Our Story
35 years of building software
that people actually use.
From the first graphical BBS for Windows in 1993, to one of the first email servers with a GUI, to a live chat platform that became the enterprise standard — we've been solving hard problems from Tulsa, Oklahoma since before the internet went mainstream.
"I've been building communication software since modems ran at 2400 baud. Excalibur BBS, MailMax, SightMax, ChatBeacon, PictureData - the technology keeps changing, but the problem never does: people need to connect, and the tools should get out of the way."
— Eric Weber, Founder & CEO, SmartMax Software
SmartMax Software, Inc. is the company behind ChatBeacon — and a string of pioneering software products that spans three decades. Founded by Eric Weber in Tulsa, Oklahoma, SmartMax has consistently shipped products that arrived before their time.
A graphical BBS when the world was still text-only. A Windows email server when Unix controlled the internet. A visual product search engine built decades before "AI" became a buzzword. And now, an AI-powered customer engagement platform trusted by financial institutions, healthcare providers, and enterprises worldwide.
We're privately held, profitable, and deliberately independent. No VC board. No pressure to ship before it's ready. Just a team that's been building software long enough to know that the best products come from solving real problems for real people.
A graphical BBS when the world was still text-only. A Windows email server when Unix controlled the internet. A visual product search engine built decades before "AI" became a buzzword. And now, an AI-powered customer engagement platform trusted by financial institutions, healthcare providers, and enterprises worldwide.
We're privately held, profitable, and deliberately independent. No VC board. No pressure to ship before it's ready. Just a team that's been building software long enough to know that the best products come from solving real problems for real people.
The Timeline
Three decades of firsts -
all from Tulsa.
Every era of computing, SmartMax was there building something new. Here's the full story.
~1990
PictureData™ — The Jewelry Engine
A Tulsa jeweler needed to catalog thousands of rings, necklaces, and gemstones by shape, material, color, cut, and aesthetic — attributes no standard inventory system could handle. Eric Weber engineered one of the industry's earliest product-classification systems, tagging each item with dozens of visual and material attributes. It was called PictureData.
Why it matters: PictureData was built long before AI became mainstream. It indexed thousands of product attributes — shape, material, color, nuance — requiring expert-level classification. The same idea would be reborn 35 years later as a visual AI shopping assistant.
1993
Excalibur BBS — The First Windows Graphical BBS
While every other bulletin board system in the world ran on text-only interfaces with ANSI art, Eric built Excalibur BBS — the first 100% graphical, mouse-driven BBS that ran entirely under Microsoft Windows. Full-color bitmap graphics, plugin architecture, file preview while downloading, multitasking, drag-and-drop file management, and thumbnail image browsing — all transmitted over modems faster than conventional ANSI screens. The press release went out March 3, 1993 from Excalibur Communications, Inc. in Tulsa.
Wikipedia cites Excalibur as "one of the first graphics-based BBS applications." It offered point-and-click graphical browsing, file sharing, messaging, games, and chat when the World Wide Web wasn't much more than a primitive method of displaying text.
🏆 Windows Magazine Top Products - 1995
1996
MailMax — A Beautiful GUI for an Ugly World
In the mid-'90s, running an email server meant staring at a Unix terminal. Sendmail, qmail, Postfix — powerful but brutal. Eric saw the same opportunity he'd seen with BBS software: bring a beautiful Windows UI to infrastructure that desperately needed one. MailMax became one of the first full-featured email servers for Microsoft Windows — SMTP, POP3, IMAP4 — with a visual admin console for managing domains, users, aliases, and anti-spam rules. No command line required.
ClickZ reviewed MailMax and called it a strong choice with "a relatively advanced feature set" at an aggressive price. It supported SQL Server backends, web-based admin, remote GUI monitoring with live graphs, and multi-domain hosting. SmartMax followed with FTPMax (Windows FTP server) and ListMax (mailing list server) — completing a full Windows internet server suite.
2005
SightMax — Live Chat for the Enterprise
The communication problem evolved. Websites replaced BBSes. Email became commodity infrastructure. But one gap remained: real-time conversation between businesses and their website visitors. SmartMax launched SightMax — a live chat platform built for enterprises that needed security, compliance, and on-premise deployment. The first customers were banks, credit unions, and financial institutions that couldn't trust cloud-only vendors with their data.
The differentiator: While competitors went cloud-only, SightMax offered on-premise installation with your own MS SQL database — critical for regulated industries. SOC 2 compliance, SSO integration, and white-glove support from Tulsa followed.
2018
SightMax Becomes ChatBeacon
After 13 years of serving enterprises as SightMax, the platform was rebranded to ChatBeacon — reflecting a new vision, new features, and a modern identity built on the rock-solid core of SightMax. The rebrand brought a redesigned interface, expanded omnichannel capabilities (SMS, Facebook Messenger), co-browse and screen share, video chat, and a plugin architecture that would later power the AI revolution.
Same DNA, new name: ChatBeacon inherited SightMax's enterprise security, on-premise deployment, and compliance certifications — then added the modern engagement tools that customers were demanding. The core never changed. The possibilities did.
2020s
The AI Revolution — ChatBeaconAIX
With the ChatBeacon foundation in place, the platform integrates OpenAI's GPT-5.4 — becoming one of the first live chat platforms to offer generative AI chatbots trained on customer content. Co-browse, video chat, hybrid AI + live agent handoff with zero context loss, AI operator analytics in plain English, and 45+ language support transform ChatBeacon into a complete AI-powered customer engagement engine.
Why it matters: PictureData was built long before AI became mainstream. It indexed thousands of product attributes — shape, material, color, nuance — requiring expert-level classification. The same idea would be reborn 35 years later as a visual AI shopping assistant.
2025
PictureData™ Reborn — Visual AI Shopping
The original jewelry classification engine is reimagined for modern e-commerce and supercharged by the ChatBeaconAIX multimodal AI platform. Now shoppers simply describe what they want in natural language — "Show me gold earrings under $150, simple and elegant" — and PictureData instantly returns matching products from any Shopify or WooCommerce store with images, pricing, and availability, directly inside chat.
Full circle: A product classification system born in a Tulsa jewelry store in 1990 becomes the world's first visual AI shopping assistant in 2025. Thirty-five years of retail product intelligence — now available to every Shopify store on earth. Describe it. See it. Buy it.
35+
Years of Innovation
6
Pioneering Products
3000+
App Integrations
45+
Languages
100%
Made in Tulsa, USA
What We Believe
Built on principles,
not hype cycles.
🔒
Security Is Non-Negotiable
SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, on-premise deployment. We built for banks and credit unions first — that standard applies to every customer.
🤝
AI + Humans Together
We don't believe AI replaces people. We believe it makes people better. Every feature strengthens the handoff between bot and human.
🏗️
Build for Decades
PictureData is 35 years old. SightMax became ChatBeacon after 13 years. We don't chase trends — we build infrastructure that outlasts them.
🇺🇸
Made in Tulsa
Real support from real people at +1-918-388-5900. No chatbot-only support walls. You can always reach a human.
💡
Innovation from Experience
Our best ideas come from solving real problems — a jeweler who needed search, a sysadmin who needed a GUI, a visitor who needed an answer.
🎯
Every Visitor Deserves an Answer
That's the belief that started ChatBeacon. Whether it's AI or human — someone is always there.
What We Believe
One platform. Six products.
🧠
AI Chatbots
GPT-5.4 chatbots trained on your content. Qualify leads, answer FAQs, process orders.
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🤝
Hybrid AI + Live Agent
AI handles 70%. Humans close the deal. Seamless handoff with full context.
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📸
PictureData™
Visual AI shopping for Shopify & WooCommerce. Describe it. See it. Buy it.
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🖥️
Co-Browse
See what customers see. Guide them through forms and checkout in real time.
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✨
Generative AI
The intelligence layer. Operator analytics in plain English. AI-suggested responses.
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📹
Video Chat
Face-to-face conversations from the chat window. Build trust. Close deals.
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Get In Touch
Real people. Real office.
📍
Headquarters
SmartMax Software, Inc.
Tulsa, Oklahoma
United States
Tulsa, Oklahoma
United States
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AI-powered live chat and chatbot platform. Built in the USA. Trusted since 2005. Cloud or on-premise deployment.
Made in the USA
© 2026 SmartMax Software, Inc. All rights reserved. SmartMax does not own any of the third-party trademarks, all represented brands own their respective copyrights and trademarks, and their use does not imply any endorsement or affiliation.
