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Comment by llambda | Hacker News Reader

The concept looks interesting. I was sold on it and then, "backers will get a steeply marked down subscription." Wait, a what? Subscription? Sorry, you lost me. No way will I pay a subscription fee to use an email program. Apart from that, as a standalone app, it sounds compelling.

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Axiom: If you don't pay them to keep the lights on, they will go out of business. Corollary: If it isn't worth it to you to pay for their added value, they don't have a real business.

Sending/receiving data (in this case email) uses energy. Since energy is not currently free, someone has to pay for it.

A service that involves the repeated sending/receiving of data, (in this case email) incurs a cost over time that someone has to pay for.

There are three solutions to this issue:

A. Run a free service until you run out of money. (not sustainable)

B. Run a free service subsidized by ads. (user-hostile and possibly unsustainable)

C. Charge the user a subscription fee. (fair and sustainable)

Unfortunately, the perception that email and other services should be free has permeated society. The internet made the transfer of information cheaper by many orders of magnitude, but it is still not free.

You're ignoring the fact that the $35,000 they're trying to raise is listed as being for exactly that:

> Where the money will go... Hosting. We need some serious hosting space to deploy our storage-intensive services.

I'm not ignoring that. If they only raise $35,000 then they'd fall into category A. The cost of hosting is ongoing as long as a service is being used, therefore they will need more than $35,000 if they plan to be around for any length of time, hence subscriptions.

Yeah, its actually pretty dumb IMO that they say the money will go to hosting. With AWS etc you only use what you pay for and the costs should be pretty minimal for beta testing and then covered by subscription fees once they launch.

Money going towards mobile dev makes more sense although is much more risky to back given the short timeframe and limited budget even if they meet their goal.

But you have to provide your own e-mail service and e-mail hosting. They aren't hosting your e-mail[0]. How do they justify a recurring annual subscription?

0: "Your email is never stored on our servers, and is left on your current email servers."

They are still providing a service. Creating and maintaining an application takes time and time is money.

I think my point still stands as a general principle though, its applicability (or the lack thereof) to this particular service notwithstanding.

How many computers do you have? I'm starting my career as a small business and already have 3 + Smartphone. I would be happy to pay for a subscription rather than 3 licenses + Phone App. It helps to have my account available on the net, so I can check my email from any computer with an Internet connection.

It's time we move forward, I think. I used not to like the idea of subscription, but I'm finding it cheaper now.

Or you could just choose software that doesn't require a license per machine. Of course open source software doesn't have this issue but I also run proprietary software that says I can install it on as many machines as want as long as it's only used by 1 person at a time.

I already pay a subscription fee for my email, in the form of a $50 per year GAFYD account (of which I use only the email). Paying a subscription for an email program isn't my favorite idea in the world, but I'm willing to try it out in the name of Great Email Justice.

Same here! Very interesting until I realized it's subscription based. Apps should have a one time cost and maybe costs for major updates. I can't even see the reason to have a recurring fee, why?

I assume their justification are the push notification servers, though that's a bit thin for my taste.

Because it's not an app in the regular sense, it's an email filtering and tagging web service. You'd be paying for their servers crunching your emails over the time you were subscribed to them.

Edit: From their FAQ:

  Mail Pilot is more than an app; it's a comprehensive online software
  service. It runs on servers, and delivers and syncs content between
  every Mail Pilot app that you might use.

  You can access Mail Pilot through a number of desktop, native
  mobile, and web applications. To make this possible, Mail Pilot adds
  services to your existing mail accounts that it syncs between all of
  your devices. Our servers store metadata about your messages (not
  the messages themselves, however!) to bring to you the reimagination
  of email that so many have come to love.

  Mail clients can get away with charging one time. Our apps are all
  free, but the service is paid for, much like other online
  productivity and email enhancement services.

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