It is with great excitement that we make the following announcement:
After two years of dutiful service, we are retiring the NAME of our online invoicing service “2ndsite”, and renaming it FreshBooks.com.
We’re excited. It’s a new name and a Fresh start. (If you want to learn more about why we changed our name, go read all eight episodes of the story).
To coincide (well almost…) with the release of our new name, we will be releasing a new version of our service in two weeks time. The new release includes some excellent usability of enhancements, as well as the ability to send invoices by first-class mail for the US post (including a return envelope). All existing FreshBooks/2ndSite users will have their ACCOUNTS UPGRADED in to include these features in two weeks time in the manner that we roll out our regular bi monthly upgrades.
[Note: If you can’t wait two weeks, you can try the new service, but keep this in mind: don't invest your time setting up a sneak peek account because ALL SNEAK PEEK accounts will be DELETED in two weeks. Why? Please don't ask, just know that if you want to try the new service in advance, that your sneak peek account will be deleted. Go here and you can create a regular account that will be upgraded in two weeks with everyone else.]
Why are really releasing a ground mail service? Honestly, many of our users are confused as to why an online invoicing service would release a service that helps people send invoices in the mail. The fact is many businesses want to do their billing online, but don’t know how to make the transition to online billing, or can’t afford to build their own proprietary online billing system. FreshBooks is the solution for these businesses.
Instead of having to build your own proprietary online billing system, companies can now create a FreshBooks account, import their clients and send their invoices [there is even an API so you can integrate FreshBooks with your existing accounting systems if you need to] - it’s easy and fast. Gradually your clients who receive invoices in the mail will transition to online billing and your business will save the money it used to spend on postage and envelopes and fulfillment.
Billing is a pain - a costly pain for many businesses. FreshBooks is the painless billing solution and it’s low-cost.
That’s the news for today. A new name. A new release [coming very soon]. We have more news coming - lots of it in fact –, so stay tuned and we will fill you in on the details.
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11:49 am
Hi Michael, great meeting you today at the mesh conference! All the best with this venture. Glad to see you have a testimonial from my ubiquitous friend Jennifer Laycock! Incidentally, I’ve been using a similar (competing, I guess) service for some time. What that probably means is, if users like myself have already tracked down pretty much the only analogous service and are already using it, there is sure to be a market. Looks like yours will be adding some much needed features.
12:15 pm
I noticed the new logo looks very similar to one of your competitors, BillingOrchard.com. Specifically the use of the grean leaf. Was that a coincidence?
10:17 am
Andrew: thanks for the comments. Jennifer is super nice, eh? As for much needed features, given we have thousands of happy clients, I think that might be a little strong , but we are continuing to deepen the value of our offering and I think the ground mail service is going to add a lot of value. Last week I got my first invoice in the mail and I was blown away…they look AMAZING.
Interesting: total fluke. What’s fresher than a nice minty leaf? Have not looked at that company’s branding, but perhaps great minds think alike?
9:19 am
[...] 2ndSite has changed their name to FreshBooks. I’m pretty excited about new products like FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online Edition. Web 2.0 apps promise a rich desktop application-like user interface, but can these products really keep up the requirements of data entry clerks that are accustomed to entering lengthy orders without looking up at the monitor? [...]
9:51 am
[...] I love Rackspace. We have been with them since day one. I have a good relationship with founder Pat Condon and have to credit Pat with convincing us to rename our company to FreshBooks. [...]
9:19 am
[...] I love Rackspace. We have been with them since day one. I have a good relationship with their founder Pat Condon and have to credit Pat with convincing us to rename our service to FreshBooks. [...]
8:49 am
[...] Getting your branding right can be tough. We renamed our service this year already. Today I send an alert…we are going to rebrand our blog soon too. Why you ask? [...]
9:17 am
[...] any of this? Maybe you will find this inspiring. When FreshBooks launched, we were called 2ndSite (we’ve since rebranded) and we did not have our first paying user until month two, but we believed in what we were doing - [...]