. Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to look into that.
danenania 13y ago
I can understand the appeal of selling on codecanyon for the existing marketplace you get access to there, but I would consider an independent checkout for the website. Your design and branding are well done and signal high quality, while codecanyon has more of a script/component flea market feel. I think taking someone out of the flow of your site to buy there is a bit jarring and might cause people to reconsider, especially enterprise-y customers. I also have the sense that you could probably raise your price significantly. Considering what businesses pay for a service like basecamp, they aren't going to blink if you charge them, say, $250 instead of $45 if the software is good. For a business of any size, $250 and $45 are essentially the same as a one-time cost--negligible.
- binaryorganic 13y ago
  I second everything said here. (I definitely did a double take when I saw the CodeCanyon link). I think the thing to note with regard to price points is that I might be willing to pay $45 "just to try it out", but that definitely wouldn't happen at $250. I'd have to first make a sound decision about the software (through the demo, etc). At any rate, nice work!
  - jonknee 13y ago
    > I'd have to first make a sound decision about the software (through the demo, etc). Which should be easy... Just offer a hosted version.
    - porker 13y ago
      So long as you can then get your data back out of the hosted trial version and into your purchased copy...
  - mortenjorck 13y ago
    I agree that you could probably charge considerably more for this, though I also agree with the poster in another thread about support expectations for a more business-class-priced piece of software. You could do both: Keep selling the $45 version that maybe includes access to a general support forum, but sell a $299 version with premium support for one year. Then sell renewals for support agreements! It'll be worth it to most businesses to avoid the headaches of having to deal with self-hosted software on their own, and you'll have a good source of recurring income from existing customers.
eiji 13y ago
Why is it that you can have a professional website, that tries to sell stuff, and there is no company or address or anything anywhere accessible? Duet mentions a name, and 23&W has a contact form also, but there is just nothing.
senorprogrammer 13y ago
This is beautifully designed, and I think you ought to raise the price. Lots of comments about the potential support headaches are spot-on; price as many of those out as you can. Check out patio11's online talks for more rational.
- einai 13y ago
  I agree. A tiered pricing plan would really benefit OP. Adding a forum to offload some of the one on one support would be great as well.
yannis 13y ago
Looks very nice and will purchase a bit later on. If you interested in charging a couple of thou and add some customization for us, please email me.
enduser 13y ago
This looks great. However, the layout is unusable on mobile. Rather than allowing me to use the desktop layout on mobile, all of the page elements are layered on top of each other in a very garbled way. Maybe set a min-width for the page?
berberous 13y ago
The text in the product images is blurry on my retina macbook.
peteacc 13y ago
Well done, love the idea! Just to let you know on the http://www.duetapp.com/features http://www.duetapp.com/features page it says 'helpw' instead of 'help' under the messaging section.
peteacc 13y ago
Well done, love the idea! Just to let you know on the http://www.duetapp.com/features http://www.duetapp.com/features page it says 'helpw' instead of 'help' under the messaging section.
saddestcatever 13y ago
Great design! Is it possible for both clients and admins to add tasks? I can't seem to find the action to add tasks as a client...
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  No, clients can't add tasks. It would be extremely simple to modify the app so that they can. It wouldn't take more than 5 minutes to make that change. I can help if you decide to purchase it...
  - saddestcatever 13y ago
    Fantastic! That would make this perfect for me. Once I read (in an above update) that updates are included, I purchased the app in a heartbeat!! I just shot you an e-mail via codecanyon. Looks great! Looking forward to giving it a shot tonight.
UnoriginalGuy 13y ago
Nice site. It does have some nasty rendering issues for me on Chrome: http://i.imgur.com/nZT9OgU.png http://i.imgur.com/nZT9OgU.png (red circles added by me). PS - More about my setup to help you reproduce: - Desktop Chrome 26 - 1920x1080 - 125% DPI (Windows) - Zoom Level: 0 (default) - Chrome Font Size: "Large"
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pests 13y ago
Typo on http://www.duetapp.com/features http://www.duetapp.com/features - "Integrated messaging helpw you keep your entire..."
pajju 13y ago
A working Demo link in codecanyon: http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/full_screen_preview/4613916 http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/full_scre... Here is the codecanyon page for the same project: http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/4613916 http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/4613916 Customer reviews and comments: http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/discussion/4613916 http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/discussio... + Feedback: 1. I did not find any word on -- updates, documentation, support or future upgrades from the developer. These things are more important. Who will maintain this project on long-term? And that's why SAAS based offering sells. 2. Also without a trial, I will never buy a solution, self-hosted or SAAS! I need to use it often to know that its the best-fit for my workflows. 3. And this being a company's project-management tool, should be tried and tested well: stable, secure and should work perfectly out of the box! I don't want to put time in maintaining another project. :) 4. Lock-in? Is there an import or export option from-and-to Basecamp or others?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Hi. I just updated the pricing page to address most of the points in #1. It would be impossible for me to offer a trial since this software needs to be hosted on your own server. There's no lock in. It's on your own server so you have full access to the mysql database with all of the info.
  - xr09 13y ago
    Easy to solve, just host a sample site with test data.
    - 23andwalnut 13y ago
      How would that be different from the demo?
  - lallysingh 13y ago
    Hmm, I'd consider setting up an EC2 image with this pre-installed. You can spin up copies for people that want to try it out with their own data (you'd run the server, charge them a nominal fee, and they'd get a full inspection of the system). When they choose to buy, you give them a copy of their image. They can run it on amazon, or export the VM to run on any machine they like. Or, they can install the software and drop-in the database images from the VM.
csomar 13y ago
Fellow CodeCanyon seller. Take your app from CodeCanyon, and try to reach the entreprise market. Price your product in this way: - single user: $79 ($49 for updates) - agency/small business: $299 (+ $129) + $199 for optional install That's a pretty simple pricing, and it'll make you 1,000 time more sane than putting it on CodeCanyon and fighting with dads and moms trying to setup this on their shared host with a thousand other app and site. This month estimate earnings on CodeCanyon: 100 (sales) x $45 x 0.7 (best case) = $3,150 Support overhead: 100 person. You'll need 20 single user license sales, and less than 6 sales in the enterprise edition. That's just 26 person to support. Don't forget that enterprise people are more inclined to give you the $200 and get the thing setup.
- ynh 13y ago
  I am currently also selling my product (newsletter mailer) via codecanyon. My main concern leaving codecanyon is how to drive potential customers to my site. As you already said there is a huge support effort on codecanyon, due to "inexperienced" customers.
ishansharma 13y ago
I second all the CodeCanyon suggestions and you should move away from there. I am definitely going to get this. Though I wanted to ask if it has some sort of import feature. I am switching from BC and it has loads of data and projects there.
cateye 13y ago
I see a lot of similarities with this self-hosted newsletter mail application: http://sendy.co/ http://sendy.co/
chrislomax 13y ago
I do think this is a market long forgotten and I do love the application itself. Congratulations on getting it to market! The one thing I can really agree on here is the installation procedure involved with users. I know someone brushed on it but it may be worth looking into Linode StackScripts and Amazon EC2 Images? It might not even be a problem or suit your needs but I think it might help in some cases
einai 13y ago
Hi, this looks like a nice and affordable product for freelancers like me. Great job! If I purchase this app now, will I get free updates (eg, bug fix) for at least a certain period of time?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  You sure do. If you purchase the app you will get all updates for free.
  - einai 13y ago
    Awesome! Going to buy it now!
  - zerr 13y ago
    Why not limit this? Annually and/or within major version updates, except [security] bugfixes of course.
bradleyland 13y ago
I can't find the system requirements. It's difficult to buy software you'll run yourself without understanding what dependencies I'll need to support in order to host it.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  PHP 5.3 andy Mysql. I'll add a more prominent requirements section now since a lot of people have trouble finding it.
einai 13y ago
One more question from me since I can't seem to log into the demo now. Will I be able to disable certain features (eg, payment through Paypal - I would rather get a check)? Thanks.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Yes, you don't have to enable any of the payment options. You can just set it to 'none' during installation or manually in the config file.
molsongolden 13y ago
When you click send invoice does it send a copy of the invoice to the email on file and give them a link to pay online? Apologies as I know you are being bombarded with questions but this looks fantastic for my small office situation. Edit: I just purchased anyways and will experiment later this week. Would you want to host a forum where users can discuss issues?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  It sends an email letting them know they have an invoice, the amount of the invoice, and gives them a link to the invoice in the portal. Once I add the ability to generate pdfs, it may also include the pdf as an attachment.
jamesbrennan 13y ago
If the developer is reading, it looks like you've got some bugs with tasks. Editing the task weight always returns an error stating 'Please enter a value no larger than 99NaN'. Also the description in that modal is 'Please enter a value between 1 and 99NaN'.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Thanks for the heads up. I'll get it fixed asap.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
zapt02 13y ago
XSS vulnerabilities all over the place. No validation performed at all? Example; http://www.duetapp.com/demo/#projects/3/tasks/30 http://www.duetapp.com/demo/#projects/3/tasks/30
- Lhadatt 13y ago
  OP, if you can address this, I'll probably buy. How are tax rates configured? I didn't see anything about it in the admin demo.
  - 23andwalnut 13y ago
    The tax rate is set in the config file.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Hmm. There is definitely a lots of validation on both the client and server. The demo refreshes every 30 mins so I'm not able to see what you're referring to. Can you shoot me an email with the issue you're referring to and I'll look into it asap. Thanks.
  - zapt02 13y ago
    I added description to a task which looked like this: <script>alert('lol!');</script> And it happily runs the script when you view that task.
jjkmk 13y ago
I just bought a copy, looked really good from the demo. I'm going to install it and share my experiences with you guys.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Awesome. Shoot me an email if you run into any trouble and I'll be glad to help you out.
Braveatom 13y ago
Very impressive. Just my 2 cents: It would be great if there was some sort of auto invoice (it seems you have to enter the time details in manually) The calendar seems to always require scrolling down, it would be great if it fitted in the view Also, mobile support if its not there, for iPad at least with a home icon And agree with other posters here, a timer that work across page refreshes and overall calendar showing all tasks / deadlines for all projects would be awesome.
j45 13y ago
This is great. I can't wait for more and more attention to go back to self-hosting. One reason why: if you knew the LTV of a customer on a SaaS app, would there be any reason to not sell it to them for self-hosting for that amount?
- ruswick 13y ago
  Yes. Charging LTV for a product upfront would be categorically untenable for both sides.
  - j45 13y ago
    In a way some of the success folks are seeing with selling info products, or other things, could be possible, especially with small to mid offerings. Software like FogBugz is available in both flavors, self-hosted or hosted by them.
joeld42 13y ago
you get huge points from me for using "Tessier-Ashpool" as the example client in your screenshots. :)
michaelbuddy 13y ago
I'll probably get buried but, here's what I'm going to suggest. Don't deviate from the price too much. I'll tell you why. You're competing with pancakeapp, buggenie, bugify, redmine, bugkick, mantis, Zoho (on some level) and many more, including some of the cheaper hosted basecamp clones. And I'm already considering buying yours. Your pricing is great. And I appreciate what you're doing. I wouldn't go more than $69 or $79 if you raise your prices at all. If you have future build plans you can always charge for the next version upgrade or specific enhancements. If you want this to be the product you work on and support, try to charge what you can to sustain yourself and grow, but you're going to turn off a bunch of freelancers at some $295 price point that people are suggesting on HN. Somebody said, "for businesses of any size the difference between $250 and $45 is negligible." Um no, These same people (thousands of comments worth) are royally pissed about the Adobe Cloud pricing and are looking for alternatives. I wouldn't even consider it at $295 price and many others wouldn't either. Why? Because I can get a proven system for many months or permanently at that rate. And for the FOSS ones, I might even become a contributor or leverage the community for enhancements or plugins in those cases. HN is full of people trying to charge more and a ton of them are going to fail or become irrelevant. Basically your product is for freelancers, not enterprise. That's a fact, luck of the draw, however you want to look at it. Enterprise might trickle in after enough freelancers are rocking your system. Enterprise use Mantis, and that's free. Why should they be turned off by a low price. You might even find small businesses you didn't think of using you product that will be more attracted to your price. There are other things you can do, like try to get bundled with something else, or offer installation service at a rate. Sell it on your own if you can using Stripe or some other managed provider that isn't taking so much of a cut. Or don't sell it exclusively on codecanyon. you should be making the majority of the money, a lot more than half.
- molsongolden 13y ago
  One possibly unexpected use is for business consulting and accounting. I picked up a copy today to give it a whirl with a few side clients. My firm uses an enterprise solution with many similar features but the usability is horrendous and it doesn't offer online pay options, a project feed, or integrated document filing. The current price was low enough that I could afford to try it out without stressing.
michaelbuddy 13y ago
Your project is probably ripe for a kickstarter. Go for that too!
ux-app 13y ago
Amazing looking product. Well done for nailing the visuals. Aggressive pricing is a good move also, seems like the right way to get some good traction. I would caution against the 'free forever' approach you've taken. Maybe free updates for all 1.x releases, or free updates for 12 months will make it easier for you to sustain the business. FYI: I had no issues accessing your page this morning, however a couple of hours later and I'm getting this from Sophos AV: Access has been blocked as the threat Mal/HTMLGen-A has been found on this website.
kunai 13y ago
I really like the source model that you've got here. All the benefits of open source without the sales leeches. Smart idea.
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
I'm so happy you're selling this. After years of dicking around with free open source plugins and scripts I have started avoiding them. The authors abandon them, they have no road map, no future, bad design, no time to read feedback. But when I see a for-profit script I know that the creator has an incentive to keep pushing updates and maintanance and design. Also, you should sell your script yourself AS WELL as selling it on CodeCanyon. That way you can funnel people towards your site and make more money per sale PLUS get the benefits of being on CodeCanyon's community. The internet is NOT Walmart, there's no exclusivity contract, you don't have to sell your product or service in only one place.
cudawas 13y ago
How long did it take to build? Who did you involve in the process? Massively great product!
kcoleman731 13y ago
Let me start this off by saying that I love Basecamp and use it everyday...but I am very intrigued by Duet. The app looks really great and I am a fan of the way the UI and navigation are set up. What I think you are missing however are Discussions. I find discussions to be the single most valuable feature that Basecamp has to offer. I also love that for any todo or file, project members have the ability to comment on that item, which is essentially a discussion in itself. The ability to keep all of the conversations that are taking place with various members of both my internal and external teams in one place is incredibly helpful. It eliminates the need to track disperate conversations across gchat, gmail, skype etc, and gives all team members transparency into the various facets of the project. I think adding these features would make your app much more robust and compelling.
X4 13y ago
WOW, simlply wow! I WILL buy it, when I get paid for my current project! I was just building this myself, incl. a url shortener and analytics, but this UI blows it away! Every other solution out there I tried is inferior. I tried many other invoicing WebApps. * Sir, can I help you by contributing?? * I can code/sysadmin/design May I suggest adding your Bitcoin adress?
X4 13y ago
You're missing a FAVICON :)

367 points by 23andwalnut 13y ago

_k 13y ago

Feedback : - An overall calendar would be good. - Software updates would be good, including what you're about to update and what type of php version the updates need. - Is it possible to change the text in the html ? I'm thinking about using another language because I live in Europe. - Not sure I understand the concept of using the timer. When I click on something else, the timer stops, and when I go back, it starts again, and eventually I end up with a list of numbers. Also, the timer stops at 99 minutes, is that right (didn't check it) ? The site's not loading right now. Is the customer able to see the timer ? If so, give us the ability to remove it. - Not sure you should stay on Codecanyon for this if you plan on giving support. - Make sure you offer good support, even if it comes at a price. - It's not really loading very well right now but that's probably because of HN. I now see 2 screens underneath each other. I will have to come back and give it another try. - Make How To videos.

23andwalnut 13y ago

I've wanted a nice looking project/client management system that I could host on my server for quite some time. Unfortunately there are very few options that fit this criteria so I created my own. I would love some feedback - good or bad.

dhimes 13y ago
What is required to host?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Just PHP 5.3 and mysql. Any shared host will do.
brianfryer 13y ago
Gorgeous. Love the concept, love the price, love the Stripe integration <3 Since you're asking for feedback, I thought this one thing was a little odd: * Click on a Project (http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/1 http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/1) * View the calendar tab (http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/1/calendar http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/1/calendar) * Click on a different Project (http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/2 http://www.plumtheory.com/demos/duet/#projects/2) * The calendar tab is no longer being displayed. Is there a way to view an overall calendar -and/or- switch between projects without leaving a calendar view?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Yes, I struggled with how that should work. I ended up deciding that the default 'project tab' should open whenever you navigate between projects, regardless of what tab you were viewing before. I'm definitely open to changing it if enough people think the current implementation is awkward. There isn't an overall calendar. I thought about adding one. I wasn't sure how valuable it would be though.
  - brianfryer 13y ago
    >There isn't an overall calendar. I thought about adding one. I wasn't sure how valuable it would be though. I totally understand. You've put together a great product where you can (and should) build more features based on customer feedback (rather than trying to build every feature imaginable and never launching). Kudos!
TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
Just out of curiosity - your site doesn't seem to mention whether customers would receive product updates or not, or even if there will be any. Is this something you have planned out?
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  Yes, customers receive all updates for free. I should probably add that to the landing page.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
    You should, it would make people more confident in it. By the way, you point out that people get the full source-code so they can edit it. Have you figured out how well this would work with updates? It might be wise to add some customisation methods you have more control over (like a box to add custom styles), since otherwise people might edit the source and then break things come updates.
  - saddestcatever 13y ago
    Fantastic! That's nice to know
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    This would be a good price differentiation point - people have said they'd pay $45 to buy it just to try and others are suggesting $250 as a reasonable price for businesses. So why not ~$50 with no updates, then $250 with updates for next n months, $500 lifetime and then add support options, or something along those lines.
cmelbye 13y ago
This looks great. One bit of feedback I have is that this seems needlessly more complex than Basecamp (especially new Basecamp), which could limit its usefulness for some people. One of my favorite features of Basecamp is that it's not opinionated towards one form of project. It gives you the ability to add anything to a project, whether it's dates, tasks, files, discussions, etc., but it doesn't show features unless you're actually using them. If you don't have any discussions in a project, it doesn't show a "Discussions" section on the project overview; just a small link to "add the first discussion" if necessary. Perhaps hide the more specialized features such as Reporting, "On Schedule" indicators, Clients, Invoices, due dates for projects, etc. until the user needs them for their type of project. This would make your product more universally appealing without sacrificing underlying functionality if the user wants it.

thehodge 13y ago

This is excellent and I love the single price rather than a monthly fee (it's one of the reasons I bought amaon)

brianfryer 13y ago
What is "amaon"?
- JosephRedfern 13y ago
  I think he means https://amon.cx/ https://amon.cx/.
  - brianfryer 13y ago
    Ahhh, thank you! I tried googling, but kept getting asked "Did you mean amazon?"
- JosephRedfern 13y ago
  I think he means https://amon.cx/ https://amon.cx/.
dpcx 13y ago
Was not familiar with Amon before-hand. What makes it better than munin, or the like?
kilian 13y ago
Does anyone know of more such 'hidden gems'? I really want a self-hosted website uptime (http status code) checker but I can't find one.
- TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
  Why? That's an hour's work or less to write.
- biot 13y ago
  Nagios: http://www.nagios.org/ http://www.nagios.org/

tfeldmann 13y ago

Very nice. Is it possible to recover deleted files / projects?

23andwalnut 13y ago
Nope. That's a good idea, but not sure whether I'll add it. I will definitely be adding archive functionality within the next week or two though. So you can archive a file/project, which gets it out of your way until you want to see it again.
- tnorthcutt 13y ago
  How will you handle updates for people who have already purchased?
  - michaelbuddy 13y ago
    he said earlier, updates are free.

holic 13y ago

Looks great! I noticed the website uses Foundation while the actual app uses Bootstrap. Any reason? Having used both, do you prefer one or the other?

23andwalnut 13y ago
Thank! I use both fairly often. I have a strong preference for Foundation, but bootstrap has a lot more components, which is useful when I'm building web apps. Foundation is great for websites.
- brianfryer 13y ago
  > bootstrap has a lot more components What are your thoughts on Bootstrap vs Gumby Framework (http://gumbyframework.com/ http://gumbyframework.com/)?
- michaelbuckbee 13y ago
  That's a really good way of characterizing the Foundation vs Bootstrap split. At this stage, it just seems weird to start a new web project and not use at least some framework. As to the difference in number of components - the Bootstrap ecosystem is massive -checkout: http://www.bootstraphero.com/the-big-badass-list-of-twitter-bootstrap-resources http://www.bootstraphero.com/the-big-badass-list-of-twitter-... I've been slowly collecting links for a similar Foundation list and it hasn't been going so well.

EvaK_de 13y ago

There's already at least one "beautiful self-hosted Basecamp alternative" out there: Collabtive ...and it's free (FOSS).

vog 13y ago
Indeed, it would have been better if the author had mentioned Collabtive (http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/ http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/), or even better: did a short comparison.
canthonytucci 13y ago
Beauty is subjective.
kyro 13y ago
That is considerably less beautiful than OP's product, if beautiful at all.
aioprisan 13y ago
I think most would agree that this version is cleaner and smoother.. You know what they say about beauty..

arc_of_descent 13y ago

Clean looks. I immediately checked out the task timer feature which does not work as expected. If you start the timer and then go to the dashboard (I should expect to see all "active" tasks here) and back the timer is stopped. I currently use TaskCoach to keep track of all my tasks and invoice my clients on a hourly basis.

23andwalnut 13y ago
Yes, you need to keep the task open for the timer to continue to run. You would want it to keep running in the background? It seems like it would be easy to forget about if it's implemented that way...
- arc_of_descent 13y ago
  Yeah. That why I use TaskCoach (desktop app) so the timer icon is always shown in my notification area. But you can use the dashboard for this. A year back I had started building a web based time tracker using HTML5 background workers and stuff. But I lost motivation. :(
  - actionscripted 13y ago
    Why not just have a start/stop toggle and record time segments so you don't have to worry about a "running" timer?
- tnorthcutt 13y ago
  If it kept running, I'd think you'd want to have a "global" timer widget/area that is always displayed, on every page, if a timer is running.

scrapcode 13y ago

When trying to access the demo in Firefox 20 it throws an error for LESS: A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: http://www.duetapp.com/demo/client/js/libs/less-1.3.0.min.js:9 http://www.duetapp.com/demo/client/js/libs/less-1.3.0.min.js...

23andwalnut 13y ago
It definitely has something to do with the current load on my server. I didn't adequately plan for it at all. I should have at least compiled my less files and minified/concatenated my js files.

scrapcode 13y ago

Did you use a PHP framework to build this? If so, which?

23andwalnut 13y ago
I actually didn't use any frameworks (server or client). They always feel to heavy for what I'm trying to accomplish, especially php frameworks. I rolled my own MVC implementations for both the client & server. I've been thinking about porting the entire thing to Laravel + Backbone, to see if I like it better, but I haven't made any decisions yet. If I do, it will probably be a month or two before I get started.
- lopatin 13y ago
  Nice job on the app. Regarding frameworks, Backbone is very light weight and server side MVC is worth the weight IMHO.
- wise_young_man 13y ago
  It seems a bit ironic to use a front-end framework, but not a back-end framework. You should look at http://fuelphp.com http://fuelphp.com, another alternative to Laravel and is a light weight PHP 5.3 framework.

mikegreen 13y ago

server overloaded? website crawling...

jbrooksuk 13y ago

Server is down for me.

23andwalnut 13y ago
Yeah, I have a support ticket open with my host. The demo is hosted on a vps with liquidweb. I thought it would be enough. I was wrong. :/
- TallboyOne 13y ago
  is it a storm VPS? Just resize it yourself...
noloqy 13y ago
Same. I hope I'll remember to check in later to the demo in action.
- brianfryer 13y ago
  I was fortunate enough to play with the demo before things went down. 10/10; would demo again. I, too, hope you remember to check back :-)
  - jbrooksuk 13y ago
    I definitely shall be, since I'm after something to replace Basecamp after my trial expired.

rjv 13y ago

What type of license does it come with?

23andwalnut 13y ago
I'm selling through codecanyon, so it comes with their regular license: http://codecanyon.net/licenses/regular http://codecanyon.net/licenses/regular

matthuggins 13y ago

Saw this on reddit a few days ago. You could make a lot more money with it by making it a hosted solution and charging monthly/yearly.

debaserab2 13y ago
Then you are competing directly with Basecamp with no obvious product differentiation. It's going to be tough to get traction going this way. The fact that it can be purchased and installed is the differentiating factor and may target a market audience that's largely ignored. While there is usually the potential for higher sales with a SaaS approach, that doesn't mean it's always the correct fit when entering a market.
- UVB-76 13y ago
  Why not price as the differentiating factor? Basecamp is expensive for what it is. You could undercut Basecamp by a sizeable margin and still turn a nice profit.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    I imagine the sort of people who's primary requirement for project management software is that it costs less than $20 per month to host 10 projects are not going to make the best customers with the highest retention in the long run.
    - UVB-76 13y ago
      Granted, but at $20/month you only need them for two and a bit months before you're earning more than with the $45 one-off fee sales model.
      - neogodless 13y ago
        Income yes, but profit no. Hosting is not free. You can, of course, work towards minimizing hosting costs, but time spent on that may cut into other priorities. Of course, as mentioned above, saving time not having to support customer installations could (easily?) offset hosting costs.

rsobers 13y ago

Beautiful product! Just be aware of the support nightmare that comes along with people trying to install your software in many different environments. I will never, ever create installable software ever again.

speg 13y ago
The same could be said about people trying to use old web browsers.
- davej 13y ago
  Not really the same because you can say "We don't support IE version x" and be done with it. There are much more variables at play in a server setup: PHP, MySQL, web server, OS etc.. Each of these can be running different versions and each instance (of PHP for example) can be configured completely differently from the next.
zimbatm 13y ago
We really need a way to easily distribute web-apps on a single-server scale for start at least. If someone is interested to build something with docker.io please contact me :)
todd3834 13y ago
I've been thinking about this and I like the idea of building the software to run on Heroku (or similar). For those that want a self hosted plan you just tell them where to host it and if they want installation outside of that you charge them a decent hourly rate to make it worth it.
- cacois 13y ago
  That only half solves the problem. A lot of shops that want self-hosted literally want to host it themselves, to keep data in their datacenters. if you built something deployable to EC2, you could make sure it works on a local Eucalyptus/OpenStack deployment or something. Or you could try to build for OpenShift and tell clients them have to have their own OpenShift cloud. But there's no real easy solution.

blackdogie 13y ago

Wow, It's not just a task tracker. I must say i was happy to see that it can take care of the invoicing side of things too. This would be a great solution for webdesigned or other contract workers. Looking at the invoicing system, it's hard to figure our all the options. But if it's good I may decide move from http://freeagent.com/ http://freeagent.com/ to host my own. Are there any more plans to extent the financing side of the app ? Or any particular roadmaps for the product ?

23andwalnut 13y ago
Yes, I have a ton of plans for the app. I would have loved to build them all, but I probably would have never shipped if I tried. Right now I'm just gathering feedback and then I will start adding the features that people want most in a couple of weeks.

spoiledtechie 13y ago

What platforms can it be installed on?

23andwalnut 13y ago
The only requirements are php 5.3 and mysql (pdo).
- jamroom 13y ago
  Speaking from years of experience with a self hosted PHP application, I'd recommend a "recommend hosters" section in your FAQ. Setup an affiliate program with them - most of your users will be happy to send you the referral to know that you recommend and have a good experience with them. Ones to really watch out for are Godaddy shared hosting (note that updates to .htaccess files can take many hours to actually show and performance is frequently abysmal) and "Hostgator" (they do something funky on some of their shared hosting servers that breaks custom user session support if you use that). You'll soon find there is a huge difference between quality and cheap shared hosting.
  - tmzt 13y ago
    Do you have more details or a forum link on that Hostgator thing?

emehrkay 13y ago

The demo doesn't appear to work in Webkit nightly. syntax error: unexpected token '/' in less.js

matthewj 13y ago

That's a really nicely designed sales page! Congrats on putting it together.

23andwalnut 13y ago
Thanks! I actually did the sales page in 2 days. Foundation is great for putting together nice looking sites in a short amount of time.

fsckin 13y ago

Constructive tone: When I try to print, it looks really bad.

23andwalnut 13y ago
Admittedly, I did not even think about printing. I will probably need to create a print stylesheet. Thanks for the feedback.
- yesimahuman 13y ago
  IMO, that's one of the things that "Just Doesn't Matter" at this point, if ever.
  - scott_karana 13y ago
    I'd almost always agree with your sentiment, but since Duet allows you to generate invoices... ;)
    - yesimahuman 13y ago
      Ah, I thought you were talking about the home page only. I agree invoices should print nicely :)
jasondavisfl 13y ago
I have never thought about this feature for an app like this however now that you mention it, this is something I could see myself finding very useful, especially printing the Tasks list

tonyoconnell 13y ago

Great work. It's very elegant and delightful to use. Is there any way to duplicate/clone a project?

23andwalnut 13y ago
Not yet. It's a highly requested feature though, so it will probably be among the first that I add. Along with the ability to download pdf invoices.

tempi35 13y ago

Could you please tell more about the development process? What was used: icons, jquery and so on. Great product!

23andwalnut 13y ago
I rolled my own MVC implementations for the client and server. The backend is in php. The client MVC implementation uses Backbone events and the backbone router, but everything else is custom. jQuery of course, Twitter bootstrap, IconJar, some free icons I found on 365psd, glyphicons.
- tmzt 13y ago
  You built the PHP router too?

cmalpeli 13y ago

Nice work! At $49 you are seriously undervaluing this product. I'd think you could easily charge $395 or more. If I'm looking for a self hosted option for project management, I'm likely in an org w/ some security restrictions, etc - AKA the Enterprise. $49 may even lead me even think it's "too small" to buy if i'm the Enterprise purchaser...

mbreese 13y ago
And you probably want to make sure it has enterprise features, like LDAP/AD integration, etc. (didn't check the features to see if this is there already).
23andwalnut 13y ago
When I first decided to start building this product, I had just started my freelance career. I seriously considered ActiveCollab which is in the price range you're talking about, but I just didn't have the resources to buy it. I want this to be accessible to as many people as possible, even those people just staring their business. But I agree, I will definitely lose out on some customers because they think it's too small. Perhaps as the product evolves and includes more features, I will consider raising the price.
- tudorconstantin 13y ago
  You could take out some existing features from the current version in order to sell the full one to a higher price. You are in a competitive market...more money means more dev power.
- biot 13y ago
  $295 with an early-adopter offer for $95 sounds better than charging $45 "because it's limited".
- beernutz 13y ago
  I would make the point that it might make sense to leave the initial price point low, and add plugins perhaps or a marketplace, and support options at higher price points. You can sell the "infinite" (the bits) for low price (price IS different than value), and sell the "scarce" (your time on customized plugins, install time, training, etc...) for more, and the customer will often be very happy with this arrangement. As well, this should get you more sales, and a larger community. This is an important point to consider, as an active community can often make or break a product like this. As a side note, I am considering purchasing this for my own consulting use. At that price, it becomes almost an impulse buy. Thank you for making this an option! Just my 2c.

thoughtcriminal 13y ago

I'm wondering if there are easy to follow, step-by-step instructions on setting it up on my own PC. Can Joe Sixpack set this up without too much grief? I'd like to use this for my own projects, but I'm way out of practice doing this stuff.

23andwalnut 13y ago
It comes with an installation script that's pretty simple to use. You just need your database credentials. I can also install it for you if necessary.
- TylerE 13y ago
  Joe Sixpack may not know what "credentials" means in this context, or how to create a database account.
  - michaelbuddy 13y ago
    "Joe Sixpack" isn't using this software. This is a self-hosted project management tool. "Joe Sixpack' isn't in this equation. They call a pro. By your logic, WordPress is challenging to install without Softaculous, and even hard to understand by "Joe Sixpack" with Softaculous. Keep it in perspective of who this is for.
- tmzt 13y ago
  I'm working on a third party installer for installing web applications on cpanel, get in touch at my email on profile. (This isn't for cpanel addons, it's for installing packaged applications directly to a user's cpanel-based hosting account.) It would be PHP-based and might work as an installer, user just needs their control panel login username/password from their webhost. (Too bad cpanel doesn't do oauth2). I've already tested with some of the major web hosting providers.

rapcal 13y ago

Just a heads up, maybe you could rename twitter-hogan to something else. I'm getting ´ReferenceError: Hogan is not defined´ and a blank page because "twitter" is blocked on my corporate network. (http://f.cl.ly/items/2o2p3c2X173Z3u2t1F2j/bug.jpg http://f.cl.ly/items/2o2p3c2X173Z3u2t1F2j/bug.jpg)

23andwalnut 13y ago
Whoa. Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to look into that.

danenania 13y ago

I can understand the appeal of selling on codecanyon for the existing marketplace you get access to there, but I would consider an independent checkout for the website. Your design and branding are well done and signal high quality, while codecanyon has more of a script/component flea market feel. I think taking someone out of the flow of your site to buy there is a bit jarring and might cause people to reconsider, especially enterprise-y customers. I also have the sense that you could probably raise your price significantly. Considering what businesses pay for a service like basecamp, they aren't going to blink if you charge them, say, $250 instead of $45 if the software is good. For a business of any size, $250 and $45 are essentially the same as a one-time cost--negligible.

binaryorganic 13y ago
I second everything said here. (I definitely did a double take when I saw the CodeCanyon link). I think the thing to note with regard to price points is that I might be willing to pay $45 "just to try it out", but that definitely wouldn't happen at $250. I'd have to first make a sound decision about the software (through the demo, etc). At any rate, nice work!
- jonknee 13y ago
  > I'd have to first make a sound decision about the software (through the demo, etc). Which should be easy... Just offer a hosted version.
  - porker 13y ago
    So long as you can then get your data back out of the hosted trial version and into your purchased copy...
- mortenjorck 13y ago
  I agree that you could probably charge considerably more for this, though I also agree with the poster in another thread about support expectations for a more business-class-priced piece of software. You could do both: Keep selling the $45 version that maybe includes access to a general support forum, but sell a $299 version with premium support for one year. Then sell renewals for support agreements! It'll be worth it to most businesses to avoid the headaches of having to deal with self-hosted software on their own, and you'll have a good source of recurring income from existing customers.

eiji 13y ago

Why is it that you can have a professional website, that tries to sell stuff, and there is no company or address or anything anywhere accessible? Duet mentions a name, and 23&W has a contact form also, but there is just nothing.

senorprogrammer 13y ago

This is beautifully designed, and I think you ought to raise the price. Lots of comments about the potential support headaches are spot-on; price as many of those out as you can. Check out patio11's online talks for more rational.

einai 13y ago
I agree. A tiered pricing plan would really benefit OP. Adding a forum to offload some of the one on one support would be great as well.

yannis 13y ago

Looks very nice and will purchase a bit later on. If you interested in charging a couple of thou and add some customization for us, please email me.

enduser 13y ago

This looks great. However, the layout is unusable on mobile. Rather than allowing me to use the desktop layout on mobile, all of the page elements are layered on top of each other in a very garbled way. Maybe set a min-width for the page?

berberous 13y ago

The text in the product images is blurry on my retina macbook.

peteacc 13y ago

Well done, love the idea! Just to let you know on the http://www.duetapp.com/features http://www.duetapp.com/features page it says 'helpw' instead of 'help' under the messaging section.

peteacc 13y ago

Well done, love the idea! Just to let you know on the http://www.duetapp.com/features http://www.duetapp.com/features page it says 'helpw' instead of 'help' under the messaging section.

saddestcatever 13y ago

Great design! Is it possible for both clients and admins to add tasks? I can't seem to find the action to add tasks as a client...

23andwalnut 13y ago
No, clients can't add tasks. It would be extremely simple to modify the app so that they can. It wouldn't take more than 5 minutes to make that change. I can help if you decide to purchase it...
- saddestcatever 13y ago
  Fantastic! That would make this perfect for me. Once I read (in an above update) that updates are included, I purchased the app in a heartbeat!! I just shot you an e-mail via codecanyon. Looks great! Looking forward to giving it a shot tonight.

UnoriginalGuy 13y ago

Nice site. It does have some nasty rendering issues for me on Chrome: http://i.imgur.com/nZT9OgU.png http://i.imgur.com/nZT9OgU.png (red circles added by me). PS - More about my setup to help you reproduce: - Desktop Chrome 26 - 1920x1080 - 125% DPI (Windows) - Zoom Level: 0 (default) - Chrome Font Size: "Large"

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pests 13y ago

Typo on http://www.duetapp.com/features http://www.duetapp.com/features - "Integrated messaging helpw you keep your entire..."

pajju 13y ago

A working Demo link in codecanyon: http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/full_screen_preview/4613916 http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/full_scre... Here is the codecanyon page for the same project: http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/4613916 http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/4613916 Customer reviews and comments: http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/discussion/4613916 http://codecanyon.net/item/duet-project-management/discussio... + Feedback: 1. I did not find any word on -- updates, documentation, support or future upgrades from the developer. These things are more important. Who will maintain this project on long-term? And that's why SAAS based offering sells. 2. Also without a trial, I will never buy a solution, self-hosted or SAAS! I need to use it often to know that its the best-fit for my workflows. 3. And this being a company's project-management tool, should be tried and tested well: stable, secure and should work perfectly out of the box! I don't want to put time in maintaining another project. :) 4. Lock-in? Is there an import or export option from-and-to Basecamp or others?

23andwalnut 13y ago
Hi. I just updated the pricing page to address most of the points in #1. It would be impossible for me to offer a trial since this software needs to be hosted on your own server. There's no lock in. It's on your own server so you have full access to the mysql database with all of the info.
- xr09 13y ago
  Easy to solve, just host a sample site with test data.
  - 23andwalnut 13y ago
    How would that be different from the demo?
- lallysingh 13y ago
  Hmm, I'd consider setting up an EC2 image with this pre-installed. You can spin up copies for people that want to try it out with their own data (you'd run the server, charge them a nominal fee, and they'd get a full inspection of the system). When they choose to buy, you give them a copy of their image. They can run it on amazon, or export the VM to run on any machine they like. Or, they can install the software and drop-in the database images from the VM.

csomar 13y ago

Fellow CodeCanyon seller. Take your app from CodeCanyon, and try to reach the entreprise market. Price your product in this way: - single user: $79 ($49 for updates) - agency/small business: $299 (+ $129) + $199 for optional install That's a pretty simple pricing, and it'll make you 1,000 time more sane than putting it on CodeCanyon and fighting with dads and moms trying to setup this on their shared host with a thousand other app and site. This month estimate earnings on CodeCanyon: 100 (sales) x $45 x 0.7 (best case) = $3,150 Support overhead: 100 person. You'll need 20 single user license sales, and less than 6 sales in the enterprise edition. That's just 26 person to support. Don't forget that enterprise people are more inclined to give you the $200 and get the thing setup.

ynh 13y ago
I am currently also selling my product (newsletter mailer) via codecanyon. My main concern leaving codecanyon is how to drive potential customers to my site. As you already said there is a huge support effort on codecanyon, due to "inexperienced" customers.

ishansharma 13y ago

I second all the CodeCanyon suggestions and you should move away from there. I am definitely going to get this. Though I wanted to ask if it has some sort of import feature. I am switching from BC and it has loads of data and projects there.

cateye 13y ago

I see a lot of similarities with this self-hosted newsletter mail application: http://sendy.co/ http://sendy.co/

chrislomax 13y ago

I do think this is a market long forgotten and I do love the application itself. Congratulations on getting it to market! The one thing I can really agree on here is the installation procedure involved with users. I know someone brushed on it but it may be worth looking into Linode StackScripts and Amazon EC2 Images? It might not even be a problem or suit your needs but I think it might help in some cases

einai 13y ago

Hi, this looks like a nice and affordable product for freelancers like me. Great job! If I purchase this app now, will I get free updates (eg, bug fix) for at least a certain period of time?

23andwalnut 13y ago
You sure do. If you purchase the app you will get all updates for free.
- einai 13y ago
  Awesome! Going to buy it now!
- zerr 13y ago
  Why not limit this? Annually and/or within major version updates, except [security] bugfixes of course.

bradleyland 13y ago

I can't find the system requirements. It's difficult to buy software you'll run yourself without understanding what dependencies I'll need to support in order to host it.

23andwalnut 13y ago
PHP 5.3 andy Mysql. I'll add a more prominent requirements section now since a lot of people have trouble finding it.

einai 13y ago

One more question from me since I can't seem to log into the demo now. Will I be able to disable certain features (eg, payment through Paypal - I would rather get a check)? Thanks.

23andwalnut 13y ago
Yes, you don't have to enable any of the payment options. You can just set it to 'none' during installation or manually in the config file.

molsongolden 13y ago

When you click send invoice does it send a copy of the invoice to the email on file and give them a link to pay online? Apologies as I know you are being bombarded with questions but this looks fantastic for my small office situation. Edit: I just purchased anyways and will experiment later this week. Would you want to host a forum where users can discuss issues?

23andwalnut 13y ago
It sends an email letting them know they have an invoice, the amount of the invoice, and gives them a link to the invoice in the portal. Once I add the ability to generate pdfs, it may also include the pdf as an attachment.

jamesbrennan 13y ago

If the developer is reading, it looks like you've got some bugs with tasks. Editing the task weight always returns an error stating 'Please enter a value no larger than 99NaN'. Also the description in that modal is 'Please enter a value between 1 and 99NaN'.

23andwalnut 13y ago
Thanks for the heads up. I'll get it fixed asap.

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zapt02 13y ago

XSS vulnerabilities all over the place. No validation performed at all? Example; http://www.duetapp.com/demo/#projects/3/tasks/30 http://www.duetapp.com/demo/#projects/3/tasks/30

Lhadatt 13y ago
OP, if you can address this, I'll probably buy. How are tax rates configured? I didn't see anything about it in the admin demo.
- 23andwalnut 13y ago
  The tax rate is set in the config file.
23andwalnut 13y ago
Hmm. There is definitely a lots of validation on both the client and server. The demo refreshes every 30 mins so I'm not able to see what you're referring to. Can you shoot me an email with the issue you're referring to and I'll look into it asap. Thanks.
- zapt02 13y ago
  I added description to a task which looked like this: <script>alert('lol!');</script> And it happily runs the script when you view that task.

jjkmk 13y ago

I just bought a copy, looked really good from the demo. I'm going to install it and share my experiences with you guys.

23andwalnut 13y ago
Awesome. Shoot me an email if you run into any trouble and I'll be glad to help you out.

Braveatom 13y ago

Very impressive. Just my 2 cents: It would be great if there was some sort of auto invoice (it seems you have to enter the time details in manually) The calendar seems to always require scrolling down, it would be great if it fitted in the view Also, mobile support if its not there, for iPad at least with a home icon And agree with other posters here, a timer that work across page refreshes and overall calendar showing all tasks / deadlines for all projects would be awesome.

j45 13y ago

This is great. I can't wait for more and more attention to go back to self-hosting. One reason why: if you knew the LTV of a customer on a SaaS app, would there be any reason to not sell it to them for self-hosting for that amount?

ruswick 13y ago
Yes. Charging LTV for a product upfront would be categorically untenable for both sides.
- j45 13y ago
  In a way some of the success folks are seeing with selling info products, or other things, could be possible, especially with small to mid offerings. Software like FogBugz is available in both flavors, self-hosted or hosted by them.

joeld42 13y ago

you get huge points from me for using "Tessier-Ashpool" as the example client in your screenshots. :)

michaelbuddy 13y ago

I'll probably get buried but, here's what I'm going to suggest. Don't deviate from the price too much. I'll tell you why. You're competing with pancakeapp, buggenie, bugify, redmine, bugkick, mantis, Zoho (on some level) and many more, including some of the cheaper hosted basecamp clones. And I'm already considering buying yours. Your pricing is great. And I appreciate what you're doing. I wouldn't go more than $69 or $79 if you raise your prices at all. If you have future build plans you can always charge for the next version upgrade or specific enhancements. If you want this to be the product you work on and support, try to charge what you can to sustain yourself and grow, but you're going to turn off a bunch of freelancers at some $295 price point that people are suggesting on HN. Somebody said, "for businesses of any size the difference between $250 and $45 is negligible." Um no, These same people (thousands of comments worth) are royally pissed about the Adobe Cloud pricing and are looking for alternatives. I wouldn't even consider it at $295 price and many others wouldn't either. Why? Because I can get a proven system for many months or permanently at that rate. And for the FOSS ones, I might even become a contributor or leverage the community for enhancements or plugins in those cases. HN is full of people trying to charge more and a ton of them are going to fail or become irrelevant. Basically your product is for freelancers, not enterprise. That's a fact, luck of the draw, however you want to look at it. Enterprise might trickle in after enough freelancers are rocking your system. Enterprise use Mantis, and that's free. Why should they be turned off by a low price. You might even find small businesses you didn't think of using you product that will be more attracted to your price. There are other things you can do, like try to get bundled with something else, or offer installation service at a rate. Sell it on your own if you can using Stripe or some other managed provider that isn't taking so much of a cut. Or don't sell it exclusively on codecanyon. you should be making the majority of the money, a lot more than half.

molsongolden 13y ago
One possibly unexpected use is for business consulting and accounting. I picked up a copy today to give it a whirl with a few side clients. My firm uses an enterprise solution with many similar features but the usability is horrendous and it doesn't offer online pay options, a project feed, or integrated document filing. The current price was low enough that I could afford to try it out without stressing.

michaelbuddy 13y ago

Your project is probably ripe for a kickstarter. Go for that too!

ux-app 13y ago

Amazing looking product. Well done for nailing the visuals. Aggressive pricing is a good move also, seems like the right way to get some good traction. I would caution against the 'free forever' approach you've taken. Maybe free updates for all 1.x releases, or free updates for 12 months will make it easier for you to sustain the business. FYI: I had no issues accessing your page this morning, however a couple of hours later and I'm getting this from Sophos AV: Access has been blocked as the threat Mal/HTMLGen-A has been found on this website.

kunai 13y ago

I really like the source model that you've got here. All the benefits of open source without the sales leeches. Smart idea.

ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

I'm so happy you're selling this. After years of dicking around with free open source plugins and scripts I have started avoiding them. The authors abandon them, they have no road map, no future, bad design, no time to read feedback. But when I see a for-profit script I know that the creator has an incentive to keep pushing updates and maintanance and design. Also, you should sell your script yourself AS WELL as selling it on CodeCanyon. That way you can funnel people towards your site and make more money per sale PLUS get the benefits of being on CodeCanyon's community. The internet is NOT Walmart, there's no exclusivity contract, you don't have to sell your product or service in only one place.

cudawas 13y ago

How long did it take to build? Who did you involve in the process? Massively great product!

kcoleman731 13y ago

Let me start this off by saying that I love Basecamp and use it everyday...but I am very intrigued by Duet. The app looks really great and I am a fan of the way the UI and navigation are set up. What I think you are missing however are Discussions. I find discussions to be the single most valuable feature that Basecamp has to offer. I also love that for any todo or file, project members have the ability to comment on that item, which is essentially a discussion in itself. The ability to keep all of the conversations that are taking place with various members of both my internal and external teams in one place is incredibly helpful. It eliminates the need to track disperate conversations across gchat, gmail, skype etc, and gives all team members transparency into the various facets of the project. I think adding these features would make your app much more robust and compelling.

X4 13y ago

WOW, simlply wow! I WILL buy it, when I get paid for my current project! I was just building this myself, incl. a url shortener and analytics, but this UI blows it away! Every other solution out there I tried is inferior. I tried many other invoicing WebApps. * Sir, can I help you by contributing?? * I can code/sysadmin/design May I suggest adding your Bitcoin adress?

X4 13y ago

You're missing a FAVICON :)