8 ms·

Mimestream, a native Gmail app for macOS

18 points by alexarena 3y ago

latchkey 3y ago
Very happy user of this app for a long time now. I have zero issues paying for it.
awill 3y ago
Not thrilled with yet another subscription. I get it though, as they have to maintain their app with Google's moving Gmail API. I understand paying for this if you're a paying Google Workspace customer. But if you're a free gmail user, it doesn't make sense. If you're going to pay for email, pay for the actual email before paying for a client.
- dserodio 3y ago
  But most Google Workspace customers are companies, not individuals. It'd be hard to convince the company to pay for Mimestream, so its customers are people. And there are too many "personal productivity" tools competing for my money, Mimestream is very low on the priorities list.
pshirshov 3y ago
Please come back again once you add one-time purchase option. Even if you limit upgrades (Jetbrains approach) it's fine. I mean seriously, you subscription fees are higher than Fastmail subscription.
tedmiston 3y ago
I have been a longtime Mimestream beta user over the past few years. I have even emailed Neil re bugs. It's a nice client, better than Mail.app or the Gmail web interface, but the features it adds over Gmail are mainly cosmetic or nice-to-haves... it's mainly a pretty native app UI. I have to admit that I didn't see a recurring subsription pricing model coming at all. I'm not opposed to the model in general, but I just can't imagine paying $50–60/year for... an email client... I'm scratching my head if there's ever been a (personal) email client (not service) billed similarly. Very weird decision by the founder... sorry, but I'm not buying. It also feels super shitty to launch 1.0 out of the blue AND then expire the public beta builds that we have been using for 3 years with 4 days notice... I hate to say it, but this feels like a totally botched overnight transition from longtime free beta to paid app to me. There wasn't even a notice given to existing users that 1.0 was coming (now or later). From the outside, it looks like they hired multiple engineers too fast, maybe they tried to raise VC and it failed, and this is an effort to pay the bills. I think this pricing is out-of-touch with their userbase and making this drastic move randomly will cause them to lose 95%+ of their users. I would have given them a $30–50 one-time purchase for sure (i.e., something like Sublime's license model).
- pshirshov 3y ago
  > I have to admit that I didn't see a recurring subscription pricing model coming at all. That was extremely obvious from the beginning. They allowed to use the beta for free and never made any promises on licensing model. So, it was obvious that they wanted to force you to pay subscriptions. Actually that was the primary reason for me to avoid getting use to the app. Someone would pay, sure, but it's cheaper to get Fastmail than to pay that much for GMail client.
  - tedmiston 3y ago
    I'm not sure I agree that recurring subscription pricing was "extremely obvious from the beginning" from my experience with it over the past three years. To me that's not any more obvious than alternatives like: selling for a one-time purchase, or raising funding to keep it free for now. It was a solo founder for a long time. I didn't realize he'd hired other people before today... but you gotta pay those engineering salaries somehow, I guess. But I agree that the new pricing model announced today feels off.
- awill 3y ago
  I wish Sublime would make an email client :). Sublime's pricing is fair, and it's cross platform. I use their text and merge apps on both my work Mac, and my personal Linux desktop. It's a bargain. The fact that Mimestream thinks they can charge $50/y means that either a) they'll fail, or b) there's plenty of room for more competition, and Sublime should come and eat their lunch.
  - tedmiston 3y ago
    It definitely feels like there's still room for something different. For instances, there's a service called Clean Email [1] that makes it much quicker and easier to burn through an inbox with thousands+ of messages. But it operates as its own SaaS instead of saying integrating into the Gmail site directly. Their pricing is interesting as well: $10/mo or $30/yr for 1 account (I'm guessing their churn rate is really high). But then they also offer a lifetime plan that's "$199" but then after you cancel, they offer it to you for half that price. [1]: https://clean.email/ https://clean.email/
monkey_monkey 3y ago
Stop paying and the app stops working, so it's not just a case of no more updates. Zero chance of paying for this. Back to Mailplane, which is still working (for now anyway).
tedmiston 3y ago
The current title of this post ("Mimestream, a native Gmail app for macOS") isn't great. The title from the post itself is "Mimestream 1.0 is here!". What's news today is the app's Mimestream 1.0 launch [1], and the new pricing model. Changelog is at [2] for the curious. [1]: https://mimestream.com/blog/whats-new-in-1.0 https://mimestream.com/blog/whats-new-in-1.0 [2]: https://mimestream.com/releases https://mimestream.com/releases
fii 3y ago
Relevant take from the author, some time back: > On the Mac App Store, there isn't a practical way to charge for updates. You could release entirely new apps, but then upgrading is a pain for users, and you lose your ranking and reviews -- and it's difficult to charge an upgrade fee. You can gate-keep features with In-App-Purchases the way Agenda does, but then you're giving away bug fixes and polish on the app for free forever, and that's probably 80% of your development time. Plus, I would imagine the upgrade rate on that model is pretty low, since most users won't care about fringe features being added. > If you really want to offer perpetual licenses with paid updates, since you're a desktop app, you can roll your own licensing system and use FastSpring/Paddle/etc. It's a fair model, but it's a lot of work. It may be worth it depending on your audience - e.g. developers tend to care a lot about this stuff. > Selling this as a subscription is probably the best path if you can stomach the initial ire of users that don't like that model. Depending on your price point, you could consider a 4x-5x multiplier for a lifetime option if you want to try and keep some of them. Yes, you will lose some users that might have paid for a major version, but you'll probably make that up with the recurring revenue from less price-sensitive users. > Best of luck. I know this can be agonizing and there's no easy answer here. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32827676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32827676
- pshirshov 3y ago
  > but then you're giving away bug fixes These damn users, they literally rob the developers, they force them to give away bugfixes for free. While the right way to go is to release a bunch of half-baked crap and then charge per-patch.
  - tumultco 3y ago
    Context is the rest of the sentence: > and polish on the app for free forever But even "bug fixes" are sometimes not cleaning up your own issues; for example, macOS updates regularly will break apps. It's like paying someone to lay down a lawn for you and expecting the grass will never need cutting.
adamesque 3y ago
As a long(ish)time Mimestream beta user (1.5 years) I paid up for a year pretty much instantly. I totally get why some folks are unhappy with how quickly they're expiring the beta builds (and with how little formal notice), and think that's worth a separate discussion. That aside, it struck me this morning that this is the native Mac OS desktop gmail client I have wanted since at least 2008, when I first got a job at a gmail shop (my own email is non-Gmail). In that time, I've tried literally every non-browser client I could get my hands on and none are good. Most are electron-style wrappers or feel decidedly un-Mac-like. And now, 15 years later, there's an extremely high-quality "Mac-assed" [1] Mac OS client that is everything I've ever wanted. I have to look at my work email multiple times a day, every day of my working life. $50/year to make that a pleasant, productive experience is well worth it in my mind. [1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/20/mac-assed-mac-apps https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/20/mac-assed-mac-a...
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al_be_back 3y ago
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18 points by alexarena 3y ago

Very happy user of this app for a long time now. I have zero issues paying for it.

Not thrilled with yet another subscription. I get it though, as they have to maintain their app with Google's moving Gmail API. I understand paying for this if you're a paying Google Workspace customer. But if you're a free gmail user, it doesn't make sense. If you're going to pay for email, pay for the actual email before paying for a client.

dserodio 3y ago
But most Google Workspace customers are companies, not individuals. It'd be hard to convince the company to pay for Mimestream, so its customers are people. And there are too many "personal productivity" tools competing for my money, Mimestream is very low on the priorities list.

pshirshov 3y ago

Please come back again once you add one-time purchase option. Even if you limit upgrades (Jetbrains approach) it's fine. I mean seriously, you subscription fees are higher than Fastmail subscription.

tedmiston 3y ago

I have been a longtime Mimestream beta user over the past few years. I have even emailed Neil re bugs. It's a nice client, better than Mail.app or the Gmail web interface, but the features it adds over Gmail are mainly cosmetic or nice-to-haves... it's mainly a pretty native app UI. I have to admit that I didn't see a recurring subsription pricing model coming at all. I'm not opposed to the model in general, but I just can't imagine paying $50–60/year for... an email client... I'm scratching my head if there's ever been a (personal) email client (not service) billed similarly. Very weird decision by the founder... sorry, but I'm not buying. It also feels super shitty to launch 1.0 out of the blue AND then expire the public beta builds that we have been using for 3 years with 4 days notice... I hate to say it, but this feels like a totally botched overnight transition from longtime free beta to paid app to me. There wasn't even a notice given to existing users that 1.0 was coming (now or later). From the outside, it looks like they hired multiple engineers too fast, maybe they tried to raise VC and it failed, and this is an effort to pay the bills. I think this pricing is out-of-touch with their userbase and making this drastic move randomly will cause them to lose 95%+ of their users. I would have given them a $30–50 one-time purchase for sure (i.e., something like Sublime's license model).

pshirshov 3y ago
> I have to admit that I didn't see a recurring subscription pricing model coming at all. That was extremely obvious from the beginning. They allowed to use the beta for free and never made any promises on licensing model. So, it was obvious that they wanted to force you to pay subscriptions. Actually that was the primary reason for me to avoid getting use to the app. Someone would pay, sure, but it's cheaper to get Fastmail than to pay that much for GMail client.
- tedmiston 3y ago
  I'm not sure I agree that recurring subscription pricing was "extremely obvious from the beginning" from my experience with it over the past three years. To me that's not any more obvious than alternatives like: selling for a one-time purchase, or raising funding to keep it free for now. It was a solo founder for a long time. I didn't realize he'd hired other people before today... but you gotta pay those engineering salaries somehow, I guess. But I agree that the new pricing model announced today feels off.
awill 3y ago
I wish Sublime would make an email client :). Sublime's pricing is fair, and it's cross platform. I use their text and merge apps on both my work Mac, and my personal Linux desktop. It's a bargain. The fact that Mimestream thinks they can charge $50/y means that either a) they'll fail, or b) there's plenty of room for more competition, and Sublime should come and eat their lunch.
- tedmiston 3y ago
  It definitely feels like there's still room for something different. For instances, there's a service called Clean Email [1] that makes it much quicker and easier to burn through an inbox with thousands+ of messages. But it operates as its own SaaS instead of saying integrating into the Gmail site directly. Their pricing is interesting as well: $10/mo or $30/yr for 1 account (I'm guessing their churn rate is really high). But then they also offer a lifetime plan that's "$199" but then after you cancel, they offer it to you for half that price. [1]: https://clean.email/ https://clean.email/

monkey_monkey 3y ago

Stop paying and the app stops working, so it's not just a case of no more updates. Zero chance of paying for this. Back to Mailplane, which is still working (for now anyway).

tedmiston 3y ago

The current title of this post ("Mimestream, a native Gmail app for macOS") isn't great. The title from the post itself is "Mimestream 1.0 is here!". What's news today is the app's Mimestream 1.0 launch [1], and the new pricing model. Changelog is at [2] for the curious. [1]: https://mimestream.com/blog/whats-new-in-1.0 https://mimestream.com/blog/whats-new-in-1.0 [2]: https://mimestream.com/releases https://mimestream.com/releases

fii 3y ago

Relevant take from the author, some time back: > On the Mac App Store, there isn't a practical way to charge for updates. You could release entirely new apps, but then upgrading is a pain for users, and you lose your ranking and reviews -- and it's difficult to charge an upgrade fee. You can gate-keep features with In-App-Purchases the way Agenda does, but then you're giving away bug fixes and polish on the app for free forever, and that's probably 80% of your development time. Plus, I would imagine the upgrade rate on that model is pretty low, since most users won't care about fringe features being added. > If you really want to offer perpetual licenses with paid updates, since you're a desktop app, you can roll your own licensing system and use FastSpring/Paddle/etc. It's a fair model, but it's a lot of work. It may be worth it depending on your audience - e.g. developers tend to care a lot about this stuff. > Selling this as a subscription is probably the best path if you can stomach the initial ire of users that don't like that model. Depending on your price point, you could consider a 4x-5x multiplier for a lifetime option if you want to try and keep some of them. Yes, you will lose some users that might have paid for a major version, but you'll probably make that up with the recurring revenue from less price-sensitive users. > Best of luck. I know this can be agonizing and there's no easy answer here. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32827676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32827676

pshirshov 3y ago
> but then you're giving away bug fixes These damn users, they literally rob the developers, they force them to give away bugfixes for free. While the right way to go is to release a bunch of half-baked crap and then charge per-patch.
- tumultco 3y ago
  Context is the rest of the sentence: > and polish on the app for free forever But even "bug fixes" are sometimes not cleaning up your own issues; for example, macOS updates regularly will break apps. It's like paying someone to lay down a lawn for you and expecting the grass will never need cutting.

adamesque 3y ago

As a long(ish)time Mimestream beta user (1.5 years) I paid up for a year pretty much instantly. I totally get why some folks are unhappy with how quickly they're expiring the beta builds (and with how little formal notice), and think that's worth a separate discussion. That aside, it struck me this morning that this is the native Mac OS desktop gmail client I have wanted since at least 2008, when I first got a job at a gmail shop (my own email is non-Gmail). In that time, I've tried literally every non-browser client I could get my hands on and none are good. Most are electron-style wrappers or feel decidedly un-Mac-like. And now, 15 years later, there's an extremely high-quality "Mac-assed" [1] Mac OS client that is everything I've ever wanted. I have to look at my work email multiple times a day, every day of my working life. $50/year to make that a pleasant, productive experience is well worth it in my mind. [1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/20/mac-assed-mac-apps https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/20/mac-assed-mac-a...

deleted 3y ago

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al_be_back 3y ago

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