Highrise

I’ve heard a lot of hype about 37signals new product, Highrise. So I thought I would give it a whirl. I started reading about it before I signed up for the free edition and got curious about how it integrates with email.

It turns out that there is absolutely no LDAP support. Why in the world would you want to use a contact management package that didn’t have LDAP support? Isn’t this supposed to provide a shared address book? What are these guys thinking? There is no way I’m going to maintain both a list of Highrise contacts and a separate address book in my email program.

Now I’m beginning to understand these guys’ strategy. They charge a small fee for a little app here and a little app there, none of which make a complete tool (except maybe basecamp – though one might argue Highrise should have just been included in the next Basecamp release). In the end you end up buying all their apps to get what you need and end up paying megabucks because they nickel and dime you to death.

Basecamp  is the only one of their products I use. The rest all seem to have one or more fatal flaws. IMHO, these products are way overhyped.