I used Nylas for a while and really liked it, until they they forced everyone to pay $7 per month to use it.
Here's the original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11553738
Here's the original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11553738
Sorry, but that isn't a fair way of describing what occurred.
Nylas is a startup, trying to figure out a business model which works for them.
You're not yet forced to pay. If you had a Nylas ID back when Pro was announced you got a gratis year of subscription. Now, they released a gratis version once more, called Nylas Mail, which is also open source. The backend is also open source.
What this means is that they've adopted a freemium model, and you got approx half a year to still enjoy your Pro license.
I haven't done a feature comparison between Mozilla Thunderbird (which I know is not everyone's preference but was my previous cross platform e-mail client), Nylas Mail, and Nylas Pro. If anyone knows one, please share.
My main concern is the backend being hosted in US by a US corporation. I don't like my data being hosted by US corporations, on US soil, and I recommend non US-citizens/residents to care about this.
So I would assume you are hosed. The passwords need to be stored plaintext.
1. You never enter them into the client. It uses Oauth to authenticate.
2. By the comment here, it seems that they're using Google's Gmail API. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13417904
Oauth makes sense that there's no password saved. A unique key is saved which is authenticated with Google. If this key leaks, you are hosed, too, but at least you can revoke that key.
I tried grep mypasswd ~/.nylas-mail/* and grep said Binary file shared.sqlite matches. This did not occur in ~/.nylas it makes sense and it is inevitable, a client like Thunderbird suffers from the same.
It can be circumvented by saving the password encrypted and decrypting it using a master password. That is akin to how LastPass and Mozilla save their cloud data.
Using containers etc would also lower the threat.
In a way its good the password is saved locally. The engine also runs locally. It moves the threat model to the client, away from Nylas servers. Kudos.
If you didn't, you had to pay.
Well, uh.. that didn't quite go that way for me.
The Pro 'transition' was a miserable experience that made me stop using it altogether* - it literally popped up asking me if I wanted to subscribe to Pro, and if I said 'no' (thinking I'll just continue non-Pro) the whole app quit.
* Coincidentally I tried it out again (seemed to get a 14day trial even though I'd used it before) a few days ago. There's still lots I like; the Basic tier is exactly what I needed really - last year when it suddenly held my emails hostage (slight hyperbole of course, there were still copies on the server).
My experience was I received a coupon via e-mail at june 15 2016. I upgraded the same day. But I also still use other e-mail clients to access my mail e.g. from my phone. So I would not be locked out of my e-mail if Nylas quit working that same day.
Nylas Mail Basic was designed exactly with this in mind. It's a free client, syncs locally, and does not include a lot of the Pro features that power users save a lot of time with.
On the flip side, we've designed Nylas Pro (and its price point) for users who are coming from the productivity world of ToutApp or YesWare. The goal with Pro isn't to merely be another Thunderbird or Mac Mail. We're focused on building new powerful workflows for people who live all day in their mailbox, calendar, and address book.
(I build Nylas Mail)