SupportBee launches web tool for headache-free email support | Hacker News Reader

SupportBee launches web tool for headache-free email support

venturebeat.com

51 pointsgnufied12 comments

I'm evaluating support software right now, so this is well timed. I've tried Zendesk, Desk.com, and just tried out SupportBee.

So far, SupportBee is winning on HTML email integration. Zendesk doesn't support it at all (and it's a long standing issue: https://support.zendesk.com/entries/80698-creating-tickets-f...). Desk.com does, but you have to view it in an overlay and inline images don't work. SupportBee supports displaying HTML email pretty much like GMail would. The only thing that doesn't work is inline images quoted in the reply message.

Zendesk and SupportBee both have very responsive UIs, but SupportBee's is simpler and maybe a little faster.

Desk.com is the only one that was able to ingest our existing support inbox, but it did a bad job of collecting threads into a single support request and did not include our replies in the tickets.

Zendesk is the worst for whole-company support due to its pricing model. Desk.com has flexible agents ($1/hour, billed in 5 minute increments) which is nice, but SupportBee's model of charging by ticket is probably the best of all for us.

Thanks for the checking us out! We have worked very hard on rendering HTML emails because we want to cater to designers and companies that need HTML emails (think newsletter companies).

We handle inline images but we don't load some images by default. There is a small picture icon that loads the images when clicked. More info here -https://supportbee.com/blog/2012/08/07/more-languages-for-th...

If that's not working, it's a bug and we can fix it. We would just need a little more info from you. Can we email you? Or you can email us at support@supportbee.com.

Also, we thread emails as well as Gmail and we have a very robust importing infrastructure (maildir + inotify + resque == lightning fast). Please let us know if you see any issues in threading or importing. We think that's our USP and we want to fix any issues there. No matter how edge case(y) they are.

Prateek, I've emailed some details to your suppport email.

I would definitely love to import our existing support emails. As I mentioned, only Desk.com supports this, and not particularly well.

Oh my bad! I thought you were referring to having a high everyday email volume. We'll work on the importer at some point. Just focusing on other stuff right now. The idea is to make an importing API and let the community build the actual importers (after the reference one). Btw, have you looked at our API - http://developer.supportbee.com? Thanks again for spending the time to give us such detailed feedback. This is why we love HN :)

Thanks to Hacker News for all the inspiration and feedback along the way. Starting with this thread 637 days ago - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2048588

I use SupportBee for my email support at judge.me. It's a great service, just what you need and nothing more.

Congrats Prateek, Avinasha and Nithya!

Well done Prateek!

After watching the video, this looks like a very simple and effective way to handle email support. I think there are a lot of small businesses that will find a focused tool like this more effective than the typical, feature bloated solutions out there. Also, kudos for not charging by seat.

I'll definitely be trying it out.

Thanks Taylor. Mailgun has certainly been a very important part of our stack. Thanks for such a reliable and useful service.

This looks fantastic! Looking forward to checking this out.

We currently use zendesk but our reseller model and everyone-does-support culture makes zd stupidly expensive for our company as we scale. We will definitely be checking you guys out!

SupportBee looks great, we've been using HelpScout.net for a while and love the shared inbox method of support. It is perfect for small teams. I do wonder how it scales up with dozens of people handling support, it seems like it might result in some clashes.

We show everyone who else is viewing a Ticket. This helps to decide who will answer the ticket.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com