Be more upfront about the cost - I knew it was coming...I got the activate email link, still no mention of price - but I see you're alluding to something....stationary. After registering (3 steps) then I see - $4.99. I wrote a note to my mom. I prefer to skype with her for free. Put some use cases in your initial email - (ie: Interview follow ups, etc) for what your service might be used for.<p>It also wasn't clear where you deliver to....I wasn't sure if Canada would work.<p>By the way - the logout button is in a most unfortunate position when you are going through registration. I clicked logout rather than the BIG HUGE submit button because it was placed where I am used to the submit button normally being placed. Why would someone logout during registration? And it seems you needed to make this button BIG so people would see it (perhaps because others were doing the same thing as me?). Why not just cave, and put the submit button where it belongs and get rid of the logout button till i'm in the app?
This opens up the door to some pretty nice automation.<p>You know, the kind that makes me look like less of a negligent husband/father/son/friend/uncle/etc...<p>(startups take their toll in many ways)
I was a beta tester, and I sent my mom a card using SendWrite. She just told me she got it and that it was the single best thing she received this year =]
This type of service used to be popular among expats from India at one point when Internet service in India was not as wide-spread. For some reason most of the companies providing this type of service died out (the government run Indian postal service still seems to provide such a service though). Maybe there is some lesson to be learned from why a lot of these companies failed?
This made me thing of a possible use case you could monetize - sending "Thank you" notes post interview. This is something that I always forget to do, although the last 2 times I interviewed I got the job anyways :)<p>An FAQ would be nice, otherwise it's a bit scary just emailing you a street address...
Feedback: only after step 3 of the signup process I discover that "The Netherlands" isn't in your list of states.<p>Of course I should've seen that coming, given how early launch this is and the cost of overseas mail, but still it's a late anticlimax.
I find myself really bothered by the fact that you would be reading all the messages. Granted I realize that in order to stuff the letters manually you would be able to see them if you wanted to, but the fact that you have to search each message for the address and then remove the address from the message seems very human meaning you're at minimum skimming every message. I would much prefer some other method like a web form that included a separate box for address and the message itself.<p>I too would be interested in an API for this in combination with some kind of developer pricing model.
I also sent a card to my mom. Next I'm going to send a card to some people who hosted me while I visited Canada. The difference between this and postcards (and postagrams) is that I can remember to use sendwrite.<p>Feature request: scheduled emails to remind me to send a card to a person. I can simply reply to the email to send the card. I'd definitely send monthly cards to various members of my family, or a long-distance sweetie, or what have you.
I wonder if there would be any money in having a free option that includes third-party advertising in the envelope. May need to limit the number of free sends per person over a period of time.<p>I'd be interested in knowing what type of messages people would send with the free method vs paid. You wouldn't send a birthday/congratulations note with ads, but maybe something witty/humorous to a friend. A semi-physical poke, as lame as it sounds.
I remember my old boss Bob Wyman said in 80's when Digital Equipment Corporation got connected to ARPANET. Because only few in the world then has email addresses, so one guy wrote a program that print out emails with snail mail address in first paragraph on typewriters and let mailmen deliver printouts.<p>Everything new was once old again.
I thought about this recently, but because I need to send mail to a few government offices, and to my university for my transcripts. Both have to be done in paper, but I'd love to upload a PDF, add an address and be done with it. I'd try to market this to legal offices as a time saver.
Thanks, you just saved me from a chore. although I've bought three mails, I have one I had to send, I am happy to pay $5 to send one. Make it so that I can upload PDF's or choose paper stock, I, and probably many other designers will be waiting in line for your service.
Reminds me of this really old website <a href="http://postagram.com/" rel="nofollow">http://postagram.com/</a> that does the same for $1.00 -- note the site is ugly and mails really ugly letters in an untimely fashion, however it is somewhat usable.
are you doing all of these manually, I looked around but didn't see that you require the message and address in any particular format ? So how are you programmaticly parsing the incoming emails ?