We just launched a new invoicing web app for under 10K. Check it out: Ballpark

by alibosworth • 17 years ago

83 56 17 years ago

First thing that hit me was "wow great design." I actually am looking for a designer for my next project. Could I contact you/metalabs about it?

cte• 17 years ago

Looks a lot like campaignmonitor.com.

Scriptor• 17 years ago

Not really, I think this layout is just very common for apps like these.

SwellJoe• 17 years ago

Agreed. I don't need the product but I would hire that designer.

rokhayakebe• 17 years ago

The same goes here. First word "WOW", then in my head "Nice design".

schammy• 17 years ago

Heh, too funny. I was thinking the same thing - nice design.

tlrobinson2• 17 years ago

btw, MetaLab designed the http://280slides.com landing page (not 280slides itself though) and http://280north.com

lunaru2• 17 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm the author of http://www.roninapp.com (also an invoicing app)

The designer for ballpark is definitely top-notch - the folks over at metalabs are good at what they do. Keeping invoicing sexy is something that is hard to do (but we're trying our best as well!)

Congrats on the launch - I'm sure the folks over at FreshBooks (who are the obvious market leaders) are taking notice at all these invoicing/time-tracking apps hitting the market (cashboard, invoicemachine, letsfreckle, among others). It certainly speaks for how far we've come in Rapid Development and how accessible good UX/design has become.

metalab8• 17 years ago

Ronin looks cool! We're glad to have some solid competition, and FreshBooks could really use some.

patio112• 17 years ago

I don't know how much of that $10k was for web design but however much it was it was money well spent.

Interesting choices in the pricing plans. I'm not sure I like using SSL as a differentiator -- I know it is quite common these days for many web apps, but particularly with invoicing you're putting third party (client of client) financial information out on an open wire because somebody was too cheap to pick the $50 a month plan.

dcurtis2• 17 years ago

Yeah, SSL costs in total $30 a year, for all customers. No company should be reckless with customer information, regardless of the tier they purchase.

Only charge for things that actually cost you time or money, otherwise your customers will feel ripped off.

patio112• 17 years ago

Only charge for things that actually cost you time or money

I can't agree with that. I charge money for software, which is free at the margin. My customers don't feel ripped off about it, because their time is not.

The worry with SSL is the security implication (particularly for people who had no option to say "Please treat my data as non-sensitive! I totally don't mind!"), not the fact that the code is making an arbitrary distinction between user classes despite the cost to the company being the same for all users (essentially nothing at the margin).

tlrobinson2• 17 years ago

SSL isn't necessarily $30 / year total, there's the extra load of encrypting/decrypting all SSL traffic as well. That may be negligible, I don't know.

mdolon• 17 years ago

In the pricing plan page, the titles of each plan are a bit hard to read as they are black on a dark blue background.

rksprst• 17 years ago

You should have the pricing plans oriented to the top instead of the bottom. Because I want to look at "estimates" and look over to the other pricing plans to compare; with your format, the "estimate" is at a different eye level.

alibosworth2• 17 years ago

This is an excellent point, we will fix this.

azrealus3• 17 years ago

I see some similarities to 37signals' layout design...

rdmlx• 17 years ago

That's because they share the same graphic designer.. look at the portfolio.

simonk• 17 years ago

Uh, 37signals use to be a design firm while they were building their startup. They design inhouse, only some sort of companion app for 37signals was designed by that graphic designer.

azrealus3• 17 years ago

ah I see now :)

metalab8• 17 years ago

Can you elaborate? I'm the designer. While I definitely drew some inspiration the way that Basecamp is laid out, I don't really see any similarity in terms of the styling.

azrealus3• 17 years ago

metalab styling (colors, font) maybe different but the layout and the flow of the application is very similar.

jerryji• 17 years ago

Unfortunately more attention has been drawn to the design of your site than its functionality.

While the design is great and you have all the reason to be proud of it, the long term success of your business will tie mostly, if not all, to the functionality rather than design.

wheels• 17 years ago

As someone with a site with mediocre design, first impressions mean a lot.

I read a lot into a design. It tells me how professional the people I'm dealing with are. It tells me if they're enterprise droids or if they're working with small customers too.

We'll be either doing a new one ourselves or paying for one soon.

alibosworth2• 17 years ago

For the record, this was going to be the title but it didn't fit:

"The small company I work with, Metalab, has just launched a new estimating and invoicing web app for under 10k with no VC. It's called Ballpark, check it out."

Thanks for the comments on the design, all of the credit for that goes to the main Metalab guy, Andrew Wilkinson, see more here http://www.metalabdesign.com

pclark2• 17 years ago

amazing portfolio site. Any suggestions on best way to learn your style of design/javascript?

jfornear• 17 years ago

i really like their style too. it looks like they use mootools and jquery for most of the javascript effects, and as far as the look goes... you could play around with PNGs, bevels, gradients, and strokes to get a similar style.

blasdel• 17 years ago

You should really have some more sites in your portfolio that don't use H&FJ's Gotham Black for all the headings/buttons.

metalab8• 17 years ago

Admittedly, we do have a bit of an obsession with Gotham. It's our Helvetica.

bkbleikamp• 17 years ago

I saw the site a few days ago when @mike9r talked about it on Twitter and I am impressed with it.

I have tried Blinksale and FreshBooks (who I guess are your two most obvious competitors) and neither of those really worked out for me, so I am anxious to give Ballpark beyond clicking around a bit. I am constantly looking for something that is only as powerful as I need and fits nicely into my work flow.

My favorite feature is definitely the "news feed" that shows comments / payments / etc. - that is a great way to visualize what has gone on with the project.

And yes, great design :)

patrickg-zill• 17 years ago

I like it, however I think you should allow more invoices to be sent at the lower level of the plans. Maybe just focus on the per-user limitations, and make the estimates generation more generous. Also everything should be over SSL - better for you and better for your customers, since if there is a data breach by the user they will still blame you.

merrick33• 17 years ago

I am curious what program you created the screencast in?

metalab8• 17 years ago

We used a really great app called ScreenFlow for the Mac.

jpwagner• 17 years ago

Great concept, great design, great execution.

How much is "ballpark.com"?

bcater• 17 years ago

I was discussing building an internal payment management system over lunch today. Do you have an API that we could use instead?

As others have said, kudos on the design.

pclark2• 17 years ago

whats the breakdown of that $10K?

bradgessler• 17 years ago

Also, how long did it take from idea to implementation?

webwright• 17 years ago

On the signup page, what percentage of people do you think undferstand the symbol for "infinity"?

Would recommend using the word "unlimited" instead.

Pretty nitpicky, though-- outstanding work and is serving a need that all businesses have. I'm more bullish on this startup than 99% of the startups that are introduced here.

geuis• 17 years ago

None of the buttons or links worked on my iPhone.

rymngh• 17 years ago

You should really consider free membership with less features.

metalab8• 17 years ago

We actually do have a free plan. If you look on the plans page, it's in the blue bar "Or, sign up for our free personal plan".

cominatchu• 17 years ago

The "under 10k" price tag is misleading because it does not include the opportunity cost of the web designers time. In other words, one has to calculate (the hours spent by Metalab web designers * their normal hourly rate) and add this to 10k to arrive at a more accurate cost for building this site.

auston• 17 years ago

The metalabdesign guys are amazing!! I'm assuming you got the design for less than $10k? If so I need to contact those people!!

csomar• 17 years ago

wow it's great! It seems also to have many features.

But I don't have much work online to go for it :)

-- Not accepting PayPal is a bad point --

cwilson• 17 years ago

The UI is great, love the simplicity, but I really don't want to use Paypal for anything. Freshbooks mails me a check or hooks up to any payment gateway I want to use, meaning I don't shell out for Paypal's fees. I'm also not seeing what this is doing that Freshbooks is not, other then having a nicer UI.

metalab8• 17 years ago

I think the key differentiation is the fact that Ballpark is built for teams. This might not resonate with freelancers (who might just use it because it works well and looks pretty), but, in most small businesses, more than one person is usually involved in the process. For example, we run a design firm (www.metalabdesign.com), and while I don't personally send out estimates or invoices, I can easily keep track of incoming payments via the dashboard, give sign off and comment, see what the numbers for the month were, etc.

Regarding PayPal: Nobody is required to use PayPal - it's totally optional. We're definitely planning on looking into offering payment gateway solutions, but at this point we are focused on polishing the core functionality and adding some really cool new features that will help differentiate us from the pack.

sobriquet• 17 years ago

Nice demo video!

One nit-picky detail, at 2:57, the VO says the Dashboard will "show how much money we received this month, last month, and last year, in addition to all the money you expect to receive in the coming weeks" The video shows 'received year to date', not what was received last year.

Probably not worth re-recording the VO (it sounds professionally done), and re-encoding, but I figured you should know :)

eguanlao• 17 years ago

I love it! I'm inspired. There are so many problems out there to be solved with Web applications, and money to be made.

henriklied• 17 years ago

The site looks absolutely amazing. Tried a free account for now, and I like the overall feel.

One thing I'd love to see: Implement autosave of invoice drafts, or at least a JavaScript popup whenever I try to navigate away from an unsaved form.

metalab8• 17 years ago

This is Andrew from MetaLab. I just wanted to say thanks for all the compliments on the design. I hope that you guys will take it for a spin and let us know what you think.

Quoted from cominatchu: "The 'under 10k' price tag is misleading because it does not include the opportunity cost of the web designers time. In other words, one has to calculate (the hours spent by Metalab web designers * their normal hourly rate) and add this to 10k to arrive at a more accurate cost for building this site."

Yes, we really did build it for less than $10k. Our key expenses were: Rails development (1 developer a few hours a week), a SliceHost server, and some custom icons we hired out. We're planning to break it down in more detail on our blog in the next little while, but I'd like to debunk this a bit here. You're absolutely right about the cost being higher if you consider what it would normally cost at a full consulting rate, but I feel like that's kind of fallacious logic:

If you learnt how to woodwork, built a bookshelf, then told your friends that it cost you $15 (the price of the wood and a couple of screws), they aren't going to argue that the true cost was $500 (the hours spent learning woodworking or a carpenter's rate).

If a founder who was an incredible programmer paid himself $1,000/month during the early months of his startup, would you say that his time really cost the company $15,000 (what he would have charged at a consulting rate)?

The point isn't that someone with no technical skills can do this for 10k (after all, this is Hacker News, and I assume most of you are highly skilled in the field), we're just pointing out that we managed to create a business by pulling a few extra hours a week over 6 months. We didn't have to quit our day jobs, move to the valley, or build a board of advisors - we just went ahead and built it. This isn't to say that it's an especially complex app or that it is some sort of technical feat, just that a little bit of money went a long way.

I don't think taking funding is always bad or anything, especially small seed funding like YC. Sometimes advantageous ideas need money to make them happen. The point is that most of you already have many of the skills required to build things, so funding really shouldn't be a barrier to entry. If your idea requires more money than you have, boil it down to the bare minimum and build it within your budget. We could easily have decided that we wanted to build the best invoicing app ever, figured out that invoicing was a 1.3 kagillion dollar industry, secured some funding, built up the stakes, then gone crazy with features. We could have convinced ourselves that we needed to close down our consulting business, hire a full-time Rails developer, and move in together. Instead we took a simple idea that we felt wasn't being done right, boiled it down to its core, then built it when we had the time.

We just launched a new invoicing web app for under 10K. Check it out: Ballpark

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