More on Intuit + Homestead (inquiring minds want to know)

Wow.  Thanks to all of the amazing feedback over the past week concerning our announced merger with Intuit.  Between the hundreds (almost 1000!) of congratulatory emails, the lively discussion on the blog, and the massive coverage in the press and blogosphere, it's been quite overwhelming. Throw in a buck-fifty (note use of web lingo proving I'm hipper than I seem) excited Homestead employees, a bunch of Silicon Valley well wishers, and several thousand buzzing Intuit people and you've got yourself a party!

I have not been able to reply personally to many of the emails or inquiries, so I thought I would respond to some of the common themes.  Here we go (by order of popularity):

Theme #1 (roughly 60%):
CONGRATULATIONS/CONGRATS/WOO HOO!/ROCK ON/ETC.

What I would say if I could respond to each of you individually:
Thanks, dudes.  Much appreciated.  You guys rock, and your support means a ton to all of us.  We have not forgotten in all of this that, without you, we would have nothing.

Theme #2 (roughly 20%):
YOU'RE GOING TO RAISE PRICES/PLEASE DON'T RAISE MY PRICE/U IZ A RICH BAZTARD NOW DON'T RAIZ R PRICES!/YOU PROMISED CHARTER MEMBERS YOU WOULD NEVER RAISE OUR  PRICES ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP THAT PROMISE?

What I would say if I could respond to each of you individually:
We have absolutely no intention of raising prices!  We do intend to accelerate our development of new products, and we'll probably charge for some of these additional features and include others for free in your packages.  As for Charter Members, who have been with us since the very beginning, my promise to you of never raising your price again is still in tact--you don't honestly think I could get away with that and look myself in the mirror?

Theme #3 (roughly 10%):
YOU'RE GOING TO OUTSOURCE YOUR SUPPORT TO INDIA/THIS IS THE END OF YOUR EXCELLENT SERVICE/NOW YOU'RE GOING TO GIVE US BIG COMPANY SUPPORT/THEY ARE GOING TO RUIN HOMESTEAD

What I would say if I could respond to each of you individually:
I was really pleased to read all of your notes and comments about how you much you like Homestead's support.  Words like "Homestead is the gold standard of web support" or "Homestead agents always know how to make us dummies feel smart" were music to my ears!  We're still working hard at figuring out how to deliver world class support to all of our customers and, in spite of the many generous comments this week, we still have work to do. 

As for whether we are going to outsource it--no, no no!  In fact, this week was exciting for another reason.  We opened our new customer service center in Denver.  Yes, as in Colorado, as in the good 'ol U.S. of A.  It should have 100+ additional folks by the end of next year, combined with the great team we already have here in California.  One of the major reasons Intuit wanted to join forces with Homestead is because of our unique philosophy of actually wanting to talk to our customers on the phone.  We've figured out ways to do this profitably, and we're not going to be changing this approach.

Theme #4 (roughly 5%):
NOOOOOOO!/YOU IDIOTS, THIS IS GOING TO END JUST LIKE PHOTOSITE/I CRIED WHEN I GOT YOUR NOTE/IT'S DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN LIKE PHOTOSITE/IN TWO YEARS THEY ARE GOING TO SHUT DOWN HOMESTEAD!

What I would say if I could respond to each of you individually:
I totally understand how a few paranoid folks might think this story ends like our sale of PhotoSite did.  But trust me, people, this is totally different.  We sold PhotoSite because we couldn't afford to continue running it ourselves at the time.  It was a labor of love, but nowhere near a mature business (i.e. it was losing a lot of money) which was directly related to its ultimate demise.  In contrast, Homestead is a very healthy business, and is growing rapidly.  A company as well run as Intuit isn't going to pay $170M for a company and then shut it down. This is more like Ebay's acquisition of PayPal, Google's acquisition of Keyhole (became Google Earth), or Yahoo's acquisition of RocketMail (became Yahoo Mail)--all previously established businesses that expanded rapidly in their new homes.  Finally, shutting down Homestead is going to happen over my dead body (and the dead bodies of about 150 other people).  And we're not going anywhere.

Theme #5 (roughly 5%):
MAYBE NOW YOU CAN MAKE MY MAIL SYSTEM WORK/DON'T TRIP OVER YOUR PILES OF MONEY ON THE WAY OUT THE DOOR/<INSERT RANDOM BIBLE CITATION HERE>/THIS IS THE LAST NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF HUMANITY/OTHER CYNICAL OR HUMOROUS REMARKS

What I would say if I could respond to each of you individually:
God bless the Web.

--jsk

 

Comments

[Joshua]

Thanks again for interacting with us. Your comments were reassuring and have help me regain some confidence in homestead again. I have a Church waiting for me to contact them about building their web site for them,which I had held off on when I heard of the merger. I should be at work on their site soon now.

There are a few resource I hope to see one day soon.

1. Better Media solutions

I would love to see Media solutions for media such as: mp3s, wmv, wma, and flash. I currently has my media files hosted on servers out side of homestead and linked to my sites.

2. Customized Templates

I would find my job much easier if my custom layout could be reproduce on consecutive pages. Right now I have to cut and paste one page to the next, and have to reset the page properties for each page It would be great to have a universal customized template.

3.More space
At least a gig!

4. Forum creator

Thanks again

[Kevin]

I'm hopeful that this merger will be a positive step for Homestead, its customers, employees, etc.

My biggest request for Homestead upgrades remains a login feature for our websites so our site's visitors can login with a password unique to each user and gain access to view certain folders within that site.

In reply to Joshua in his Nov. 30 (6:20 pm) comment:

1. I don't use Flash on any of my Homestead sites because I haven't worked with Flash before, but I do have mp3 files on them. You can import them the same way you import jpg's and gif's and then create a text link or image link on your page, linked to the URL of the mp3 file. That works for me. I hope it will work for you.

2. What I do is create a template when I'm designing my sites and save it as its own page. Whenever I add a new page, I just bring that template up in Sitebuilder, customize it, and save it under the new page's name. The big drawback is that you have to start over from scratch or redo the layouts on every page when you redesign your layout (a huge task if you've got a lot of pages on your site). I agree that it would be cool for Homestead to have a customizable template page we could save and it would automatically import as the layout behind all our pages within that site.

3. That would be very nice.

4. A cool idea.

And to Justin (JSK):
That's a cool pic of you with the guitar. As a fellow musician, I'm curious about your music. Your bio page didn't mention it. It would be cool to know a little more about your music.

[Sergio's World Beers]

Check your email!

[Stephanie]

This was funny!

God bless the web!

I have faith in your judgement, the merger is a great opportunity for you-so don't listen to the nay-sayers.

[Adam Wojtelwicz]

Dear Justin
Congrats on the Merger. My question is in regards to being a charter member. When I sign into my account, no where does it say I am a charter member. All I have is this email in my file drawer from you stating I have been upgraded to Gold account and I am a Chartered member and my cost will never go up. When we sign into Our account why not place "Charter Member" next to Our Name. I have been with your company from the get-go. I have never needed to contact support because I never had any problems with your program. I just went along and built my sites and handled the problems on my own. It was slow and angonizing at the start but you have come a loooooooooooooog way in improving your programs. Thank You.
ps: Your baby has grown into a young adult and with the additional support with Intuit you baby can grow into a mature adult. Kudos Justin from a charter member.

[Bill Massey]

I am happy for you,your business and you diod it, so many achievements as a yound man and a dream, you deserve all you get and more, I don't understand why most comments are over just a few dollars, or they are just not applying all their efforts and the Positive reply and cooperation you we all have a HOMESTEAD Customers and clients, be glad someone has made it easier and does most or all of the work if you want to Play online or work and achieve goals you all, we all set.My Dream is applying and coming true to be, since 1999 @ HOMESTEAD!!! PROUD TO BE!! I know the coming year be one of your best, MUSIC 4 PEACE AND Jesus Christs AND the Angels SING, Glory, Glory,Glory.Happy Holidays, Bill massey

[Kyaw Win]

Hi, congrats Justin on the merger. We would like to personally invite you and friends reading to check out our website and join us for alliance.
Happy holidays.

Kyaw
Chief Executive

[Ron Wolf]

Justin, there's already a loss in service from the merger. I've had a Help ticket question waiting for a response before buying a Storefront that has gone unanswered for FIVE business days so far. This is NOT the way to treat members who want to buy more of your services!

[Ron W]

It has now been 7 days since posting a Help Ticket and still no response from Homestead's Customer Service.

JSK, you could be right about this merger/takeover deal. Did the entire Customer Service staff walk out over this? Or this is the new level of Customer No-Service we can expect from now on?

[Mary Carol Bird]

ARE YOU STILL IN BUSINESS?
I cannot access my website to make additions/changes, because you are using the WRONG E-MAIL address & password.
PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON

[Mary Carol Bird]

Well, if I don't hear from you soon, I'm phoning my bank and stopping any further monthly payments to you.

This is NOT SPAM. I'm for REAL.

Mary Carol Bird, owner of CAROL'S NEW PLACE

[R. B. Chandler]

I have been here pretty much since the beginning and I've had my share of ups and downs. It is nice to watch things grow and get better. I keep toying with the idea of applying for a job at Homestead, but I like my current job too. It will be interesting to see what the future holds as the software of both companies begin to merge too.

To the guy who wants his custom layouts reproduced on consecutive pages use the Save As command and rename your pages.

To the other people with problems, it's call a phone, use it. Even if all 150 Homestead employees were all customer support specialists that is still more than 6666 customers for each agent assuming there is only million customers which actually there is several times this number. Every now and then somebody's going to get lost in the shuffle. Just keep bugging them, politely. Rude people have a way of ending up on the bottom of that shuffle. Complaining here is not going to get your problems solved any faster.

[Doug]

Its so refreshing to see fellow CEO's blogging. Let the official voice of the company be heard yah dah yah dah yah dah. Good luck with your projects.

[Bobby Torres]

I am a faithful Homesteader. I would like to know how did you do the blog and Preview Post button. The auto blog system that is built into Homestead does not do this.