Welcome to REV23 Cloud

Welcome to REV23 Cloud, the next generation of REV23! It’s been a long journey to get to this point with a lot of work… man, was it a lot of work, which was exciting and fun, but also came with many challenges and delays. Did I mention how much work it was? But, we finally got here and I think you’ll agree it was worth the wait as we are launching the best possible platform and the first layer of our new foundation!

REV23 Cloud is designed for tattoo artists, body piercers, permanent makeup artists and tattoo removal technicians. We are proud to be designed specifically for the body modification industry. In fact, REV23 Desktop is the longest running software package to do it, and while designing our Cloud App we once again made zero compromises. Want to use REV23 in a salon or a pet grooming business? Don’t bother. It’s not for you.

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Our cloud platform is built from the ground up, completely from scratch. Trying to move our existing legacy Windows desktop software to cloud was not realistic. The first lines of code for Desktop were written 17 years ago. A lot has changed in the industry since then, and some decisions that we made early that we just had to live with. Having a blank slate gave us an opportunity to change rethink some of those approaches and reduce some headaches for us in the future.

Aside from the obvious goal of a Cloud platform making REV23 available everywhere, especially iPad where most artists are doing their work these days, as well as any web browser, our primary goal with Cloud was to make it more accessible to everyone! Desktop was designed for the tattoo shops of the 2000’s: medium to large studios with many artists, some counter staff, and maybe a manager or two. Since then, we’ve seen the rise of small private studios, booth renters, convention nomads, studio collectives and more. Desktop was less than streamlined for some of these scenarios. We have ensured that our Cloud platform works great for everyone, whether you’re a solo artist or a multi-studio enterprise!

For the launch version we decided to stick with the basics: digital release forms with solid client and session management. This gave us the best foundation possible, stripping REV23 to its essentials that are required by everyone, allowing us to build back from there!

Next, we needed to focus on changes that have happened in the industry. Health departments across the globe are requiring more information than ever on release forms. Lot numbers and expiration dates on pigment and disposables are not fun to have to track, but we’ve tried to make it as easy as possible for you to record with more planned changes to come!

Another priority for Cloud was to utilize the nature of what a good Cloud platform can and should be! We’ve added support for Webhooks (via Zapier initially, with more options to come later). Put simply, webhooks allow apps to talk to other apps. A basic example of this is when a client (customer) record is created in REV23 you can automatically add them to your Mailchimp or Constant Contact email marketing list, all behind the scenes. This can be done easily and without us having to specifically write an integration to these services. Another very real, put powerful example could be when a tattoo is finished a robot mop starts a job to go clean that artist’s station. Webhooks from other apps can also add data to REV23. For example, a Google Forms form on your website could create a customer profile. With webhooks from QuickBooks, Dropbox, Shopify, Square and many more, there are endless possibilities to make REV23 work for you, or allows you to continue using another platform you enjoy for point of sale, scheduling, etc… but supplement their less than ideal release forms with the best the industry has to offer! Additionally allows you to add features to REV23 that we may not yet have. The first immediate example: “Can it send aftercare instructions via email?” Not right now! But this is easily accomplished with Zapier!

Finally, we wanted our app to have a great flow! Desktop is extremely powerful, but it is not known for its ease of use. There is a bit of a learning curve, and we’ve heard plenty of feedback over the years that its “too complicated” and “too many clicks”. While we don’t necessarily agree fully with those statements, it certainly would be nice if it was easier to get started as well as flow through each stage of your service.

From the minute you sign up for a FREE 10-day trial, we get you started based on how you intend to use REV23. If you are a solo artist that doesn’t need to modify our industry standard release form, you’ll be running instantly!

We spent a lot of time getting the flow right and making the app easy to use and understand. A trend in apps these days is a website that is just wrapped up and delivered to app stores as if it’s an app. Some apps pull this off very well, and it’s all that’s needed. For REV23 we wanted the iPad app to look and behave like an iPad app and the web app to behave like a web app. These are two separate apps experiences, which ensures we deliver a user experience that makes sense on each platform whether you were an artist working on an iPad or counter-staff working at a Windows computer at the front desk. Because they are two separate apps there are some things that may be available on one that are not on the other. One big example of this right now is the Template Designer (how you design your release forms), which is only available on the web app right now.

I am so excited to finally deliver the first release of REV23 Cloud to you all. REV23 Desktop was the first software package to bring paperless release forms to the tattoo industry in 2010. The iPad did not exist at the time REV23 was first released, so we focused on what made sense at the time. I realize that many iPad apps have come and gone in this space, and maybe we’re a bit late to the party, but I am confident that whether you’re new to digital release forms or already using another iPad app, REV23 is unmatched in quality, features and an uncompromising experience for you.

Where do we go from here? Now that the foundation is poured, we can build on it quickly, but we will do so methodically. When speaking of Desktop I often quote Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park: “You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should”. In the early days, I was determined to impress everyone and adding features left and right. Some were great and applied to everyone. Others were very niche, in an already niche space and they complicated the software and thus the experience of other users that didn’t need that functionality. With Cloud, less is more I think, and I can tell you for certain not every feature of REV23 Desktop will come over. Some may be added but much more basic than before but be assured we will never compromise to generalize to make REV23 work other markets. We bleed black and gray (with the occasional color!)

GET STARTED TODAY WITH YOUR FREE 10-DAY TRIAL HERE. Getting started is easy: sign up for your Cloud Studio then download the iPad app! You cannot sign up from within the app itself, so make sure you do that first.

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Even though it has been stated many times, we need to make it clear again, REV23 Cloud is NOT compatible or integrated with our REV23 Desktop software for Windows. Some of you may find switching from Desktop to Cloud an easy decision depending on how much you utilize in our Desktop version. Others may rely on features in Desktop which are not yet or may never be re-implemented.