Comment by tedmiston | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tedmiston | Hacker News Reader

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).

> 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.

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.

> 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...

The 1.0 has a 14 day trial, so that at least extends it to 18 days notice.

It really seems like the beta program might have been a victim of its own success (and ridiculously long duration).

It is interesting to look at it through the lens of what's the social contract between a beta user and a developer? I feel the basics are that users get access to features ahead of time in exchange for reporting bugs if they discover any, but nowadays perhaps folks think there should be more they get out of it? Of course it isn't fun to beta a pre-1.0 product and have the workflow disturbed because the price isn't palatable, but that's the risk?

> It is interesting to look at it through the lens of what's the social contract between a beta user and a developer?

I think that social contract can be anything you want as long as you communicate it clearly and in advance (they did neither).

---

What "beta" means and its timeline varies widely. Mimestream was technically in public beta this whole time but quality-wise has been production-grade software most of that time. Gmail was in public "beta" for 5+ years.

Of course, many apps hit 1.0 eventually... but then a lot of those migrate their beta program to TestFlight to continue to help fix bugs and as a thank you for helping get the software to 1.0.

But the most important things if you do decide to kill the beta track post-1.0 (i.e., take away features from your users) are to: (1) give your users a timeline and sufficient heads up in advance (e.g., 30–60+ days), and (2) solicit feedback from and listen to your users. If Mimestream had done either of those, this launch would have gone a lot better.

Mimestream also offered beta testers a first-year discount code, which seemed like a nice gesture. But then upon reading the press release, they offered everyone basically the same discount. So that cheapened the offer and made the connotation go from "they're thanking their beta testers" to "they're just trying to convert as many people as possible".

People are so funny about software pricing. There’s somebody on the other end who has to make a living to maintain and improve the software. And doing one-time pricing means you have to pursue user growth instead of sustainability. You also might be forced to charge for major version upgrades, fragmenting the user base and adding lots of complexity and overhead. What’s the maintenance expectation on a one-time purchase from a small company? Keep it working forever?

As a software developer myself, like many of us here, I can assure you that I'm very familiar with the concerns mentioned; in fact, I've already provided examples in this thread of companies which directly consider them into their pricing model in order to provide versioned licenses.

It's kind of surprising to have to say this though... 10 years ago and beyond this was the norm, if not the only way. Software companies figured it out a long time ago. A one-man company or a side project is a different thing with more constraints, but that's not what this is anymore.

There's also the philosophical angle of creating software that cannot be bought or owned. That strikes a nerve with a lot of people (especially on HN).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free

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.

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/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com