An honest review of my app
It’s rare that the makers of something feel they can be honest about what they’re building. The default is positive marketing and promotion. But for someone trying to decide whether to start using a product (especially one like Revere, where you’ll be investing a lot of time and personal information), you want to know more. That’s what this post is about.
This is a review of my app Revere from the perspective of the person who has the most insight and control it, me. It describes what it is and isn't, what it does and doesn't, what works and what’s still missing. It touches on the future direction and will provide an idea of what you can expect. My hope is that after reading it you understand the purpose and the spirit behind it.
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Revere is a simple app. It will always be a simple app. No screen should make you wonder "What do I do here?" or "What does this button do?" We all have a lot of things to do each day, figuring out an app shouldn’t be one. There are some places it's not as easy as it could be and we have to fix those.
Revere is a notes app, but only for notes about people. It's a place for big and small details about people you care about. Things like someone's hobbies, or favourite food, or gift ideas. The focus on people makes it possible to build features other notes apps wouldn’t, like a dedicated place for how and when you met. That's pretty useful.
Revere is also a reminders app. When life gets busy, the things in front of us get our immediate attention, and our relationships often take second place. A well-timed reminder brings people back to our awareness and makes sure our relationships don’t get drowned out by busyness. Setting reminders in Revere isn't difficult but it definitely could be easier – right now it still takes a few too many taps. The notifications have some nice features though, like snooze, but they also have room for improvement.
Revere only has two types of reminders right now: the standard, manually set date/time reminder, and birthday reminders. This is admittedly limited and we are working on more. The possibilities with reminders is one of the most exciting areas going forward. Expect much more here.
Families. They some of the most important relationships we have, so it follows that remembering other people’s families is important too. A dedicated place for writing someone’s family member names is very useful and another example of something a people-focused notes app can do that other notes apps can’t. Still missing with the families feature: the ability to link people so looking up one person automatically shows you everyone.
Revere tries to stay out of your way. When life is busy, you don't have time to stop for 5 minutes to type into your phone – you won’t bother. That’s why adding notes quickly has been a top priority from the start. Even in the earliest versions of Revere you could add notes without unlocking your phone using Siri or the Apple Watch app. It's also why every page in the app has a big blue button to open the add note screen; why you can add notes without specifying a person; and why we built a Chrome browser extension for desktops. You can expect more ways to make adding notes faster in the future.
That said, Siri, the Apple Watch app, and the Chrome extension are very basic. You can add notes but that's it – you can't assign people and you can't view or search notes. The clean simplicity makes them easy to use, but a few more features like being able to assign a person would be useful.
Revere has no desktop app. As someone who spends the majority of their day on a laptop, I would like a desktop version of Revere. Picking up the phone, unlocking it, launching an app, etc. is time consuming, never mind the risk of distraction with other notifications. Imagine instead adding or searching a note without taking your hands off the keyboard because the app is right where you’re working – that would be great.
More voice functionality. I've been a voice user for a long time... since the 1990’s, long before Siri, Alexa, or Google's Assistant were a thing. Talking happens at the speed of thinking – fast! You can also give voice commands while moving and not looking at your phone (with AirPods, for example), so it’s efficient too! And when a voice command works perfectly it feels like magic, and like you have a real personal assistant. I’m very excited about the possibilities with voice in Revere.
Revere is not designed specifically for business use cases. That's not to say it's not useful for a business owner (many people actually do use Revere for business and work), but the spirit of the app is in our personal, every day relationships. There are many companies already addressing the business use cases with CRMs (contact/customer relationship management). We’re doing something else.
Revere is not a contact manager. It doesn't "import all" your contacts or synchronize email addresses and phone numbers. Maybe some day that information will be somehow connected but the primary focus will always be the details about your relationships that don’t fit into a contact manager. We believe focus is important.
There is no way to export notes from Revere. I would personally be very wary of an app that didn't let me own and control my own data, so I can certainly appreciate that this is a concern for some people. Rest assured export is coming. We want you to use Revere willingly, not begrudgingly because we locked you in.
Privacy. Revere does not use your data. I wouldn’t add personal information into an app if I didn’t believe it was private. Revere and it’s business model are being built on subscriptions, so the information you enter never needs to be monetized.
Revere is a subscription app with a free version. As mentioned, this is Revere’s business model. The subscription features are power-ups to the core functionality, and the core functionality will always be free. We believe that if we build a useful free version, enough people will eventually want to "power-up" those features. The subscription falls into a typical price range ($5/mo), which some people might find expensive today, but with the features we plan to add soon, it’ll be well worth the money.
Revere will be an iOS app for the foreseeable future. Building an app for multiple platforms (like Android) is a significant increase in work, and our current team is too small to handle it. Instead we are focusing on building a really useful and well-made iPhone/iPad app. There are no near-term plans to bring Revere to other platforms, it’s not out of the question in the long-term.
Revere is built by a small team. The closeness of a small team is in the spirit of the closeness Revere wants to bring to people's relationships. It’s also the right size for the current stage we’re at. Maybe this will change one day but there are certainly no plans to build a huge team right now.
Revere is built sustainably. Because Revere has a small team and it’s self-funded, it doesn't depend on outside investors. This means it has time to grow into what it needs to be without sacrificing it’s principles. This also means it may not deliver features as quickly as a big company, but it will definitely deliver carefully considered features. Revere is playing the long game.
And finally, Revere will be around for a long time. Personally, I'll always need it, so as long as I'm alive (which I hope to be a long time) I'll keep it going. When I started this project, I knew that even if only I ever used it, it would bring enough benefit to my life to be worth it.
If you’re not a user of Revere I hope that helped you make a decision. If you have any questions, you can message me at mark@revereapp.com.