You are running a business and you have the time to create your own version of this app?
That's excellent. For me however, there is hardly time to comment on Hacker News :), let alone code my own CRM when I can get one for $30/month/user (at least for now).
Cost/Benefit I guess. Its not worth my time to code this up myself, but in your business, It might be.
I love your pricing. Or what I initially thought it was
One plan every feature - (correctly) gives me the impression that if I pay $30/month, I'll get everything your app has to offer.
Extend your reach for less(or Need Less, Pay Less) - I initially thought that this was a feature-limited lower priced tier of your app (for small startups or freelancers for example)
This made it seem as though your "One Plan" was cleverly pushing the plan you want most people to join, whilst still making lesser plans available for those who cant afford the "one plan".
This is a great because it makes me feel comfortable paying for the "one plan" (the most expensive plan) without feeling as if I'm paying too much or missing out on any key features (by choosing the lower plan). I feel you are charging me fairly for what I'll use.
And because you have your needs-based up-sells, you left room to increase revenue from heavy users.
This is excellent and I will definitely split-test this in my business against the traditional pricing grid.
This is a cool project. But don't let the fact that you are building an app distract from the main goal (building a community).
I would suggest you first go to as many universities as you can, get their computer science students on-board, and then connect to their alumni network.
And start organising meetups, hackathons and other events. You need to start a small fire and it will kindle.
A simple website is good enough and you can start today. http://www.hackcampus.io/ is doing something similar in the UK.
A directory might not be so useful at this point.
I would also love to see the Tech space in Africa mature. I expect great things to come out of that continent, and building a community Is definitely a great place to start.
I found quora a few times through google, and i HATED them because i could only see answer 1. I HATED QUORA soo much.
After signing up, I realised that its much more than just a QnA website.
Quora is a great place to find interesting discussions about a wide variety of topics.
The QnA part is mostly an excuse for domain experts to blow you away with interesting content.
its a community where experts can discuss interesting topics in their field, and I believe the "google spam" thing is helping keep the community this way for 2 reasons:
1. People coming from Google are expecting a "yahoo answers" type of website (public opinion, not expert advice). They want their answer and they are out.
If they could see all the results, the trolls (of which there are many) they would probably be tempted to signup with a fake account, just to add their throll-y whimsical answer or comment and never return.
2. If you go through the pain of being on-boarded, you probably care about the topic enough to become an engaged member of the community. Which will help maintain the quality of the website.
Failing that, 2Checkout and http://www.fastspring.com/ are really good and 2Checkout works in many countries.
The other option would be to just get your own merchant account and use something like WorldPay