Conceptshare, less of the same
When reading the heading you may be thinking this is another article lamenting the wonderful features of this product. Well, yes and no.
What is ConceptShare?
ConceptShare is a flash based web application that allows you to share your visual work, whether it be a website, flat file logo, or other general design. The user can create a workspace [a workspace is defined as a holding place for similar concepts] and load as many concepts [concepts are the actual individual designs themselves] as desired. For example, I created a workspace called Triple Jeah Logos therein I placed about 7 different logos I created for the Triple Jeah redesign.
The Product
The product is amazing there is no doubt about it. It solves the problems designers in all disciplines have been plagued with, standardizing the presentation of your work to colleagues and clients.
Within each concept I can post comments, use the drawing tools to emphasize a comment, and use the target icon to point my comment right to the portion I am remarking on.
Then the real beauty of this product kicks in. I can send out invitations to 2 types of people.
- Guests
- Experts
Guests are anyone whom I wish to invite to the workspace. I can invite you, whether you have a ConceptShare account or not and receive your feedback. As a guest you can perform any function I’ve mentioned but you can only view the workspace I’ve invited you to. This is a great feature to invite your clients to. They get to post their valuable feedback and leave feeling like everyone is on the same page.
Experts are fellow ConceptShare subscribers. I can invite these people for feedback before I submit the work to my client. Not all are true design professionals, but in truth, all you need sometimes is a fresh pair of eyes with a new perspective. Using these friends I can proof a design before I make the leap to submitting to the client.
Pricing
Cost is subscription based, charged monthly. There are 5 plans available. The most economical is the Free plan which allows one workspace. If you design anything even fairly often this quickly becomes cumbersome. For $19 per month you can sign up for the Solo plan and get a total of 25 active workspaces. For small to small-medium businesses this is more than enough. What’s nice is you can deactivate a workspace thereby freeing up an available spot. The Solo plan allows only one administrator (the person whom manages workspaces). I have found the Solo plan to be more than enough for this firm. However, if you need more workspaces, administrators, or even more security, they have plans to accomodate you.
Customer Service
So far, I’ve told you nothing you probably haven’t read some where else if you’re a fairly savvy blog reader. However, the customer service portion is the part I am most impressed with. When purchasing my ConceptShare subscription, unbeknown to me, my credit card had been reported stolen. I made 2 attempts to purchase but both were declined. Within 3 hours I had an e-mail from Scott Brooks letting me know that he had noticed there was a problem and asked what he could do to help. After a few more e-mails in the same day, we concluded the problem.
Post purchase, when I made the transition from a free account to the solo, I wanted to use the same domain I had set up on the free account, so I wrote an e-mail to support@conceptshare.com. I received a reply within hours from Bernie Aho whom verified my needs, passed it to Chris D’Aoust who handled it the same day.
Impressed? Just wait. After a week of service I sent an e-mail to Scott Brooks asking yet another question. About 20 minutes later, my phone rang. It was Scott saying,
I started to respond to your e-mail but thought it would be much better explained over the phone.
Scott Brooks
Needless to say, I am impressed. If they continue to develop this outstanding product and treat customers with as much respect as they already are then I’m buying stock.
ConceptShare, less of the same.
