I understand all businesses, the longer they are in business, and the more they improve, the more the cost goes up. The price increase honestly still has me SHOOK and if not for all of my financial info & client info & communication being kept in one place, I would 100% be switching platforms due to the increase. I am still wondering if it’s even worth it…
BUT I still love Honeybook, and considering it’s SO difficult to transfer from HB to another CRM, I’ve decided to stay for at least another year. I was hoping with the price increase would come some awesome changes… instead, I keep feeling like these edits are purely for aesthetics or are fixing something that wasn't broken to begin with. I can't understand, thus far, how the price increase is justified. I like the platform less with these updates.
The things I’m not loving the most are:
- Scheduling - why can't I just add a simple schedule link to email anymore?
- TASKS - the new tab is so inconvenient… Can y'all PLEASE put it back? We could see when things were scheduled for. It was convenient, especially while responding to emails and thinking about what’s next. And I can’t delete a step in tasks anymore? This is really frustrating. It was perfect before.
- Emails - why are they still going to spam or just not delivering at all? This is costing me god knows how much money, and at the same time, I’m forced to pay more? I get emails and texts constantly like “hey did you get my email?” and I’m like “yeah, check your spam” just for them to find it there. But in the meantime it’s damaging their trust in me because they get the impression I am slow or unresponsive. It HURTS. Before this became a problem, I was booking almost every single aligned project that inquired.
- Finance - the inability to transfer funds from buckets on mobile is really frustrating when making an in person purchase.
- Gift Cards - PLEASE bring them back!! People ask if I offer them frequently and it’s annoying to have to go create a gift card in canva & email it over with an invoice. It was so cute and convenient to be able to offer them through HB.
- Archived Projects - why are they showing up on my calendar. I am constantly reminded of clients that ghosted me. Can we get a delete project option or something?
- The App - the glitches are almost constant. Click on a tab, sends me back to home. Other times, open the app, log in, home loads, kicked back to log in.
- Calendar - It used to automatically open projects in a new tab… now it’s the same window. And the work around is extra steps… I thought we were about efficiency *cries*
I feel trapped at this point, I want to stay but with nearly every change I simply don't care or feel more like I want to leave. I can’t justify the increase, making me not want to renew, but due to the inconvenience of switching, I probably will.
Truthfully I am just very very sad - I feel like the CRM I have raved about and referred people to for YEARS is continually letting me down, while asking me to pay them more to do so. I really could’ve done without AI. I hope this isn’t what the majority of the price increase went to.
Some actually helpful updates would be:
- Allowing clients to edit previously submitted questionnaires - this would be especially helpful for timeline changes.
- Allowing clients to choose their own meeting type when scheduling - sometimes they want to see my face and sometimes they don't.
- Task notifications
- Coupon codes and/or gift cards
- Afterpay or Klarna or something of the sort
- Two way SMS communication - keeping it ALL in one place would be incredible.
- Better file organization - I don't think I even need to say much.
- The ability to edit files deeper via mobile app
- The ability to transfer funds from buckets via mobile app
- The ability to divide expenses between multiple or all projects
- Multiperson events in calendar
- Better mini session scheduling
- Automated email reminders for clients when a file is about to expire
- Since we’re using AI now… what about an AI website chat? Engaging potential clients that way could be SO useful… and maybe make up for the ones we’re losing due to emails being sent to spam.
- More design customization
- Better automations - “if the, do that” functionality
- More customization in regards to recurring invoices/payment plans, like allowing partial payments without having to modify the payment schedule & contract
- Automatically add late payment
- Email marketing/lists
- Mile tracking in app
I still LOVE YOU Honeybook, I'm just not happy with some of these updates & that paired with such a high % increase, I don’t know what to do.
