

Zimbra has more users than Gmail. And they are paying. - rokhayakebe
http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/05/zimbra-tops-40m-paid-users-more-popular-than-gmail/

======
smakz
It's actually pretty astonishing to me how many web sites don't charge
anything. It reminds me of how Bill Gates gloats about the early days of MS
how there was this huge hobbyist scene in software and very few were getting
paid (not sure how accurate that really is but it seems similar to what I see
today).

Developers of start ups should get used to the idea that it's OK to charge
people for a service you provide. It provides psychological incentives to the
buyers that they are buying something and therefore are entitled to a real
level of service, and it provides real cash to the founders to properly grow
the business.

Not to mention, it is trivially easy to start charging people these days, with
services like Amazon FPS.

I really thought back in 2000 that companies based around the 'advertising
will pay for everything' model would have learned their lesson, but clearly
it's not the case.

~~~
sachinag
There's a lot of hate for ad plays here on HN, and that's fine. (My startup is
a commission-based model as well.)

But let's be honest - there are plenty of great, useful apps supported by
advertising and lead generation where the end-consumer pays not a penny:
Google, Yelp, YouTube, Zillow, SideStep, YellowPages, TicketStumbler, and so
forth. And plenty of media sites make money on ads: Ars Technica, Pitchfork
Media, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, and so on.

Let's not let the quest for ramen profitability distract us from looking long-
term.

~~~
cstejerean
Agreed, a website with low recurring expenses and high volume of quality
traffic can probably survive just on advertising.

The problem with advertising-only models IMHO is that ultimately survival of
the company depends on other companies' advertising budgets instead of the
value it's products provide to their end users. At the moment that situation
does not seem ideal.

~~~
jshen
"The problem with advertising-only models IMHO is that ultimately survival of
the company depends on other companies' advertising budgets instead of the
value it's products provide to their end users. At the moment that situation
does not seem ideal."

Um, depending on users paying you is equally problematic. I imagine this
moment isn't good for that either.

~~~
smakz
Advertising budgets are down just as much as consumer confidence - they are
tightly related. But even in hard times people's needs don't change - save
people time, money, or make them healthier, #2 might be more attractive in
recessions, but people will always pay for any of those services.

~~~
jshen
and they will find out about those services via marketing.

------
timf
Where is the actual source of this information? The Zimbra front page says 20M
mailboxes (does not say how many are paid or not). There's no press release or
RSS entry.

The last number I see approved in some way by Zimbra is a 20M paid mailboxes
article from January on <http://www.zimbra.com/about/news.html>

What, they gained 20 million new paying customers in the last six weeks (with
no big, new deal with another mail provider)?

And where is that chart from in the venturebeat article? There are no sources
for anything listed.

I don't find this information credible.

~~~
timf
And there's a new CNET entry that says 40M but... it _references the
venturebeat link as its source_ not any actual Zimbra statement.

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10190071-16.html>

EDIT:

The author of that says: "I talked with the company. They just haven't
released the formal PR yet"

I guess we will see later. Interested to know what the number actually means
and how on Earth that amount of recent growth could be possible.

~~~
cellis
Facebook is adding 700k+ users a day. But they aren't facebook.

~~~
timf
And those users aren't paying anything.

------
krschultz
I use Zimbra at work (though we use the open-source version and don't pay a
dime), and Gmail for personal use. They both have strengths and weaknesses,
but I see Zimbra as the better professional solution. The search in Gmail is
great, but no amount of tags can replace good old fashioned folders in Zimbra
- especially if you subscribe to a bunch of FOSS project mailing lists - I
just don't need to read it all that often but when I do I want it in one
place. The calendaring system in Zimbra is useful for scheduling meetings as
well.

~~~
lacker
But you can use Gmail tags exactly like folders, if that's what you want.

~~~
mapleoin
labels

~~~
lacker
You can also use Gmail labels exactly like tags, if that's what you want. ;-)

------
trapper
I am not really surprised at this. If you ask for money with a good product,
people often pay. A fact that seemed to be lost on many in the tech community
in the last few years.

~~~
davidw
The problem is one of economics. As Varian and Shapiro say in this book:

[http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/7/information-
rules-a...](http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/7/information-rules-a-
strategic-guide-to-the-network-economy)

"Information commodities trend towards the marginal cost: zero, meaning that
selling information commodities is not likely to be successful in the long
run."

~~~
trapper
I think the second word is the issue: commodity implies stagnation. If you
have innovation, there is always a moving target, and thus the ability to
charge.

Making replicas isn't a good business model. Creating something new and
capitalising on it is.

------
wastedbrains
bad headline since it is only talking about paying users.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
No, it's not.

~~~
timf
It's unclear to me since it says Gmail gets 31.2M and Google Apps (which
includes email) has another 10M. Also, I think the article may be wrong, it
seems like Zimbra is only claiming 20M. Also note ajkirwin's point above, the
measurements also seem to be conflated.

------
ajkirwin
I hate the blending of terms in this article. It makes for a shitty read.
Here's an example:

"Zimbra actually has 31.4 million users in the United States, squeaking by the
31.2 million unique monthly visitors Gmail received in the US during the month
of January."

Take note. In the first, they put out 31.4 million, but that's a total user
count and in the second, they put out 31.2 million, but that's unique monthly
visitors.

Two totally different statistics, but they act as if they are the same. GMail
likely has a LOT more user accounts, plus, this doesn't account for people who
get their email through SMTP/POP or IMAP..

Shame on you VentureBeat. Shame on you.

~~~
tjogin
I don't understand why magazines like VentureBeat and Wired love to talk up
individual companies so much. All the damn time it sounds like this company is
so incredibly amazing and all the time the numbers are inflated and skewed as
much as they can possibly get away with. Is the honest truth not interesting
enough?

They're getting paid by them, right?

~~~
quilby
They probably arent getting paid- there is just nothing too interesting going
on in the startup world right now that they have to make trivial things into
incredible stories.

~~~
tjogin
Sure, but aren't there _other_ things to write about, besides how incredibly
magnificent some individual company is doing (with the help of skewed stats,
at that)? It seems like these "journalists" aren't working from a wealth of
ideas and perspectives.

------
thepanister
I used Zimbra for the first time, when I became Stanford student. When I
logged in to my Stanford University email, I found out it's Zimbra...

Zimbra is really great product, and yeah... more than 40 MM are using it; What
is the problem with that?

------
c00p3r
I never saw zimbra in any internet cafe in India or Nepal. It's all about
facebook, (five screens of ten) gmail, and some hotmail (mostly japanese).

Seems like they are living in their own reallity.

