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Kevin William David

Beamer - The best way to notify users about your product updates

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Use Beamer to announce new features, your latest releases, and relevant news. Improve user engagement with a quick and easy changelog.

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Catalin Pop
Cool. But you should have it embedded on your own website as well so we can see how it looks.
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@catapop84 You are totally right! We forgot to do that. We've just added a "New features" option at the top of our website. Thanks!
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
Hi @producthunt community and thanks @kwdinc for hunting us! This is Mariano, founder of Beamer and Hibox (www.hibox.co). We are really proud to launch Beamer today to help fellow entrepreneurs keep their users more engaged with our SaaS changelog. Don't let your hard work go unnoticed! This product came about from a real problem we wanted to solve at Hibox and I am excited to offer Beamer totally for FREE to help others with the same need. Please send any and all feedback so we can keep improving! Cheers!
John Alexander
Looks cool and I like the focus on product changes. For someone like us that uses intercom. what are the advantages of adding this when we can do similar things through in app messages?
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@johnalxndr Great question John! Actually, we also use Intercom in our parent company Hibox.co and we love it. The problem with Intercom is that it's really difficult to have a repository of product changes. I mean, you can send a message for every new feature but those messages will likely get lost in the conversation. Also most of the time users tend to ignore those messages. With Beamer you have a designated space for users to track product updates and new features. We get 10x more reads of product updates vs. Intercom.
John Alexander
@mariano_rodriguez_colombelli Awesome. Just the answer I needed to take a closer look. Congrats on the launch!
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@johnalxndr Thanks! Would love to have your feedback!
Joshua Pinter
@johnalxndr @mariano_rodriguez_colombelli I agree. Plus, I think separating your support / conversation with product features and change log is important. Simplicity is also very key when it comes to features and changelog. If it gets too complicated it won't get done. But with something as simple as this it takes a few minutes to log (and get credit) of even the smallest improvements. Well done!
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@johnalxndr @joshuapinter Thank you, that's the idea, to keep it simple for the product owner and the devs. It's not rocket science but it takes its time to develop something like this on your own, specially when it's not your core business. Also I agree that it's better to have the changelog and the conversations separated. Since we start doing this we are getting not only more reads on product updates but also more engagement on chats (without all the noise of constants updates).
Benjamin Alijagić
Would love to hear if there is any difference between this and https://headwayapp.co or https://barelog.com. Ps. definitely add that widget to homepage! :)
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@benjam1n Sure! We have 3 main differences: 1_ Multilanguage support: this is super important if you have clients in other countries (You can internationalize your posts). 2_ Team: You are able to invite members of your team to help you on Beamer. 3_ Straightforward Video, Image and GIF embedding: No code or markup needed, just 2 clicks. BTW, we've just added a "New features" option on the top of our homepage. So really good suggestion! Our bad for not including from the get go :)
Brian Jagger
Tried it out... am I right in that every user has to create an account with you to see the updates? This is definitely a turn off.
Joshua Pinter
@briansjagger That's no good. surely we can pass in some authentication from our own SaaS application. I understand why people need to log in so that Beamer knows when somebody has read a new feature or not, etc. But there's got to be a way to not force them to create a Beamer account.
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@briansjagger Only the admins have to create an account. Your final users will see the embeded widget on your site. No need to be logged in or having an account. Check the example on our homepage clicking the "New features" link on the top.
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@briansjagger @joshuapinter In fact users don't have to be logged. We just use a cookie to identify unique users to get those stats. Beamer it's pretty simple. You can have it running in 5 minutes. No code needed.
Joe Kaz
@joshuapinter great point. I was very interested in this solution until I read this. Big turn off. Can you guys let us know if this is on your roadmap?
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@joshuapinter @joe_kaz are your referring to the “users must be logged in” issue? As I mentioned before, that’s not te case. Users don’t need to be logged in or have an account on Beamer. The changelog is public. If you want you can restrict access only from one domain.
Primer
@mariano_rodriguez_colombelli I signed up for your product today and without me doing anything, you had my avatar as an image I have used in another product I am building. Where are you pulling this image from?
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@mickc79 Secret sauce! ;) Not really. We are using this cool API: https://devidentify.com/
Primer
@mariano_rodriguez_colombelli Pretty creepy. You should maybe tell people that you are gonna invade their privacy in such a way before they sign up. Can I remove or change that image at all?
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@mickc79 It's just a placeholder. You are the only one that see that image. Also it's just based on avatars that you made publicly available online.
Primer
@mariano_rodriguez_colombelli it looks like I am an edge case then. Allow me to explain. I have multiple email addresses as aliases on the one, paid for, gmail account. The image you pulled is associated with my primary email address, I do not want it to be associated with the email address I've used on beamer as they are 2 very distinct businesses. It's no big deal, but if this is a problem for me then you can be assured it will be a problem for others. At least it's not publicly visible, as you say. PS. Beamer is awesome.
Kevin William David
Hunter
Beamer is a product changelog Saas that helps increase your user engagement by letting you share product improvements, new features, company news and much more directly from your app or site with a simple plug-in, no tech skills required and it's totally free.
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@kwdinc Thanks for hunting us Kevin!
Krishna De
Really interesting product and I could imagine this could be used not just for product updates but also news or new articles and videos. I was checking your implementation on your own website and could see it on desktop but could not see it when on my iPhone and Safari?
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@krishnade Thanks for the notice! We've just updated our mobile site to add the same "New features" link. (It's after the product mockup). Please refresh a couple of times ;)
André Hess Brenes

Beamer is really solving my need of communicating my new features to my customers. Previously I've relied on e-mails which not only have a low open rate but take me too much time to design and send. With Beamer I'm saving tons of time on this and putting those new features right on my customers's noses which is great for my to show my SAAS customers our progression.

Pros:

I really like their ease of use and low pricing

Cons:

Add a new feature for displaying a big new feature to users on an all screen form

Mark Osborne
Does this just do the changelog or does it do in-app hotspots as well to show new features, like Appcues?
Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli
Maker
@mposborne In this first stage we want to focus on the changelog feature but we might consider adding some onboarding tools in the near future.
Lisa Zigel

Installed it just under a month ago, working brilliantly. Great way for site visitors to see new features, blog posts, etc., and the CTR is really high. I love it.

Pros:

Easy to use, looks great, works great, excellent CTR!

Cons:

Would be great if I could have more formatting capabilities, and if it supported video.

IdeaSpies
Beamer looks clever so is now on IdeaSpies www.ideaspies.com/beamer-the-bes....
Mukesh Biswas
Does it identify the user as well?