SoonCall
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Anna Scandella

SoonCall - Manage your friendships and call your friends more often

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SoonCall is the mobile app that helps you manage your friendships and call your friends more often. With smart reminders and catchup tracking, SoonCall will help you feel more connected, be a better friend and feel closer than ever.

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Anna Scandella
Hunter
📌
I have lived abroad for several years and was lucky enough to make friends from all over the world. Life does get in the way, though, and it’s easy to forget how important it is to keep in touch with people—this app is exactly what I needed! My TLDR: SoonCall is a friendship tracker that helps you manage past and upcoming phone call catch-ups with friends. It's a bit like a journal and scheduling tool combined for tracking friendships with those in different cities. I know Mark personally and have enjoyed watching SoonCall grow from the day he first pitched the idea to me to the day he and the team prepped the first app store release. Now, I can finally start using it to track my long-distance friendships, and I'm excited to see how the roadmap will evolve going forward. Here are a couple of my favourite features so far: - getting that immediate visual feedback of "Wow, has it actually been that long since we last spoke?" - adding notes after a catch-up so that I actually remember important details next time we speak.
Ksenia Meshkova
@annascandella congrats! That's so cute, I usually forget to call my family because of work.. Best of luck!!
Mark Houghton
Maker
Thanks for the hunt @annascandella! It's good to hear what features are speaking to you the most so far, especially since you've been following along with SoonCall's journey from the beginning. Visibility on when you last spoke, and the ability to note take are an important part of the app and I want to keep improving it further in the upcoming releases. I'm looking forward to hearing what others are most excited about too, so if you're reading this share your thoughts here on our launch page 📝 I'll be here to discuss and will make notes for our roadmap! Thanks again Anna, it means a lot to have your support as we work on making long-distance friendships that every bit easier 🌍
@annascandella Big congrats on your launch! Wishing you a successful and fulfilling journey. What’s been the most rewarding part of the process so far?
Anna Scandella
Hunter
Hey @kjosephabraham! The hard work was all @mark_rsh's. I just thought it'd be a great product to share here, as I'm loving using it. I'm sure he could share what the most rewarding part of the process has been, though!
Mark Houghton
Maker
Hi @annascandella @kjosephabraham! Thanks for the question, I think for me the most rewarding thing for me so far has been working on a problem that really speaks to me and to others I know. I've enjoyed building on early feedback from our beta users, with the knowledge that we're making SoonCall better for them personally!
Stefans Keiss
The immediate visual feedback feature sounds really useful. How do you handle data privacy and security for the users' information?
Mark Houghton
Maker
Thanks @memphys_sk great question! In the current version of the app there are no accounts, so your data is local and never needs to leave your device. Data around your friendships should be yours, so there's also no plans to change that in future! For performance and anonymised analytics we're using Amplitude Any other questions drop me a message 😄 I've also put together a privacy policy if it's helpful: https://sooncall.com/privacy-policy
Kyrylo Silin
SoonCall sounds like a great app for maintaining long-distance friendships. Questions: - How do the smart reminders work, and can users customize the frequency of reminders for different friends? - How does the catchup tracking feature function? Congrats on the launch, Anna!
Mark Houghton
Maker
@kyrylosilin thanks for the kind words, and great questions! - Every friend is unique, so you could set your preference for Jane to be "Weekly" and John to be "Every 6 Months". The home screen displays smart suggestions for who might be ready for a catch up next, based on frequency and past catchups, but the goal is to continue to make this more intelligent in future releases - Catchup tracking is a place for you to check in on a recent conversation and add in any personal reflections (e.g. how it made you feel and add notes on what you chatted about). Every catchup is collected into that friends history so you can remember what you were speaking about and when
Andreas Sohns
The idea of personal CRM for friendships is great. It's so important to keep in touch with friends despite physical distance. The smart reminders and catchup tracking are super helpful.
Mark Houghton
Maker
Thanks for sharing @andreas_sohns, I'm glad to hear you like it! 🔥
André J
I need this! But finding time that fits is often the issue. If you schedule it on a cadence, life happens and one or both are unavailable. If its sponantious, then eighter or both are definitely unavailable 🤦
Mark Houghton
Maker
I'm glad SoonCall resonates with you @sentry_co! Scheduling and spontaneity definitely feel like two opposite ends of the spectrum and you raise valid concerns for both 😄 We've opted for "light-touch" one-off scheduling that means being more intentional about each scheduled catch up in the hope that it's more likely to happen. Putting scheduling aside for a moment, my goal is first to help people build the habit of reaching out to people regularly, since that's often a big hurdle for many. However, we have been looking at ways we could encourage more spontaneous catchups that account for each person's availability too! We do have a couple ideas in the works for this, so stay tuned...
Kehui Guo
This is something that I have been dreaming of for a long time!!! Thank you for making this happen!!! Managing long-distance friendships can be so exhausting sometimes and I need some ways to re-connect with my friends every now and then! The only worry I have is how to quickly import how those contact information in, seems like a lot of work🫠 But i really love the idea, congrats on the launch of SoonCall!!!
Mark Houghton
Maker
@kehui_guo thank you for the kind words! I appreciate your feedback too, I feel like contact importing needs to strike a good balance between being as easy as possible while still offering customisation. One thing I'd recommend is just adding a few of your closest friends first while you familiarise yourself and then gradually add people over time. In SoonCall we've - added a contact picker to auto-fill some details from your contact book, - broken down importing it into small steps - and made many of the fields optional If you get chance to try it out, it would be great to hear how you get on and which parts feel like the most work 😊
Tony Han
💡 Bright idea
Love this idea, and honestly, I used Notion for part of this before, and it wasn't easy to set up. This looks much easier. Though, I wonder if users can just send a message to start? Congrats on building this cool product @mark_rsh and team!
Mark Houghton
Maker
Thanks so much @tonyhanded 🚀 I'd love to keep encouraging more phone calls as personally text based communication doesn't give me that same sense of connection. That being said, I think you make a great point about that initial reach out being a message - it can be less intrusive when you know to expect a call! We're actually looking into offering other modes of communication for those who'd like that.
Tony Han
@mark_rsh I totally get what you mean. A phone call is worth a lot. Though, I typically ask my friends to hang out via msg, so I feel that's even better!
Josie OY
You've created the app I’ve always wanted to make! BTW, I have a funny but totally reasonable idea: this app would be perfect for players managing their roster of romantic interests. Haha
Mark Houghton
Maker
Hi @josie_oy, glad to hear this is something you’ve also been interested in! It’s a good point, there’s a bunch of potential applications for relationship management such as dating and networking (sometimes referred to as a personal CRM) The problem is sometimes this doesn’t feel very “personal” when thinking of close friends I’d really love SoonCall to help people in the “friend-space” first - those with friends that they don’t want to drift apart from because of physical distance But always happy to hear about new directions to explore so thank you! 😄
Anastasia Chakileva
💎 Pixel perfection
Congratulations on the launch! How does SoonCall tailor its reminders to ensure they are meaningful and not intrusive, and are there any features that help users personalize their interactions based on their friends' preferences?
Mark Houghton
Maker
Hi @anastasia_chakileva_, thanks for your support! I agree that reminders can quickly become intrusive if not managed well, so we do a few things to manage this in the current version of SoonCall: 1. "Suggestions" that can be seen on the home screen. These are visible whenever you open the app, and aren't notifications. 2. "Catchup notifications" that are set by you based on when you would like reminding to catch up with a friend. These can be personalised per friend so you could set a reminder for Jane, a different reminder for Alex, and no reminder for Robin. 3. "Birthday notifications" these can currently be turned on / off for reminding you of all known birthdays, but I'm currently working on some improvements to this to let you personalise it further depending on your preferences. We've also got some exciting changes to our reminders coming soon so that could let you optionally add more date reminders per friend (e.g. anniversaries, childrens birthdays etc.)!
Mark Houghton
Maker
Hey Hunters and Makers! 👋 I'm Mark, the founder of SoonCall - the app for long distance friendship The journey to creating SoonCall has been an interesting one. I'm currently based in the UK, working as a mobile developer at Pocketworks. Over the years, I've had the opportunity to work in software development as well as tech consultancy and research. Throughout these experiences, I've been fortunate to meet incredible people from all over the world. However, as we've scattered across the globe, it's been far too easy for life to get in the way of keeping in touch with these friends over distance. This struggle was the spark that ignited SoonCall. SoonCall is born from a personal need - a tool to help reconnect with loved ones across distances. It's designed to make maintaining long distance friendships easier and more meaningful. Here's some highlights of what SoonCall offers: ✅ Visibility of your catchup frequency, motivating you to stay in touch ✅ Catchup and birthday reminders to reach out, so you never lose touch unintentionally ✅ Friend notes, giving you a space to jot down conversation highlights, ensuring you remember the important stuff. ✅ Simple calendar view for scheduling and viewing your upcoming catch-ups calls We're excited to launch on Product Hunt and would love your feedback! If you're dealing with similar challenges in keeping up with far-flung friends and family, I'd love you to give SoonCall a try and let me know how we can make it better for you. I'll be here in the discussion to answer any questions about our launch, but otherwise you can also connect with me directly on LinkedIn, or check us out on Instagram for more updates and insights into maintaining long-distance relationships. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback! Finally, a big thanks to the rest of the team @judit_salvado @lbeldon and @tobinharris for all their amazing work, and to @annascandella for hunting us and her ongoing support 💚
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