In the September Newsletter that was posted on their blog, Shoeboxed announced their new pricing. As you know, Shoeboxed allows you to upload or mail in your receipts to be scanned, stored and viewed online.
Other than some cosmetic changes, they added a few extra details to the plan, which is a welcome. For the basic plan, you get 150 receipts scanned a month. For classic and business, you get 500 and 1000, respectively. The Business Plan replaces the former Express Plan and costs $10 less per month. These are likely the most significant changes. Shoeboxed has written additional information about the new pricing in an updated post.
Overall, the new pricing is a welcome change. However, as a potential buyer, I have spent some time perusing the web site and finding answers to questions that I have.
Consistently Confusing
The marketing is still confusing to me. Here is the new pricing plan screenshot:
Compared to the old one, they did a better job specifying more detailed information here. Unfortunately, I don’t even get to see this plan listing until I go to Step 3 of the trial sign up from http://start.shoeboxed.com. During this time, steps 1 and 2 have already asked for my highly personal information such as name, username, password, and my physical address. This is a real barrier. Better to show me the plan and have me choose one first before asking for my personal info. Sell me before you sell me.
On top of that, what’s more confusing is the old pricing information on their main website and the new pricing on start.shoeboxed.com. The first time, I read the September Newsletter, I immediately went over to the web site to see the pricing plan and what other things have changed. What I get is the old pricing plan. I got confused. Which one is the real one? So now, there are two sign up pages. Which one do I go to? Then, the new pricing blog post mentioned about “work-in-progress” on their pricing page. This is too much. If you want to announce the new pricing on the blog, make sure that the entire web site is consistent and ready to go. Halfway-finished marketing is a deal breaker for me.
In addition, I noticed that there are two websites – the main shoeboxed.com and start.shoeboxed.com. Which one is the real website for me? I would think it’s the first one. But then again, the new pricing is on the latter site. I’m lost. And clicking on the Shoeboxed logo on start.shoeboxed.com in hopes of returning to the home page took me to… the start.shoeboxed.com home page. Not only am I lost, I got nowhere else to go except typing in a new website and going somewhere else that actually want my money.
Second Impression Still Matter
This is my second time checking out Shoeboxed and I am still not sold. The sign up page was not well done to capture my attention and the money in my pocket. If I were a normal user, I would have given up on Step 1. If not, Step 2 did a great job to turn me away. Since I am doing a semi-review of this service, I took it to step 3 just to see the pricing plan.
I’m hoping to see how the new pricing page will look on their main website. Perhaps third time’s a charm.
September 16, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Thanks for your input! We are underway in putting in the changes you suggested.
If you’d like, I can set you up with a free account so you can try out the service. Hopefully your first impression of *that* won’t be so confusing!
My email is dan@team.shoeboxed.com
Thanks!
Dan Englander
Shoeboxed.com
September 16, 2008 at 4:30 pm
I’d rather wait until the website becomes more clear before I consider it again. But I do appreciate the offer!
September 19, 2008 at 2:02 pm
jclayton, have you notice on shoeboxed sing up page, in the middle section where you Choose Mail-In Membership Level, it clearly stated “Receipt Limit Per Month” is “unlimited”? its fishy
September 19, 2008 at 9:46 pm
@Adam,
I noticed this the first time I checked it. It’s not entirely fishy to me, but it’s that the inconsistent prices confuses people who are looking into the service. For example, their current sign-up page shows “Receipt Limit Per Envelope” is “Envelope capacity:
>500 receipts”. This is a bit misleading since it makes people think that you can mail in over 500 receipts for the Classic Service. Nowhere does it exactly tell you how many receipts are allowed per month as part of your quota. This only now exists in the new pricing plan on start.shoeboxed.com, which shows only 150 receipts/month now.
Regardless of which is true or not, the point I want to drive across is that consistency creates credibility. If a service can’t get their numbers and prices right, how can I trust them with my finance? It’s a bit counter-intuitive.
I really hope they can fix this soon. Although I give bad reviews on them, I still do believe that things can be fixed and I encourage everyone to do their best considering startups always stumble a little at the beginning. In this case, though, I think Shoeboxed may have stumbled one step too many.