Rackspace Chooses reMail (YC W09) To Bring Email Search To Its Customers | Hacker News Reader

Rackspace Chooses reMail (YC W09) To Bring Email Search To Its Customers

techcrunch.com

49 pointsSam_Odio9 comments

Hmmm.

reMail seems interesting but I wonder what the chances are of Apple adding those features to their mail client and then simply locking reMail out of the App Store for duplicate functionality?

Xobni came to mind as someone who seems to have done something similar (remedy limitations in an existing implementation) but they weren't so very much at the mercy of Microsoft.

I'm also wondering how the economics of reMail will work out. The Redlaser article on the HN front page from today says they've had 750k downloads (albeit at $2 versus reMail's $3.99) but reMail seems more of a niche offering. Even assuming they near that amount, at $3.99, is it really a sustainable business model? I guess there's scope to upsell some other monthly services in there.

I also have to chuckle at $4.99 being considered 'premium'.

Apple make money off people using reMail, I don't see them removing it to add the features to the native mail.app but who knows with the app store.

Thanks for your thoughts! Quick clarification: The App is free. The $3.99 price tag is for IMAP accounts.

We're not making millions of dollars on reMail (yet), but quick iteration is the key to success. We've rewritten the app once, then relaunched, then replaced its guts, then changed the business model, experimented with UIs and so on. Every time we do that more users start using the product. I guess the perception of Apps in the store is that most are one-hit wonders. Instead of cranking out a new app every two weeks, we're trying to make the one app we have better and better. I'll let you know how that worked out :-)

Xobni came to mind ... they weren't so very much at the mercy of Microsoft.

One of Xobni's biggest barriers to entry is the difficulty of developing for Outlook. However, that difficulty doesn't exist for Microsoft itself, so Xobni's always run the risk of MS simply packaging all their features into Outlook itself:

http://www.xobni.com/blog/2009/11/18/xobni-and-the-outlook-s...

perfect example to give when someone asks about the value of YC. Sure $5K is a drop in the bucket..hell I just dropped that on my holiday promotion. But does anyone think that without the YC connections and validation, that the remail guys would have gotten this deal? I doubt that.

gabor's a fairly enterprising guy.

yeah, but would someone like Rackspace want to take the risk if he didn't have YC backing him?

Yes. Have you used reMail? The product is awesome and it sells itself. I highly doubt YC was even part of the consideration.

Honestly, I feel like having YC backing you might actually end up putting a bad taste in the mouths of some companies.

so you think a huge corporation like rackspace, would want to take a risk with a company run by a single person? Yes remail is a good app, but the fact that it's a one man show, no doubt raised questions for Rackspace, and the fact that he had YC backing no doubt helped eased them.

why would YC put a bad taste in the mouths of companies?

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