This weekend a company named Bizodo won the AngelHack NYC Fall 2012 Hackathon. But not for Bizodo, a form automation tool that launched in September out of the ER Accelerator. Instead, the company hacked up a brand new feature called SignupasaService (obviously a play on SoftwareasaService or SaaS) that lets small business and website owners add a few lines of code to their site to implement a fully functional (and quite beautiful) sign up page.
According to Jonathon Ende, Bizodo founder, the idea is to take some grunt work out of the equation for startups, as most new companies want to focus on their product rather than tedious pieces of the puzzle like registration, forgot-password systems, etc.
“Not only is the current process a pain, time-consuming, and inefficient, but it is also not secure, many times leaving your password unencrypted and sometimes even storing your payment info,” said Ende. “SignupasaService allows users to utilize a secure solution whose main focus is enabling a smooth, beautiful and seamless registration and sign in process while also giving them easy tools to manage and analyze their users.”
The service lets users log in with Facebook and Twitter, and even tracks if users are paying through email reminders. On the startup side (or client side), SignupasaService provides user analytics like Last Login, number of sessions, geo-tagging, and even pulls in some social data.
You start by simply creating an account at the site, which is currently accepting beta users, and fill out info such as website, pricing packages, etc. Then, all you have to do is drop the auto-generated embed code onto your site.
If you have paid subscription or registration plans, you can use Stripe Connect to set up a merchant account.
From that moment on, you no longer have to worry about user registration. “Let us worry about making sure it all works while giving you user management tools,” said Ende.
For the next three weeks, the site is in closed beta while Bizodo handles a few tweaks and ensures security. After that, I expect it to be on the to-do lists of many an entrepreneur.
In related news, PhoneMe and Addicaid were the runner ups, and certainly deserve some quick consideration. PhoneMe is a graphical interface for making phone applications. You know, press 1 for payments, press 2 for account info, or hold for a representative. The service could go even further and work for scrappier projects like phone trees. Addicaid is a community resource for addicts by addicts, that lets people struggling with addiction have an online tool to get help outside of the traditional 12-step program. It lets you connect with others in a similar stage of recovery, find meetings, and get some daily inspiration.