Email productivity tool AwayFind announced today that it has closed its seed round of $800,000, led by 500 Startups and CAP Ventures, with participation from several angels, including Ben Lilienthal, Anton Sutton and Amir Banifatemi.
The company is also launching its new product for business, available now in the Google Apps Marketplace. This new service includes an integrated Gmail gadget, new subscription plans starting at $10 per month and instant alerts.
In case you’re unfamiliar with AwayFind, the company serves the oddly overlooked, but insanely practical need to address the “email overload” situation. Instead of constantly checking your inbox for important messages, AwayFind lets you configure when and how to alert you of urgent emails, using notifications that are sent out through SMS, phone calls (yes, old school calls!) or smartphone apps running on the iPhone or Android devices.
Obviously, the target market for AwayFind’s revenue monetization options is the business customer, which is why today’s Google Apps offering makes sense. This more professional-grade service includes an administration control panel that enables I.T. to provision AwayFind for Google Apps users, check on account issues and manage the system. And as before, AwayFind uses oAuth for Google Apps email checking, and is fully PCI compliant.
Google Apps users themselves are able to set up AwayFind right within their Gmail in a process that take around a minute, the company says. Once integrated, users will see new links alongside their email messages that let them quickly follow a person or topic just by clicking.
Company-wide billing options are available, plus there are new plans for non-Google Apps users, like the $5/month personal plan (down from $15/month previously) which sends out alerts within 5 minutes. Monthly Pro plans and a Max plan are available too, for those who need faster alerts or who want to configure multiple email accounts.
More details are available here.
