Review: BeejiveIM
Author: Jeff Noble | Posted under: Reviews, Social NetworkingTags: aim, chat, messaging, palringo, Utilities
BeejiveIM v1.0 | Published by Beejive, Inc. | Via App Store | $15.99 | Released: 9-26-08
Overview
BeejiveIM is yet another entrant to the world of instant messaging on the iPhone. It’s pretty crowded in there with apps like Palringo, AIM, fring, WebMessenger, MobileChat… you get the picture. So how is BeejiveIM different? Well, it continues running even after you’ve exited the app, sending you push notifications of new chat messages via your push email account. That one feature may entice many to take the $16 plunge.
Functionality
BeejiveIM is an attractive app. It is clean and well-designed. There’s nothing to its functionality that is confusing or unintuitive. You can jump in and begin using it almost immediately, if you’re familiar with chat apps. If not…
You’ll be presented with a screen right up front asking you to configure your IM accounts. It has a wide selection of options. After that, you’ll see your buddy list from all your accounts. You have the option of customizing your “view” screen - you can view by account or by group.
The one feature that this app seeks to promote above all others at the App Store, is its ability to keep you logged in to your messaging clients. I tested this with a friend by engaging in a chat, logging out of the app to make a phone call, and then logging back in.
Upon my return there was a little “1″ balloon next to the previous chat, indicating that I had a new message from him. I called him and asked if I remained online during my absence from the app, and he affirmed that I did. So that part does work. However, the app’s promo claims that it sends a push email notifying you of new messages while you’re away from the app. I’ve had random success with these. Sometimes I get them; sometimes I don’t.
There’s also a feature that allows you to email the contents of the chat. This is very nice. You tap on the name of the person you’re chatting with, and you can either email it or delete it.
At first, I did have some problems setting up my AIM chat account. I kept getting the error above. After multiple attempts, it finally went through, and I’ve had no problems since.
Review
About two weeks ago, I would have been raving over the ability to remain in chat session while exiting the app, however, I still would have griped about the price. With the advent of Backgrounder for jailbroken iPhones, any app can stay running in the background now. With Backgrounder being free, and many of the other messaging clients free as well, I can’t justify the high cost of this app.
It works well and does exactly what it purports to do. In addition, it also has a few other bells and whistles like being able to edit your buddy lists from the app and set customizable alerts and vibrate settings. The BeejiveIM site promises that future features will include group chats, emoticons and full hyperlink support.
The price is simply prohibitive for me to be able to recommend this app to anyone when you can get the same basic features for $2.99, or free in other apps.
Summary
Don’t get me wrong; BeejiveIM is a great entry to the world of iPhone IM. If it was priced reasonably, it would be in the top 2-3 apps for this function. It’s full-featured, easy to use, and well designed, but the price is simply unreasonable. It’s almost as if the BeejiveIM folks decided they wanted to make all their money up front from the sale of this app.
It concerns me about future versions. How are they going to remain competitive and support the app if other apps are cheaper and have the same features? What if another app incorporates the background feature? And what will customers who paid $14.99 do when BeejiveIM lowers their price to be competitive? Will BeejiveIM, like Apple, be thoughtful enough to issue a partial refund or App Store credit?
Usability: 4 / 5
Value: 0 / 5
Utility: 4 / 5
Aesthetics: 4 / 5
What’s with the keyboard? Mine doesn’t look like that, this looks like ass compared to the default UI.
I’d definitely give this app a few more value points for the non-jailbroken crowd. I paid the $16 and I’m very happy with it. Until we get real push notifications, I think this as good as it gets.
Bryan on October 12th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I’m sorry. This reviewer is an idiot. Why? He made up his mind about this application before even reviewing it, and this impacts not just the “Value” rating, but all others.
This applications includes many bells & whistles: for instance, it is possible to set the priority of your Jabber client so as to not steal focus from a desktop client (or, indeed, to steal focus); when you’re talking to several persons, passing from one conversation to another is as easy as taping on the title bar to see (in translucent display) the other active chats, and how many messages they’ve got going.
Other beautifully well thought out features include the typing bubble: instead of wasting yet another line of precious screen real-estate, when you type a message in a conversation, the message appears as a translucent bubble over the conversation (which remains quite readable).
Etc., etc.
This reviewer missed the whole point: this application does not run in the background. Instead, every connection to the IM services goes through Beejive’s own servers. These servers act as a “buffer” to store messages when (a) you close the application (b) when you are disconnected because of you lost reception (happens; often). In case (b), for instance, when you’re riding on a train and you hop from tower to tower, losing signal every once in a while, Beejive makes sure that these disconnection/reconnections are completely transparent, and no message is lost, which is not the case with other messengers.
The high cost of this application comes from the fact that Beejive is promising to let you use their servers as a proxy—without ever rebilling you—until they run out of business or stop supporting the application (given that the Blackberry equivalent has been out and supported for over a year, I’d say that they are pretty serious about sticking around). Alternatively, they could also finance the servers’ costs by using even more screen real estate and put ads in BeejiveIM, which I would not like at all.
An IM application with Backgrounder would first require you to jailbreak your iPhone (and lose warranty), would leech your battery like crazy, and finally, would not be worth a dime in case you receive anything will it’s trying to reconnect.
Don’t get me wrong, this blog is my first stop for iPhone app reviews, but on this particular application, the reviewer was just ticked off by the price. My own rating is 5/5.
Jeremie L. on October 12th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
@Jeremie L.: Actually Beejive works well with backgrounder, and I’m using it daily without a drain on battery. It also displays badge indicators on the springboard when new messages arrive. I agree with you, I think the value of the app is higher than Jeff has indicated. I think the app covers the missing functionality that Apple should have included to begin with. I think it is still slightly overpriced. I think 5.99 or even 9.99 would be a better price range.
BeejiveIM w/ Backgrounder
Nic Elder on October 13th, 2008 at 11:24 am
[...] our full review: “BeejiveIM continues running even after you’ve exited the app, sending you push [...]
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