Using OneSaas to integrate with Basecamp, Freshbooks and more
Do you manage your business across multiple web apps? Wish they could all talk together? Just as the Babel fish from 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' served as a universal language translator between alien races, OneSaas is an online service for transferring contacts and financial data between multiple web apps. That's right, by acting as a bridge between APIs, it can push new and existing contacts from say, Highrise and Google Contacts, to a Campaign Monitor subscriber list. And you don't even have to stick it in your ear to use it.
Which web apps can you sync with OneSaas?
It's not uncommon for folks to have customer details scattered across multiple web apps. For instance, you might have paying customers in Highrise that you want to invoice in Freshbooks. Additionally, you want to add these same customers to a Campaign Monitor subscriber list, so you can send them post-purchase email newsletters and updates. Exporting and re-importing new and existing contacts/subscribers across two or more services can be a real chore, so OneSaas has done the legwork for you.
With OneSaas, you can automatically push new and existing contacts from one or more of the following apps to a Campaign Monitor subscriber list:
Basecamp
Business Catalyst
Freshbooks
Google Contacts
Highrise
Saasu
EventBrite (Coming soon!)
SalesForce (Coming soon!)
WordPress (Coming soon!)
In addition, OneSaas' Financial Management accounts can be used to migrate and synchronize orders and transactions between apps like Business Catalyst, FreshBooks, OneSaas, and Saasu. We'll focus simply on managing your contacts for now.
Getting started
Setting up OneSaas to push contacts from the web app of your choice to a Campaign Monitor subscriber list is fairly simple. And don't worry, it's all documented within OneSaas itself. In this example, we'll race through getting an existing 37signals' Highrise account to integrate with Campaign Monitor, so buckle up.
Say you have an existing Highrise account and list of contacts:
The first thing you'll need is your Highrise account's API token. Now, lets say you already have a OneSaas account. In the 'My Cloud' tab, create a 'new connection' by selecting 'Highrise HQ' and adding your API token and domain name when prompted:
So far, so good. Now, lets do the same for Campaign Monitor. There's no need to get your API key in advance - OneSaas displays your Campaign Monitor account page in the app, so you can get your key on the fly. You'll also be given the option to select which Campaign Monitor subscriber list you want to push new Highrise contacts to.
If everything has gone to plan, your 'My Cloud' tab in OneSaas should look like this:
All up, this process takes no more than 5-10 minutes and only needs to be done once.
Pushing contacts to a subscriber list
The neat thing about One Saas is that you can set-and-forget. Either you can wait for OneSaas to push new contacts to your Campaign Monitor subscriber list on an hourly/daily basis (depending on your plan), or you can click 'Synchronize' under 'Active connections' to manually push your Highrise contacts to Campaign Monitor. You probably want to do this on your first run.
And well, the bottom line is that it simply works. After clicking 'Synchronize', our Highrise contacts were automatically added to our Campaign Monitor subscriber list of choice:
Note that at this point, it's possible to transfer names and email addresses via OneSaas, but not custom fields. We'll put this one on our wish list to the developer.
Our verdict
The skinny is that OneSaas does as labelled on the tin. It's also fairly easy to setup, thanks to a fair amount of in-app documentation. Plus this setup process only needs to be performed once for as long as your account details remain the same, as OneSaas will push contacts indefinitely until told to do otherwise.
OneSaas has a range of simple pricing plans, based on the number of contacts you wish to synchronize, how often you want synchronization to happen and the number of applications you want to connect. There's even a free plan to help you kick the tyres at absolutely no cost. Included is in-app email support, as well as support channels via Skype and Twitter (@OneSaas).
Perhaps most endearingly, OneSaas are Australian-made. And as we know, all the best web apps find their roots in the surf and sun Down Under!
On the downside, it's only possible to synchronize your contacts with one Campaign Monitor subscriber list. Also, the transfer of custom fields is not yet supported, so you can't segment your single subscriber list by whatever contact details you have stored in Highrise, or elsewhere. OneSaas plan to support custom fields sometime in the future, but if multiple list or custom field support is something you're specifically after, please feel free to let us and the developers know in the comments.
We've been in touch with the friendly folks at OneSaas for a few months now, so its been great to watch this service move out of beta and onto the public stage. Now it's in the wild, it seems that they're not planning to rest on their laurels any time soon. Alongside further improvements to their service, integrations with WordPress, SalesForce and EventBrite also in the works.
So, if you're after an automated way to push your contacts from apps like Freshbooks and Highrise to a Campaign Monitor list, then give OneSaas a go. It's a simple, affordable solution to what has long been a tricky problem... And you don't have to like fish to use it.
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