Pipechat
Pipedrive sidebar for WhatsApp Web
Pipedrive's users often use WhatsApp to talk to their clients. Pipechat is a simple Chrome Extension to manage everyday Pipedrive actions directly from 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...
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...
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...