Why we built re:praesent: one system instead of five logins

re:praesent is a managed website and customer management service for small businesses, made by Dendrite Corp. It grew out of our website work at GagaDomains, where customers kept telling us that a website alone was not enough. It puts the website, business email, inquiries, customers, deals and online booking in one place with one login.

Where we come from

Before re:praesent there was GagaDomains. There we build, host and look after websites for owner-run businesses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The customers are shops with a front door, small firms, online shops and local service providers. They get a website, hosting, business email, visitor numbers that respect privacy rules, and inquiry forms. It costs €30 a month and a person answers when they need help.

That work taught us how these businesses run. The owner is usually the salesperson, the bookkeeper and the one who answers the phone. Nobody has a spare afternoon for software.

The gap our customers kept describing

In conversation after conversation we heard the same thing. The website brings in an inquiry, and then the trouble starts.

The inquiry sits in an inbox. The customer details go into a spreadsheet, or onto a note beside the till. The appointment is agreed by phone and written in a paper diary. Each piece lives somewhere else, and each has its own login.

What these owners asked for was simple to say. They wanted email, a list of customers and appointment booking that work together with the website. One place, not five.

What we tried first, and why it did not work

We did not start by building our own product. We tried existing open-source tools for customer management and appointments, and connected them to the websites we already ran.

• They were too general for a showroom business such as a kitchen studio or a furniture shop.
• The quality differed a lot from one tool to the next.
• Keeping them running reliably across dozens of customer websites became impossible.

So we stopped joining separate products together and started building one system.

What re:praesent is today

re:praesent connects the website, email, inquiries, customers and appointment booking. An inquiry from the website arrives in a list the whole team can see. The same record then moves on as a deal, without anyone typing the details again.

The app is organised by the jobs of a working day. Today shows who is waiting for you. Customers holds inquiries, people and the inbox. Deals holds your open deals, tasks and the calendar. Results shows how many people saw you, how many contacted you and what you earned. Website is where your site lives.

The price follows what we learned at GagaDomains: €300 a year or €30 a month, everything included, with no fee per user. The details are on the pricing page.

The posts that follow on this blog go through each part as we released it, from the first inquiry form to the views for brands with many partner stores. If you would rather see it than read about it, book a call and a person will show you.

Questions