It’s not often you come across 2 online applications that compete directly against each other, yet are light years apart in terms of functionality, useability and overall first impression.
I tried out Blinksale quite a number of months back, and I was mightily impressed. Although I wasn’t in the market for an online invoicing service at the time, being a Web 2.0 application, I had to give it a try.
Push on a couple of months, and I was now looking for an online invoicing app. I read about Blinksale going into version 2 and thought, their new features sound really cool, but isn’t there something else out there? Roll on Simplybill.
Signing up was probably the only part that worked for me. From there on it has been a royal pain trying to get anything done. Firstly I specified that the currency I use is South African Rand, which Simplybill seems not to worry about much. Never once is my beloved ZAR used. Everything has defaulted to U.S. Dollars.
Trying to create a recurring invoice was pretty neat. With the use of AJAX to create new invoice lines, that part worked pretty well. Except for trying to view the invoice once it was finished. It just never loaded. I wanted the invoice emailed to me. I’m still waiting for the postman to deliver it.
That was the last time I’m trying Simplybill. Painful, powerless invoice management. The problem now is I’m recieving emails about my test invoice being overdue. I need to cancel this account before it gets out of hand, but the problem is, I cannot login! Did you know that your Simplybill username is case-sensitive? jbagley and JBagley are 2 different users!
So Im guessing you asking “Well whats so great about Blinksale then?”. The answer to that is that Blinksale works! It does everything that Simplybill “says” it can do, as well as many extra’s like being able to pay invoices via Paypal. There are a number of custom invoices styles as well as being able to design a one yourself. Also, sending, emailing, printing etc all work! Unlike some other invoicing application I know about.
So if you ever in the market for an online invoicing application that looks good, is really functional, and gives you value for money, definitely give Blinksale a try.
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