The Relenta blog

Relenta pricing plans range from free to $25 per user per month. Those who use Relenta as a business tool think it’s is a steal. We also come across people who wouldn’t even consider trying any service that isn’t free-for-all (because Gmail is, you see). Often they are quite vocal; rarely business-like.

We’ve created a simple ROI (return on investment) calculator to show you that Relenta’s pricing is irrelevant. Really.

Here goes. Simple ROI is defined as the ratio of gains to cost, expressed as a percentage:

ROI = (Gains - Costs)/Costs

Ready? Read the rest of this entry »

In no particular order…

1. Relenta easily and naturally prevents email mismanagement. The Radicati Group estimates that you will spend 41% of your time in 2009 on managing email. Not if you’re a Relenta user! 
2. Relenta helps you fight the tyranny of information overload. Research firm Basex created a nifty calculator that shows how much the information overload is costing you (post your results in comments). 
3. Relenta is the first and only shared email, contact and task management platform. Without Relenta, chances are your team efforts resemble an orchestra without the conductor.
4. Relenta is high and to the right. Our value proposition is a killer combination of utility and simplicity that beats both standalone and integrated applications hands down.
5. Relenta is GTD-compatible. We are big fans of high-output productivity approaches such as David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Kevin Crenshaw’s Total Relaxed Organization. Other tools aren’t flexible enough.
6. You may like Relenta better than Gmail. BTW did you know that according to Google, Gmail sucks 50% more than Outlook? 3.2 million search results vs. 2.2 million.
7. Relenta makes productivity contagious. We grew 500% last year without any paid advertising and even without an affiliate program.
8. Our customers love us. They really love us.
9. Relenta is a holistic solution to your productivity problems. Life is too short for endless life hacks. Hack is a 4-letter word that comes from the German word meaning “someone who makes furniture with an axe.”
10. Relenta gives you so much value that even its modest cost becomes irrelevant. Use our simple ROI calculator to see for yourself (post your results in comments).

I was inspired to do this incredibly interesting exercise by Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. Specifically Chapter 7, The Law of Dharma, or Purpose in Life:

“If money was no concern and you had all the time in the world, what would you do? If you would still do what you currently do, then you are in dharma because you have passion for what you do. How are you best suited to serve humanity? Answer that question, put it into practice and you can generate all the wealth that you want.”

If money was no concern, I would…

Increase the salaries, pay off the debt and return the favors accumulated during years of bootstrapping. 

Give the first year of service for free to startups. Let organizations that help improve lives of other people use Relenta for free. 

Ramp-up our development capacity and complete the already-underway transformation of Relenta into a universal, open communication platform. My vision is to merge the distant worlds of CRM, collaboration and social networks into one hybrid communication channel that will accept as its own email, chat, microblogs, RSS, SMS texts, voice, video, and whatever else comes along tomorrow morning.

Hire an evangelist extraordinaire in every language.

Globalize Relenta’s hosting infrastructure.

Set up a charitable foundation to advance a few social and personal causes in Latvia, the home to Relenta development team. Latvia is a tiny, beautiful, and charming country with uniquely screwed up politics and economy. Its capital Riga had been my home base for the last six years, and I am connected to this place in many curiously intriguing ways.

What would you do if money was no concern?

The word hack implies the lack of finesse and elegance, opposite of effortless ease and harmony. 

Hacking is good if you need to quickly solve specific, one-off problems in your everyday life. These small, incremental improvements in your day-to-day routine will not do if you want to jump the curve and get to the next level of productivity and peace of mind.

That’s where life design comes in. The discipline of life design advocates a holistic, balanced, and planned approach. It begins with discovering your personality and purpose in life, setting goals, developing systems and finding the tools that will take wherever you want to go.

Master the the life design first. Change your habits, find the right tools, and you will need fewer life hacks. Good places to start your life design adventure are here, here and here.

We at Relenta believe in productivity by design. Life is too short for endless hacking.

In the real world, talking to a complete stranger is a challenge. Online we do it all the time. It’s become our second nature. We type from the hip.

Think about it. Every email, every IM, every tweet you send not only forms an impression of you, it also represents an infinity of choices you had. You had a choice to be polite or nasty, forthcoming or reserved, calm or irritated, understanding or pissed, helpful or arrogant.

Your every choice of action and its consequence is your Karma. You reap what you saw. Your entire life is the consequence of choices you made in every moment of the past.

Most people pay their karmic dues, without realizing it. It’s often painful, but in the universe no action goes without reaction.

So if you want peace, be understanding and polite, and not only to your customers. If you want abundance, be generous. If you want to be more productive, stop wasting other people’s time. To be lighthearted and joyful, make a choice to not be defensive and resentful. Attract instead of persuading. And stop sending “Do I know you?” messages in response to the Facebook invites…

I don’t believe in coincidences. Do you?