We have revised our business model according to your feedback. You have told us about complexity and all the calculation needed with previous pricing plans. As a result, we designed a simple pricing model with only two packages: basic and premium.

Flowr basic version remains free with limited feature set and 5 user limit. We have slightly changed our Premium model which now starts at $59 and includes up to 15 users, premium features and priority support. We still offer 50% discount for NGO’s and 20% discount for upfront payment for 12 months.

We are staying focused on SME segment since we are too small to serve large corporates. However, we have been cooperating with some international consulting and technology partners for implementing Flowr locally as part of their core business focus. Feel free to contact us, if you are interested in partnership.

Our group of users and beta testers has provided us with encouraging feedback on Flowr Mobile so we are ready to open it up to everyone. We’re sticking to beta label for now although we are sure you will have a great experience.

Flowr Mobile is perfectly designed for small screens. It’s easy to read and easy to tap. We designed it to be a pleasure to use while on the go.

Stay in touch with your team. With Flowr Mobile you can collaborate with your team anytime and anywhere. Post new messages, add comments, like and bookmark messages for later response. You might also like to check off to-do items, vote for new ideas, answer questions and view attachments.

No apps to install. It’s HTML 5. You don’t need to download an app, just type http://m.theflowr.com in your mobile browser, login with your email / password and you’re ready to go! If you are a Google Apps user, you need to setup your mobile password first (go to profile settings / password).

Flowr Mobile has been tested on the following devices: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, Motorola Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Desire and BlackBerry Torch. It works on devices running iOS 4+, Android 2.1+ or BlackBerry 6.

We are excited to announce our new release!  We have fine-tuned Flowr platform to suit the demands of our users to develop even more simple and effective interface.

Key changes have been made on reorganization of user interface and removing unnecessary elements, based on your feedback, analytics and tracking methods via Mixpanel.

What’s new in this version?

• centralized navigation within left sidebar
• additional filters for messages and minimized sharing box
• functionality to import contacts: Outlook, Apple mail and Gmail contacts
• complete re-organization of settings, new templates and custom themes
• weekly & monthly summary
• several performance and scalability improvements
• new translation system improved for faster translation process

Several technology improvements on our platform will enable us to support our growth and get ready for exciting milestones on our roadmap. We have the ambition to be really global and as of today Flowr already speaks 12 languages and new translations have been adding constantly.

Our passion when developing Flowr is still about the design, simplicity and improved productivity. We believe that enterprise software should be more social to become well accepted among employees. And this is how we plan to evolve Flowr.

What are your thoughts about new Flowr? We would like to hear you! Speak to us, we would appreciate your feedback.

Flowr is proudly learning new languages and to make it even easier, we improved our translation tool. What’s new? It’s faster. Translation update takes only one day. It’s even more simple and everyone can do it. No training is needed and everything works with the online interface.

Here’s how you can do it:

Flowr has learned twelve languages so far, recently français and 中文 and we would like to add many others. Do you want Flowr to speak your language? You can help us with translations. Ask for access to our translation system. 

Updating Flowr we created some new themes as well. We know that your workplace needs to fit your personality or at least be likeable to get your work done. Online collaboration with your team should be done in a nice environment also. We often post nice things on our office walls or even paint it so why not paint the online wall? In Flowr, you can do it with a click.

Currently, there are 18 themes at your disposal with different color schemes, shapes and motifs. Take a look and pick up the one that you think will refresh your desktop and inspire you at your work.

New refreshing themes. More will be added in the future.

Activity flow view with different backgrounds. Set yours by going to Settings menu – click Settings tab – Themes. Choose your theme and click save. Which one is your favorite?

Changes in communication brought by social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn just to name a few are reflected in collaboration and internal communication as well. Today business is “social”, encouraging the sharing of knowledge and experience among members of a company just like in a group on Facebook, as written by La Repubblica, the Italian daily which recently published an article about business social software mentioning Flowr as one of them. The question is no longer whether a company should limit employees’ access to social networks but which social network should the company use to improve social interaction within and between teams. And according to Gartner, to which La Repubblica refers, social communication and collaboration are top of the top ten technology strategies that companies would do well to adopt in 2011.

According to Enterprise Irregulars and The 2.0 Adoption Council technology is the leading industry adopting “social business” followed by financial services, healthcare/medical and manufacturing. Let’s see how Flowr users are distributed across industries.

Software companies present nearly half of our users followed by media & advertising (13%), design & creative and healthcare (both 9%).

And which are the areas where social collaboration especially thrives*?

1. Industries high in either knowledge work or critical/time-sensitive coordination.
2. Organizations that are already networked across silos or receive outsized benefits from faster and better information sharing, discovery, and connectedness.
3. Increasingly urgent, unmet business needs around better communication and collaboration.

Have you adopted social business already?

* Source: Enterprise Irregulars

Flowr will soon be presented with updated interface that will make it even easier to find and organize messages inside your networks. New interface will be ready before the end of March and you’ll be the first to know. Should you have any suggestions regarding interface changes please let us know – you can send us email, comment on this post or talk to us on twitter and facebook.

New languages are on the way

Flowr interface is currently available in six languages – English, German, Italian, Brazilian-Portuguese, Russian and Slovenian. Thanks to our cooperative users from all over the world we are constantly updating it with translations. Flowr will soon speak French and Polish interface is on the way as well. If Flowr doesn’t speak your language yet you can help us with translation or suggest which language we should introduce next.

Your feedback is our commitment

Flowr’s user experience is developing according to our users’ feedback and suggestions so we plan to continue our development with your engagement. We really appreciate your support so our promise is not only to improve our product but also to get back to you with tools for improving collaboration and information flow in your team. With cooperation of our team I will take care of interaction with our users*. We want to stay in contact with you wherever you feel most comfortable so we will be introducing new channels for you to get involved.

* I’ve joined the Flowr team as communication consultant, passionately dedicated to interaction with users as well as website and online solutions usability. I will take care for social media and other communications in Flowr team. – petra

We are happy to announce that desktop notifications for new messages on Flow are now available also for Internet Explorer.

Unfortunately, Internet Explorer has its own rules for popups, which by default do not allow these notifications to show unless Internet Explorer window is on the top.

To show new message notifications even when other programs are open, please do the following:
1. On Tools menu, choose Internet Options.

2. Open Security tab. For these modified settings to not affect all websites, choose Trusted sites first, then click Sites and add your Flowr network to the list.

Now click on Custom level button. Scroll down to Miscellaneous category and find option named Allow script-initiated windows without without size or position constraints. Choose Enable under it and click OK.

Due to these security limitations in IE, you will not see notifications if your IE window is minimized or you have another IE tab open.

Flowr desktop notifications are also available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.