
Nylas Mail is now free - jalada
https://blog.nylas.com/nylas-mail-is-now-free-8350d6a1044d#.7cykx2z49
======
yoasif_
Is there a build available which doesn't require users to sign up for a Nylas
ID?

The support page states that "If you’re using N1 against our open source sync
engine, you’ll still need to create a Nylas ID."

Given the privacy policy says that Nylas shares information with third parties
and that they can "make a copy of the entire contents of the applicable email
inbox, calendar, and contact book", it doesn't feel like a traditional email
client to me.

[https://support.nylas.com/hc/en-us/articles/220974588-How-
is...](https://support.nylas.com/hc/en-us/articles/220974588-How-is-a-Nylas-
ID-different-from-my-email-address-)

~~~
e0m
Nylas Mail Basic does NOT store your mail data in the cloud. It still uses a
cloud service for some features (like read receipts), but all the data is
local on your disk and auth credentials stored in your native OS keychain.

Nylas Pro currently syncs in the cloud to enable some of the pro features not
currently offered in Nylas Mail Basic and to provide a much easier to use
modern API wrapper around mail data. The cloud syncing infrastructure is open
source and you can run it yourself and inspect the code.

All editions (both Basic and Pro) need a Nylas ID. This lets us manage
subscriptions for those who want to upgrade. The code is open source on GitHub
(nylas/N1). You can fork & run yourself without a Nylas ID. You just won't get
any cloud-enabled features.

We never send mail, contact, or calendar data to 3rd parties. We do, however,
use 3rd parties for basic usage and performance statistics and self-host as
much reporting infrastructure (like Sentry) as possible.

(I build Nylas Mail)

~~~
yoasif_
I understand the desire to have a seamless flow from free to paid, but you can
easily move this flow later in the app (a la progressive disclosure). You can
even build this into the existing flow where users currently go to upgrade, by
prompting the user to create a Nylas ID at that point (if they haven't
already).

There's a reason that e-commerce sites allow buyers to add items to a cart
without sign up, and to "checkout as guest" instead of forcing users to sign
up for a Staples (or whatever) login -- you get more conversions.

Even if you prefer the approach of trying to get the information up front,
adding a "skip" option that allows users to use the app without cloud sync,
etc., then allowing a user to "go pro" later on at least allows people to
_try_ the app without a commitment. It's not possible to convert someone who
isn't a user because they got scared away by the registration requirement --
better imo, to have a non-registered user, than no user at all.

The only reason I could think of for not wanting to allow this is related to
the third party data sharing -- perhaps you plan to sell (obfuscated) user
data to data brokers. If that's not in the cards, and you do not plan to
monetize your free tier (aside from up-selling to pro), I see no downside to
allowing users to use the app without cloud sync in the free tier, with
upgrades available within the app.

Updating the privacy policy to be explicit about what data is used for ("basic
usage and performance statistics") would do a lot to allay the idea that this
data is being sold to data brokers (and not simply to make the app better).

~~~
nopzor
It's a lot harder to monetize free->paid if you don't even know who your free
users are. Requiring the creation of a Nylas ID for the free tier addresses
this. Your ecommerce example doesn't fit the situation here; the ecommerce
business wants the order $$ at the expense of the account, and their UX
reflects that.

~~~
yoasif_
I remember a few years back after I got my first decent Android phone looking
at "top 10" lists of the best apps out there.

One of those apps was Lumosity, and I installed it. The first step was setting
up an account. I promptly uninstalled the app, and to this day, I have no idea
whether it is any good.

It felt odd to me that for a game with no multiplayer component would require
me to sign up for an account, and I'm not interested in leaderboards or cloud
based backup either. I have the same feeling about email clients, especially
when Thunderbird exists and is mostly decent.

Giving up an email account for a free "app" (and not a service) continues to
feel odd to me. It almost feels wrong to call it "free", especially since it
is unclear to me how my email is used.

~~~
dyu-
A non-main/throwaway mail for that purpose would be a good one for you to have
so you can test without giving away anything.

~~~
drdaeman
And a throwaway phone without any user data? (I don't think there are working
Android-in-Android VMs that are both performant enough and offer good
isolation.)

------
gnufied
I really wanted an Email client for Linux which isn't power hungry but
unfortunately last I tried Nylas - it was always top app in `powertop`. An
always running app has to be low on power consumption IMO, but because so many
apps are being built on top of webkit/electron most of them pretty much suck
when it comes to battery usage.

Another case in point is slack app. On Linux, it is probably the worst app. :(

~~~
wslh
Sylpheed? [http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/](http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/)
screenshots here:
[http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/screenshot.html](http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/screenshot.html)

~~~
biokoda
GTK still looks that bad? That is absolutely horrendous.

~~~
AsyncAwait
No, GTK3 looks like this[1] these days[2], these screenshots use an ancient
version.

[1] - [http://i.imgur.com/0eLhrAM.png](http://i.imgur.com/0eLhrAM.png)

[2] - [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chergert/gnome-builder-
web...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chergert/gnome-builder-
web/master/screenshots/build-bar.png)

~~~
biokoda
Thanks

------
AndrewUnmuted
After signing up for Nylas Mail, I started getting daily "marketing email"
(spam) from them. It really added insult to the injury already caused by the
Linux app being horribly slow, buggy, and power-hungry.

~~~
OJFord
You can turn it off in preferences. (Although I guess if you got rid of the
app, you'd have to install it again to do that! No unsubscribe link?)

~~~
creshal
I sent them a scathing email about Nylas violating EU privacy laws years ago,
and they only responded to them after I spoke up against the product here on
HN. They still haven't told me what data they collected about me, which they
are required to by law.

It's _nice_ to see that Nylas has learned nothing at all and keeps violating
their users' rights.

Maybe I should finally sue them.

~~~
kuschku
I suggest calling your local EU Data Privacy Official, they’ll be able to
investigate the issue, and sue Nylas – without you having to get active, and
netting the same result (your privacy rights being respected).

------
artursapek
I open the page and have no idea what Nylas is. I click on the logo and I'm
taken to the blog home page, where 60% of the screen is the Nylas logo with no
subheader telling me what it is. I click on it again and it just refreshes the
blog index. No link to nylas.com. How do so many people make the same mistake?

~~~
macinjosh
I had the exact same experience. I see this sort of issue commonly. Surprising
companies don't just link you back to their homepage when they promote their
product with a blog. Seems like an obvious thing to do.

~~~
dorian-graph
It's incredibly common to not have a link to their homepage—I have no idea
why.

~~~
ryanSrich
It's a medium blog. They don't allow you to add external links anywhere
outside of a post. I suppose you could create a new post, add links in that
post, and then add that link to the nav of the blog.

~~~
wodenokoto
Yes they do. There is a link to the download/purchase page in the header of
the blog.

And even if this was impossible, they could make their name in the body of the
blog post a link to their website.

~~~
ryanSrich
Right. I think it's limited to one external link (could be wrong). Makes sense
they'd include the download link over the homepage link no?

~~~
nebulous1
You are correct: [https://help.medium.com/hc/en-
us/articles/231510068-External...](https://help.medium.com/hc/en-
us/articles/231510068-External-links-in-publication-navigation)

Don't use medium for this purpose then, would be my answer. I also had an
issue getting to the homepage. Obviously I managed to get there, but I almost
didn't bother.

------
grinich
Hey HN-- I'm the author of this post. Feel free to post questions!

We are a very small team building this app. Hopefully you can focus on what's
new/good and not what is left to do! :)

If you find bugs, please post them here:
[https://github.com/nylas/n1/issues/](https://github.com/nylas/n1/issues/)

~~~
torgoguys
It looks nice. I don't have a mac so I can't test until you finish your
release for the other platforms, but my question is about your marketing copy.
I almost hate to badger you about this since the product looks nice, but I've
got to ask about this line, "...the most powerful email client ever built"?
That's a pretty bold claim and it makes my baloney detector go off. My
suspicion is that it almost certainly isn't true, expect perhaps in specific
areas, but not in the general. (If the suspicion is born out after testing,
that makes me trust you less rather than more since it was a broad claim). Do
you care to back up that claim in the general sense it seems to be offered?
Or, if not, maybe change the copy?

~~~
PublicEnemy111
Buddy? Is that you?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUPDRnUWeBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUPDRnUWeBA)

~~~
torgoguys
I had forgotten about that part. Thanks for the clip; it's awesome!

Call me old-fashioned, but I still think words matter. IANAL so I don't know
whether any laws are broken or not by such claims as "worlds greatest coffee",
but there are truth in advertising laws on the books in the U.S.
[https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/adv...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/advertising-faqs-guide-small-business) Even if there weren't,
it erodes your integrity if you're not being truthful and the faces of the
staff in the video clip are a nice balance between disbelief over Buddy's
credulity and shame (particularly on the guy in the foreground). But I may be
reading too much into this...

(Repeating here that I'm not claiming that Nylas' claim is false; I don't know
if it is or isn't).

------
ilSignorCarlo
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11553738)

~~~
Fnoord
> I used Nylas for a while and really liked it, until they they forced
> everyone to pay $7 per month to use it.

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.

~~~
OJFord
> _If you had a Nylas ID back when Pro was announced you got a gratis year of
> subscription._

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).

~~~
Fnoord
I'm sorry to hear about your problem with the transition. Did you attempt to
contact customer support about this?

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.

------
innocentoldguy
I used Nylas back when it was free, and it is a good email client, but it just
wasn't worth $7 a month to me, and certainly not $12, especially when I
consider that Office 365 Business Premium is only $12.50 a month, and includes
Outlook, Word, Excel, etc. I would never use Office 365 personally, but when I
consider the value offered by Office 365 Premium vs. Nylas, for about the same
price, it makes Nylas Email look grossly overpriced.

It seems to me that Nylas could make a lot more money by charging $1 a month,
since there are likely many, many more people willing to pay $1 vs. $12.
Probably more than the 12 to 1 ratio required to break even.

I like Nylas, and think it is a good email client, but their pricing suggests
they haven't done the market research and competitor analysis required to
price themselves strategically and to be successful.

~~~
grinich
> It seems to me that Nylas could make a lot more money by charging $1 a
> month, since there are likely many, many more people willing to pay $1 vs.
> $12. Probably more than the 12 to 1 ratio required to break even.

Do you have any data on this? Would love to see it to help inform the research
we already did when pricing the Pro edition of Nylas Mail.

~~~
innocentoldguy
Not for Nylas, since spending the time to do that research wouldn't benefit
me. I'm happy to do it for a salary though.

Having said that, I can offer you this isolated anecdote (as worthless as that
is): The last company I worked for used to use Nylas, before the pricing was
set to $7 a month. When your company started charging for Nylas, we all
stopped using it, both personally and professionally, and the general
consensus during the transition away from your product was basically, "I'd
continue to use it if it were around a buck." We understood the need for your
company to make money, but $7 a month seemed too steep to us, so we went
elsewhere.

I think it is great if you're able to succeed at $12 a month. I certainly
won't begrudge your success. It just seems to me that at the $12-price-point,
your competitors are offering much, much more. There are also free options,
like Boxer, that work satisfactorily and are still free.

I'm not knocking your product. I liked it when I was using it, and I think
you're trying to succeed in a difficult market, so kudos for making the
attempt. I just don't personally value Nylas Mail at $7 (or $12) a month, and
reading through this thread, it seems there are others who feel the same way;
which I would think you'd want to consider as you fine-tune your business
model.

Anyway, best of luck to you. I wish you all the success you deserve.

------
nkkollaw
How is this different than Mail and every other email client in existence?

Don't get me wrong, it looks extremely good.

However, I visited the site and immediately clicked on the back button.

I've been using Google Inbox for a few months, and it radically changed how I
handle my many mailboxes. It's not rare now that I actually achieve inbox
zero.

I would love to see the same amount of innovation that was put into Google
Inbox (I think they might have acquired it, though?) in another email client,
as I'm always looking to try things out.

In Nylas, I see the same things that make dealing with email a pain: folders,
the trash and spam being given the same importance as the inbox, etc.

It's set up to make it a job to keep your emails organized, while you
shouldn't keep them organized, because it's just doesn't matter: just reply
and mark as done, snooze until you can reply and mark as done, or discard/mark
multiple emails at the same time and go on with your life.

~~~
e0m
Nylas Mail Basic and Nylas Pro are all built on an open source, highly
extensible, modern platform. This lets us deliver a very familiar clean
experience out of the box while supporting the ability to add an enormous
number of very powerful features very quickly.

Everyone uses email slightly differently. The plugins allow us to build
Salesforce integration, tracking, templates, and mail merge for sales people,
while offering an entirely different targeted set for other users.

We intentionally "don't move the cheese to far" from existing clients to ease
transition. There are a lot of grand ideas for radically different email
experiences that fall flat due to their deviation from the core experiences
most people expect and need. We instead believe that a handful of targeted
features to a targeted group gradually develop into a very different way to
interact with email for a very specific use case.

(I'm an engineer at Nylas)

~~~
nkkollaw
Your goals seem to be different than mine (and there's nothing wrong with
that).

I'd rather lose Salesforce integration, tracking, templates etc. and get the
basics right: going through the dozens of emails we get every day.

When we reply to emails we feel like we're being productive, but we're just
taking time away from our actual job. If there's no easy way to easily
differentiate between low priority and important emails—which Google Inbox
does automatically by grouping them and letting you dismiss them all at
once—you're not helping me.

Again, the product looks awesome, this is just my point of view I thought I'd
share.

------
ghosttie
People need to start saying what their product does on their website

------
lnx01
What happened to Linux support? I'm sure I installed it a while back using a
deb package downloaded from their site?

~~~
grinich
Coming soon! We just didn't have enough time to QA it. Should be ready in a
couple of weeks. (Windows too)

~~~
jyrkesh
I was a bit bummed to not see Windows support either...especially when there's
a screenshot showing how to install on Windows on the download page. I
registered for an account thinking that an auto-download had already started,
so I was extra disappointed by a "Coming soon" prompt. Just felt a little
bait-and-switch-y.

~~~
shardo
Same, felt dishonest and a bait to get me to signup.

------
sethhochberg
I've tried it, I wanted to love it, but man was the self-hosted sync engine a
pain in the ass. Seemed like this was a totally second-class offering from
Nylas, there were several known bugs where the client had problems syncing
with self-hosted engines and the response was seemingly "we know this is a
problem with self-hosted sync engines, we'll try to fix it eventually". A fair
enough response to me as a nonpaying user who didn't want their cloud
offering, but certainly enough to get me to stop using their open source
offerings as my email client.

------
ocdtrekkie
> Does Nylas Basic support all mail providers?

> Today’s release supports Gmail/G Suite, Office365 Exchange, Yahoo! Mail,
> iCloud, and FastMail. Full support for self-hosted Microsoft Exchange
> servers is coming soon.

I am a little curious why this is so limited. All of the above solutions
support IMAP, so why is this so specific? I could understand if they're trying
to support, say, Gmail-specific features of your inbox, but a provider like
FastMail is pretty much entirely standards-compliant, AFAICT.

~~~
grinich
You actually can add any IMAP server. We just haven't tested all of them, so
we're only officially supporting a few at launch.

Here's how to do it: [http://imgur.com/a/WBdXe](http://imgur.com/a/WBdXe)

(I work at Nylas.)

~~~
Tepix
So it's closed source, by a US company (subject to NSLs, violating foreigners
rights etc) and they get a copy of all my mails? At least that's what it
sounds like.

~~~
parfe
This is an absurd comment venting your personal gripes with US Law onto
someone's product.

Which supported service is not _already_ running in the USA and subject to
NSLs? In what way is Nylas reducing your privacy?

~~~
kuschku
> Which supported service is not already running in the USA and subject to
> NSLs?

Quoting

>> You actually can add any IMAP server

Well, my own server?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
And in that case, you can surely run your own Nylas sync engine server
alongside it. Which still adds no new security issues with using Nylas.

~~~
e12e
This comment made me smile. Mostly because it threw a new a new light on what
I was already thinking; self-host (love how my phone assume I mean "self-
hatred", not "self-host", btw) the whole stack, and avoid new security issues
that come with forced hosting in hostile jurisdictions.

But take a new daemon that talks a cross product of tls/ssl and three(?)
protocols, is supposed to parse random emails, expose it to the Internet - and
claim "no new security issues"?

Oh, how I whish that could possibly be true.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's reasonable to point out this, true. But in the scope of the parent
discussion, it was about NSLs from hosting in countries with compromised
providers. If you are running your own mail server, you have mostly the same
security issues you need to zealously guard against, wherever you put it.

------
romanovcode
Wait, so Nylas was free, then it was paid and now it's free again? Did I
understand correctly?

~~~
OJFord
There's still a paid version (in fact I think this is a price bump?) - but
there's now a free tier too.

~~~
romanovcode
Yeah, maybe if author would charge 7 bucks in total instead of 7 bucks per
month he would not have this problem.

~~~
athenot
I have not used Nylas but if email is a tool that is integral to your
productivity, paying for a tool that helps you is not a far-fetched idea. It's
the same as with text editors. There are plenty available for free but if
there's one that happens to help you in your work, paying less than 0.1% of
your income can hardly qualify as excessive.

At $7/month, if this tool saves you 10 minutes a month, it's worth it.

~~~
ashark
Maybe I'm weird, but it's worth more than 10min/month to me _not_ to have
another recurring charge on my CC, before the amount of money is even
considered.

------
colinramsay
I use Nylas but I recently had to move from a 2013 MBP to a 2008 MBP and it
shows how unresponsive the UI is. I'd like to use something such as mutt but I
find it very unfriendly.

~~~
aylmao
Spark and Polymail are two other options. I'm personally a fan of how easily
it's to setup your own keyboard shortcuts in Spark.

~~~
otalp
There are serious privacy concerns[1] with spark though. One alternative to
Polymail which is not often discussed is Canary Mail[2], which I've always
found to be reliable and good looking.

[1]-
[https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/5grsan/do_not_use_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/5grsan/do_not_use_the_spark_email_client_by_readdle/)

[2]- [https://canarymail.io](https://canarymail.io)

~~~
davidcollantes
Canary isn't fully reliable... yet. I believe Dejalu[0] is more reliable and
stable (from one of Sparrow's creator).

[0] [https://dejalu.me/](https://dejalu.me/)

------
janlukacs
Does all email still go through their servers?

~~~
lnx01
Apparently on the basic version it connects directly to your mail servers
without going through Nylas' cloud. But there are a couple of features which
still require the cloud to funtion, snooze etc.

~~~
sachinag
This is exactly right.

(I work at Nylas.)

------
tjsix
I used Nylas for a while after it was first released and really liked it. Then
one day out of the blue I started getting sync errors and it basically stopped
working (I've talked to multiple people that this happened to). After spending
a couple hours, removing, reconnecting, re-installing, all with no success I
gave up and stopped using it (actually attempted using again a month or two
later with the same results). Would've been great to have local sync from the
beginning as I actually might've paid to use it if I wouldn't of encountered
so many issues and lost time trying to fix them. Now it looks like everything
that I used to use and like about the app is only included in the paid
version, and there's no way I'm going to pay just to see if they fixed the
issues.

------
ryanSrich
I'm really enjoying spark
([https://sparkmailapp.com](https://sparkmailapp.com)). I would try Nylas, but
snooze is an absolute deal breaker for me. I'd highly recommend making that a
free feature.

~~~
davidcollantes
Spark has similar shortcomings: it isn't an email client, it is an email
`service.` It relies on a third party service (other than your email
provider).

------
mike-cardwell
Anyone got this set up and would be willing to test it against
[https://www.emailprivacytester.com](https://www.emailprivacytester.com) and
report back?

~~~
sachinag
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/1hie94302jtxcmx/Screenshot%202017-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/1hie94302jtxcmx/Screenshot%202017-01-17%2009.35.44.png?dl=0)

(I work at Nylas.)

~~~
mike-cardwell
Is this image from before or after selecting "Load Remote Images", assuming
Nylas has such a feature? Also, what is the default configuration? To load
remote content, or to not?

~~~
sachinag
Nylas Mail defaults to loading remote images.

~~~
mike-cardwell
If you configure it to not load remote images, how does it fare against the
email privacy tester?

------
fuzzygroup
I looked at this app in depth and used it for about 2 days. Overall it is
fairly usable and I liked it but the memory usage is killer. On a MacBook Air
with 8 gigs, it uses 979 megs out of the gate and bloats up an additional 100
megs by the next morning. More details here:
[http://fuzzyblog.io/blog/email/2017/01/18/nylas-mail-
review....](http://fuzzyblog.io/blog/email/2017/01/18/nylas-mail-review.html)

~~~
grinich
Hey Scott-- how much of that usage was active memory vs cached/swapped?

Do you also run apps like Slack or Google Chrome? How does their memory usage
compare?

Was this during initial sync (very resource intensive) or at a steady state?

(Thanks for the blog post btw!)

------
fritzw
Ok I will try it again. I have to say when I used it during the trial, I liked
it a lot. Love the inverse theme and the customization that is allowed. My
only bad experience was, I ran the OS update that killed their app. It stopped
updating with their server, then a week later started taunting me to pay
money. It's not their fault the app stopped working. It was just bad timing
that left a bitter taste in my mouth. I really do like the app and looking
forward to reinstalling and configuring right now.

------
esamy
I actually really like it. It's funny how many Electron apps I have been using
lately: \- Visual Studio Code \- Hyper Terminal \- Nylas Mail \- Slack \-
Whatsapp Desktop \- ...

------
dalanmiller
How secure is it if I run the open source parts myself? Are my emails stored
unencrypted on the server itself?

Also if I access my email largely from my phone, would I have any significant
advantages?

------
skierscott
I debated switching but the lack of IMAP support in the free version turned me
away.

That's the only feature I want Nylas Pro and it's not worth $12/mo.

~~~
karim
Nylas Basic supports generic IMAP accounts. We don't show them in the list of
supported providers for QA reasons but you can still add such an account like
this: [https://imgur.com/a/WBdXe](https://imgur.com/a/WBdXe)

(By the way, feel free to open a Github issue if you're encountering problems
syncing your IMAP account:
[https://github.com/nylas/N1/issues/](https://github.com/nylas/N1/issues/))

~~~
newsat13
"QA reasons"? What is that supposed mean?

~~~
grinich
It means we didn't have enough time to make sure the app is great without bugs
for this feature.

~~~
newsat13
Thanks. How is that done selectively based on the pricing?

------
pmcl
20xfaster than what?

~~~
criddell
An unladen swallow.

~~~
OJFord
African or European?

------
vittore
I am not sure how much faster it is right now, but last time I tried N1 just
hanged when i plugged in my gmail account ( it just have like 8-10gigs of
emails for last god knows how many years). But that is what happen to pretty
much any mail client I tried on mac. I end up using only inbox in the
browser/android.

~~~
grinich
It is much much much much much faster now. :)

------
BugsJustFindMe
I love Nylas, and I've recommended it to people in the past. But what new
funding model has enabled this change?

~~~
spang
No new funding model, just better tech! In the new version, we don't sync and
store all of your email on our servers, which dramatically drops the cost of
running the service.

------
carsongross
I have a lot of sympathy for companies trying to make decent email apps. The
economics are just awful.

~~~
sachinag
Thanks! Thankfully we have both the Nylas Pro offering and the Nylas Cloud
APIs as revenue streams. (Seriously, if you're integrating with email, check
out the Nylas Cloud APIs: [https://nylas.com/cloud](https://nylas.com/cloud))

(I work at Nylas.)

------
ausjke
still using thunderbird that is really, totally free, I recall it is EOL,
looking for alternatives.

~~~
jcranmer
Thunderbird is not EOL.

Disclaimer: I am a Thunderbird developer.

~~~
Nadya
It's been over 1 year since a blog post on the Thunderbird blog [0]. Is there
any possibility for an update? Maybe something like "All the cool things we
worked on in 2016?" (E: I realize 'developer' does not necessarily mean 'part
of the Mozilla team developing it/in charge of the blog' but you may have
better contact with someone who can get this done than I have. :] )

It was to my understanding that development, outside of security fixes, was
more or less halted. Although looking at commits this doesn't seem to be the
case [1]. While I use and enjoy Thunderbird, I was also under the impression
is was more or less frozen/dead in the water/EOL.

[0]
[https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/](https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/)

[1] [http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central](http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central)

~~~
criddell
Are there new features that you would like to see?

For me, I would be super happy if the feature set of Thunderbird were frozen
and future updates only fixed bugs and improved performance.

~~~
hendersoon
Yes, absolutely. Multiline thread lists in particular.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945)

This bug has been open for ~14 YEARS. Thunderbird not being actively developed
is not exactly a recent development.

Reading through this thread I see tons of great MacOS mail clients, but very
few Linux and essentially zero Windows. That's why I still use Thunderbird
myself-- nothing better has ever come out.

~~~
jcranmer
The reason for the lack of implementation has very little to do with a fault
on the side of Thunderbird. It's been blocked on Firefox people accepting the
changes in
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=441414](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=441414)
(which they finally categorically refused to do a few years ago).

~~~
hendersoon
Yeah, it's the usual open-source ego-driven squabbling.

Whatever the reason may be, users were left without this extremely useful and
desirable feature for fourteen YEARS. Thunderbird at its core today acts and
performs essentially identically to 2003. I've been using it myself since well
before that. Development on the mail client hasn't meaningfully progressed
since, well, _ever_.

------
ilSignorCarlo
What motivated the decision to give again the option to use Nylas for free? I
remember reading that your target were kinds of "email power users", for whom
you would offer the ability to create advanced workflow. Did this change?

~~~
sachinag
Free trial versus freemium. If you have a larger base (free tier), even if a
small percentage upgrade to paid, then you may make more money. It's what
Dropbox and Slack do.

(I work at Nylas.)

~~~
ilSignorCarlo
But Dropbox has always offered the free option. Nylas used to have a free
plan, but at some point took it away entirely -which actually meant cutting
away a part of their base. I feel like they might change their mind again and
remove the free plan.

~~~
grinich
I previously wrote about why we switched to a paid model last year.
[https://nylas.com/blog/nylas-pro](https://nylas.com/blog/nylas-pro)

> We already sync several hundred terabytes of data for our users and are
> adding tens of thousands of new users each month. It’s costing us real
> dollars.

This is now changed with the new architecture in Nylas Mail.

------
NikolaeVarius
I've been using Mailbird recently and liked it enough to actually buy it.

Does Nylas have anything that might convince me to use it? I guess Open Source
is a pretty big one, but I'm talking featureset wise.

------
ldev
Ugh, Emojis are thing for very informal conversations - your friends. Seeing
them splattered in somewhat official statement looks so out of place and
unprofessional.

------
baby
This is amazing. I was using this client all the time until they were not free
enough. The price was way too high imo so I stopped using it until today.

------
cabbeer
It seems like they changed their sync model. The client syncs with the email
provider directly now instead of using their server. This is great.

------
rapsey
They were charging money for an electron based app?

~~~
wkoszek
Engineers to build software using Electron cost money.

------
surdaft
I enjoyed Nylas but was unsure about the features being worth enough for a
subscription. So I am glad a free version is now available.

------
samk117
...for mac users

------
boduh
One bug I found is that open tracking does not seem to be working.

Maybe a way to submit feedback right from the app would be useful.

------
Wintamute
And ... their Google auth gateway is down.

~~~
grinich
hm, try again?

------
rhaps0dy
What are the feature differences between this and Apple's Mail.app? They look
the same, on the surface.

~~~
aorth
First of all Apple's Mail.app is a native macOS application. Nylas is based on
Electron, the Chromium/NodeJS platform originally designed by GitHub when they
were building the Atom text editor.

[http://electron.atom.io/](http://electron.atom.io/)

------
petrvojacek
Why is it free for Mac and paid for Windows and Linux? I think Mac users are
most likely to pay for it.

------
locusm
Anyone compared this product to say Postbox or any of the other newish clients
out there?

------
painted
what is the reason of all this energy usage? It uses more resources than
Chrome: [https://i.imgur.com/uTjinwO.png](https://i.imgur.com/uTjinwO.png)

------
febed
The download page is blank for those of us who disable javascript.

------
water42
The emojis in every other line really distracts from the content

------
jbmorgado
I do understand the need for a better modern open source email client (not
trying to start any kind of client war here), but I really want something that
doesn't rely on an external server.

1 - any suggestions for an open source alternative that provides email
snoozing on linux (that's a big part of my email processing)?

2 - any good guide on how to self host the Nylas server on my home server (I
know they have the project on GitHub but the instructions are a bit too
complicated for me, although that's perhaps my sysadmin skills are quite low)?

