Rest Easy, Buzzer

When we stopped overpaying Bell for a landline in favour of only overpaying Rogers for cell service (what a country we live in), by far our biggest logistical hurdle was making sure that Carin and I both had access to our building’s buzzer so that either one of us could open the door if the other wasn’t around. In that post, I explained how I had stumbled onto a service called Easy Buzzer, and did a bit of excited raving about how promising it was and how nice the people were. Years later, all of that is still true…but not for much longer. Well, I’m sure the people will still be lovely, but they’re going to have to be lovely somewhere else, unfortunately.

A few nights ago, because she is a human calendar, it crossed Carin’s mind that it would soon be time for me to pay Easy Buzzer again. So when I got an email from them last night, I thought it was just going to be a renewal reminder. But since in my experience renewal reminders don’t tend to carry subject lines like “Easy Buzzer is Shutting Down”, that thought was quickly put aside and replaced with oh no, that sucks, what are we going to do now?

I suppose the first thing we’ll do is take a look at Ringo as suggested in the goodbye email and hope that we can talk about it without breaking into song every time.

Early returns suggest that we cannot.

And if anyone else has any alternatives or experiences with Ringo, we’d love to hear them, of course.

But for now, a big thanks to Daniel Fraser and everyone else who had a hand in Easy Buzzer over the years. Thank you for being so open to feedback and responsive when we needed you. We didn’t need you much, which is a testament to how well your system worked. It was truly the definition of set it and forget it. When there were problems, we could always count on them being our building not having its shit together. Whatever may have gone wrong with you folks was always cleared up before we even noticed it. I’m sorry to see it end, but congratulations on a nice run for a service that’s going to be hard to replace.

Hello,

Unfortunately due to changing personal circumstances, I will no longer be able to support the Easy Buzzer and EveryDoor projects. Easy Buzzer and EveryDoor will be shut down permanently on April 1 2024. Please prepare as soon as you can to change your buzzer phone number at your building away from your Easy Buzzer phone number. The number will be deactivated and your buzzer system will no longer function. Billing will stop on March 1. In April, any yearly payments will be refunded for the remaining months. I suggest Ringo (useringo.com) as an alternative which has similar capability as Easy Buzzer, but there are many alternatives that are easy to find with Google.

If you would like to shut down your Easy Buzzer account now, prior to the end-of-service, you can do so here: https://www.easybuzzer.com/account/deactivate

I started Easy Buzzer in 2012 as a simple way to share the ability to answer and use my buzzer with my roommate living in Vancouver. Since then, Easy Buzzer has been used to buzz-in many thousands of food orders, party guests, students, short-term-rental guests, cleaners, dog walkers, and more. Years ago, we raised a small angel round of funding and launched a business product called EveryDoor, which helped companies manage AirBNB rentals and small hotels around North America.

Ultimately, I will be unable to continue to meet the obligations of running a reliable, secure, and useful service without investing a significant effort for which I don’t have the resources anymore. So, the best path will unfortunately be to shutter the service with enough time for everyone to change out their phone numbers before the call systems stop functioning. 

Thank you to everyone who encouraged, guided, and invested money or effort into the company. But most of all thank you to the customers, some of whom have used Easy Buzzer over 10 years, for entrusting us with the security and capability of part of your home. We had some highly supportive customers over the years who helped with testing and accessibility that helped make the experience better for everyone.

Please direct any questions to help@easybuzzer.com which will be monitored until shutdown and refund activities have completed. 

Sincerely,

Daniel Fraser