ManyPixels. When being nice is not enough.
After reading @ryanwinchester article about his experience with ManyPixels, I've decided to share my own frustrating experience with the acclaimed service.
While Robin (the founder) seems like a great guy, very friendly and responsive, the service itself is downright awful.
I purchased a Premium Plan and everything from confusing onboarding process to the communication and final results was terrible.
For example, I made a request for a Home page design on October 22. On October 24 I received a wireframe for that Home Page. Ok, no problem. I approved it and requested to proceed further. On October 31 they sent me "design"that was actually the draft again with no actual design in it.
Here is the link to it: https://imgur.com/a/virh3fw
It took them 9 days to come up with this result for just 1 page and I was told that one of their best designers is assigned to that task. LOL. I'm terrified to see the work of their worst designer.
By that time I was so frustrated by the lack of communication and poor results that I gave up. They sent me some updated version which was basically the same one with just some color added to it and I realised it was the lost cause.
Overall I ordered a logo, and 2 home pages for different websites. I didn't expect top quality designs but what I received wasn't even worth $349. I can't get a refund now because I'm way over my 10 days trial since I waited for the designs for so long.
Now, I understand that Robin is a great guy and has a great reputation on this forum but in my opinion, what he actually does, is misleading people. Sometimes it's not enough to be nice. Sometimes you actually need to deliver on your promises. Otherwise you are just deceiving your customers and waste their time.
Many pixels had issues from the day of the launch and they don't seem to improve, they just keep promising. And then apologise. And then promise again. And again fail. And again apologize. Rinse and repeat.
I'm pretty sure that I will receive a standard comment from Robin where he will tell me that their main concern is customer satisfaction blah blah blah. To which I can only respond: "Focus on actually delivering what you promise otherwise, sorry, it's just a scam that will disappear from the market in the moment when the right amount of unhappy customers will decide to speak up about their experience".
P.S. they have updated their portfolio on the website and everything looks great and shiny. Surprisingly, I don't see my designs in that portfolio at all :)
Hey Daria,
You are right, we suck at the moment.
I think it is time for us to take a BIG step back.
Here are the immediate actions I am going to take:
(UPDATED) Focus on customer-fit -- We are going to focus on finding who's the ideal type of customer for our service at this stage. We think we spread ourselves too thin by trying to get any kind of customers and it didn't work. We think our service at this stage is ideal for a certain subset of customers and we're going to focus on that.
Stop focusing on marketing -- I am going to take my focus off from marketing and acquiring customers and rather work in service delivery (defining exactly which products we offer), customer service (getting my hands dirty into projects, helping the team, and understand where things break) and product (platform)
Redefine our company for the long term -- This week we are redefining the roles of project managers (which add little to no value currently), working on a new platform (which will greatly improve the experience), and working on promising less (we will create a page "Scope of delivery" on our website).
Last but not least, I will disclose shortly an honest statement and a public roadmap and you will be able to follow the updates of our company improvements in our feed.
After all is going well and better, I will repost an update on IH.
Finally -- for the refund - email me at robin@manypixels.co - happy to provide it (and if there are others in the same case - feel free to email me too!) I would happily keep you subscribed as well.
Awesome, as someone who is still in the growing stage, let us know how you process / solve this! Go, stay the course!
Agree with you.. We might in the future get something like this.
@Vinrob i know you can solve this👍
Looks like you're still accepting new subscribers, @vinrob. Why?
Hi Tonya, following a lot of IndieHackers comments and Louis' post we thought that completely turning off subscriptions wasn't a good move. Rather, we're focusing on product/customer-fit for now (our service at this stage can be great for a certain subset of customers but not everyone). Updated this above.
Focus on good account management.Customer complaints need to be solved at that level and also work on prioritization road map
Robin, you need to take some additional steps. While some of the above are OK steps, there are things that you can improve that will lessen the chaos that is currently going on. For one, you need to find designers that are capable of meeting the standards that you set. What happened to the designer(s) that put together many of the earlier illustrations? This is what people (including myself) crave.
You need to work on marketing while improving the service delivery. By scaling back on everything, including new subscribers, you are going to kill a lot of income. This is never a good thing.
If you need some pointers, do reach out to me via email as you have something great going on here but a lot of mismanagement.
I think Robin needs to release an honest statement and a public roadmap before continuing to advertise on IH.
Hey Dominic!
I just posted a small update below and will post a more lengthy statement + roadmap shortly.
I will also stop focusing on acquiring customers/IH for a while till things get better.
I think you made the right choice with the design. As a developer, if I was handed those designs I would be pretty confused, there is A LOT left to implementation. It looks like they did a tutorial from 2011 and that's the result.
Hopefully they can turn it around and end up with a good product but situations like this are always a risk in a community that praises launches and "27 startups in 27 days" challenges instead of actually building and maintaining a business.
That thing with "one startup a day" it's awful. What's next, 1 startup an hour? Lol... I spent 1 year on and off building my product before I launched and still had to work my ass off after that to reach a point where I could compete with established competitors.
The "ship fast and iterate" has gone way too far. I see lots of great products on IH, but much more which have a very poor quality and of course people won't pay for them... and if they pay, they get disappointed big time.
This guy seems that he wanted to grow fast without having a good process in place to evaluate the work of his contractors and client satisfaction, which is critical for a productized service. Maybe he also took any projects he could instead making it clear that some projects take too much time and can't do them, before people pay.
How about 1 every 2 hours? 😀https://www.indiehackers.com/@bentossell/10-startups-in-24-hours-492aba8348
Curious... is there a healthy startup built in 24 hours that currently does over $10k/month?
Perhaps leadpages, but it wasn't "done" in 24 hours.
That’s not exactly how leadpages worked. The founder had a blog, gave away templates, then had people create the first version. Much longer than 24 hours.
Or were you saying use leadpages?
Having had a (small) back and forth with him, I see he's a really fantastic guy. However, after seeing results of ManyPixels it really concerns me. You can see our conversation here https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/how-we-acquired-200-subscribers-and-got-to-50k-mrr-7f1ebec56c , along with some of his justifications.
Hi Sam!
My honest opinion is that maybe it's time for Robin to spend less time on IH boasting about their $50000 per month revenue and to actually try and make his product work instead.
So far, it doesn't.
I have that feeling too, but he has shown that he's in the process of developing a new onboarding/submit process. It's a shame that the service is in the state it's in, because I'd most definitely buy it, if it wasn't for the piss poor work I've seen.
Confusing onboarding process is just one of many problems they seem to have.
Simply switching to another platform won't solve it. It's like curing the symptom, not the cause.
I think what we are witnessing now is the whole concept of productized design service failing in front of our eyes. It just doesn't work.
Wow. I've seen the image with what you've received. As a designer myself (and, regardless, someone who has eyes), it feels like a complete mockery. Of course portfolios only contain the handpicked best versions of one's work, but here the gap is huge. I am so sorry for your bad design experience.
It's disappointing to say the least. You'd think with that $50k MRR they could do something better. :/
Has anyone used any of the competitors out there? For example, Design Pickle? What was your experience like? Are these problems just related to Many Pixels? Or are they related to productized services in general?
@Vinrob, I'm rooting for you!
Just focus on fixing the leaky bucket, hiring leadership, mentorship, and improving internal processes and forget about the allure of more $$ for the time being. It will benefit you greatly in the long-run.
/me speaking from experience!
Thanks, Ryan! Great point on hiring leadership and mentorship.
After all, one of the biggest obstacles in business is you and your ego - and not knowing what you do not know (if that makes sense!)
We will announce it soon but we will soon receive mentorship from a big productized service founder in the next weeks that will help us overcome these blockers.
To add to this: they delete the work you've paid for within seven days and deny you access to it until you start paying again. So hundreds of dollars for a hosting service of a few graphics. (Putting it on hold wasn't an option given to us at the time we cancelled.)
Hi Daria, as a designer I have my concerns about this type of services, it is too cheap. If you're still looking for a solution check this out https://dribbble.com/imthiagocarvalho and let me know if I can help you ;)
It's easy to criticise someone without having any idea of the internal complications. Manypixels has scaled from $0 MRR to $50k in an incredibly short amount of time and at the end of the day it's rather difficult to expect top quality designs for the price that is charged.
@Vinrob if I was in your position i'd be focusing on user churn and sustainable growth rather than sacrificing the quality of the service you are providing.
@JJ_Deakins Yes, it's easy for me to criticise since I was their customer. I don't care what their MRR or ARR or whatever. All I care about is getting what was promised to me for the money I paid.
I didn't expect top quality designs but what I received wasn't even worth $349.
When client orders a design service he looks at the portfolio to get the idea about the quality standard that he will get in the end. The difference between what is posted on their website and what I received is TOO big. Huge, in fact.
That makes everything they advertise a lie. An honest approach would be to tell customers that they only have 1-2 decent designers and all others are not even close, so if clients are prepared for the atrocious result, they are welcome to buy.
Plus, I've had issues not only with the result itself but with every step of the process, starting from the onboard, communication etc.
To have so many issues after being on the market for almost one year is very bad.
If even 1 person in 5 receives the same quality and treatment as I did, then their self claimed revenue is simply a scam.