37 Signals just launched a new chat product called Campfire. They are targeting “easy” and it’s easy, alright, easy to see why.

It’s one of those drop it in your browser third party hosted chat solutions, when open source chat solutions exist. A tough market to compete in, especially if targeting those who already have their own server space.

And then you look at the Campfire pricing. 4 people for free? That might work for a really tiny group or nuclear family. Hey, nothing good is free in life, right? I can get with that thinking, 37 Signals at least has a business plan unlike some of these Web Pooh-Point … Oh companies, so let’s look at the commercial plans.

10 people for $12/month and 20 people for $24/month. Still doesn’t work for a group of any size so you have to look at their premium tier. Their max, the Cadillac plan. Which is?

$49/month for 40 simultaneous chatters. My god, these days you can get an entire dedicated server for that price! They’ve got be kidding. I want to know what they are smoking around the base … camp.

I don’t care how cool this is in the browser, how you can create a chat in 10 seconds, the pricing is a deal breaker for groups of any size. This reminds me of some of the corporate presence website deals out there which really are about raping companies that don’t do their homework about other viable and much more cost effective options.

Sure enough, people in the comments at TechCrunch are also keying into the pricing.

If your company wants chat, you can throw up an IRC server with Java applet that runs in browser for folks for a couple bucks a month and support hundreds of users. There are plenty of companies that specialize in setting up IRC servers which are meant to chat. Almost every chat app I’ve seen that is in the browser has sucked for performance. IRC was engineered for chat and even it has limitations.

But don’t listen to me, go try Campfire yourself. It will easy liberate itself inside your wallet.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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