Pipechat
Pipedrive sidebar for WhatsApp Web
The extension shipped a couple of months ago. The early adopters reported a few issues here and there that I missed while implementing it, like being able to recognise users who only display a username and no phone number.
It's now live and working, and already with a few happy customers.
It's been a while since the last update...
Pipechat allowed me to quit my day job at Pipedrive in May 2021. It's the best place I ever worked in but I needed to take a breather.
I'm very grateful for how things turned out and that I got a chance to enjoy a lot of free time to focus on other things - to name one, I took up acting and Meisner technique. I love it...
In the meantime Pipechat has continued to grow slowly and steadily. It's now passed €7k/MRR. I added support for Zoho CRM (still waiting to see how it performs). I also tried to bring it to HubSpot but they lacked some essential API features, and tech support wasn't there.
I turned down a couple of acquisitions offers, and I'm working on adding features and growing the product.
Reminders API has been available as a free beta. I didn't do any marketing. I have a few users and one going live with an official project in March (I'll make a separate update).
There are a few other projects I'm working on. We'll see how they turn out...
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Thats great! I have a question. Would be nice if you can answer it. I am trying to understand how can you get clients for your product when there are so many like it on Google (search: Connect Whatsapp to CRM)
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Most of my customers come from Pipedrive’s marketplace looking for WhatsApp integrations. It would be much harder to get them from Google searches. It’s one of the best things about building for an existing marketplace…
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Congrats on the milestone! Pipedrive must be a really good place to work. I know a lot of companies that would consider this a conflict of interest.
Any reason for not testing some marketing or new acquisition channels?
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No real reason why I didn't test marketing and new acquisition channels. I'm open to suggestions :)
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Thanks. Luckily there were no issues at all. I built a feature that wasn't there and customers needed. There was never a conflict. They're actually trying to make it easier to bring similar integrations deeper into their UI. Something I'm looking into https://pipedrive.readme.io/docs/messaging-app-extension
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I got notification from Chargebee that I reached €100k in total revenue since the app went live. (And that I needed to upgrade to a paid plan for €99/month 😄)
I also finally got a restyling of the logo that I created as a placeholder in 34 seconds...
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Hi Daniele, love this product! I see more and more products related to Whatsapp so you definitely jumped on a growing market :) Also, love the new logo!
I was wondering, what is the best way to contact you?
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Thanks :)
You can send me an email at daniele@pipechat.app
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WhatsApp extension, that's something I've never seen before 😃 Congrats!
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Thanks :)
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Just did a text interview with Indie Hackers. I talked about building an app for Pipedrive, and shared my story with Pipechat: how I got started, what my journey has been like, my goals for the future, as well as some tips and advice for other indie hackers out there. Check it out: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/why-i-created-a-third-party-app-for-my-day-jobs-product-2dd1d0005c
I officially set up a company to run this project. The Chrome Extension is now free and payments are handled inside the app via Chargebee and Braintree as a gateway. The app now support Brazil and customers can choose yearly and multi-seat plans. I'm having some issues transitioning existing customers to the new payment method because they need to set up a new subscription manually (which is annoying) and Google Pay is still wrongly charging users (hopefully only for this month).
I released the first version of the app as a paid Chrome Extension and got the first 3 paying customers without any advertisement. A few bugs fixed right away. If I could go back in time I would implement payments with Chargebee or Stripe right away, because Google Pay doesn't support Brazil (which is a huge percentage of my customers).
I've done some research and I know that Pipedrive users need to integrate with WhatsApp somehow, but a full integration through WhatsApp API is a bit tricky at the moment. I woke up and thought that an integration through WhatsApp Web might do the trick. Let's see...
1 Comment
Awesome