We recently saw Polymail launch with a huuuuuge response after Mailbox announced it was shutting down.
How do you justify charging $20 for a mac email client vs a free app like Polymail? Especially with no free trial.
Honestly I'm still figuring out why I need any extra email 'fluff' that warrants me using an app other than just using Gmail.
I downloaded Polymail but never use it, and since updating I've had issues getting back into it. So that barrier is enough for me to probably not bother with it. Emails on my browser are just so convenient for me I feel that there must be something extra special that really makes me want to take the effort.
Would love to hear what you have to tell us about CloudMagic @rohitnadhani & team
@bentossell
- Our 3M mobile users have been asking for a native Mac app. This is by far the #1 feature request.
- If you are only a Gmail user, one of the advantages of a native app is increased snappiness, alt tab switching, etc (basically every advantage of a desktop app)
- CloudMagic really shines when you have multiple email accounts across vendors (Work, Personal, University). Our users register 2.6 accounts on an average
- By charging for the desktop app, we are trying to create a legit & clean business model
@bentossell "I downloaded Polymail but never use it, and since updating I've had issues getting back into it":
1) how come you never use it
2) what do you mean by "since updating"? updating what and why's that affect things?
@_jacksmith when I first got it, I couldn't see an unread vs all in my inbox... that put me off.
Not sure I need all the bells and whistles. I star emails for later, read, reply and delete. I'm always on top of them each day.
I was promted today with an update to install, so I did. Now it keeps asking me to sign in, when I type in my details it says can't upgrade existing account. Assume a bug, but don't have time for it when Gmail does everything I need atm.
@bentossell If you have multiple email accounts a client is really necessary. I have to imagine Google is thinking about that though, and will have a solution eventually. That being said Polymail is the best new Mac email app on the market, would have tried CloudMagic if there was a trial but would never pay $20 out of the gate
@bentossell Got an e-mail from @karthiksuroju asking me to join the conversation on Product Hunt and share my thoughts. So here are my thoughts:
1) I never joined the mailing list for this product
2) The e-mail address it was sent to was the e-mail address I use for some of the Product Hunt slack channels, which tells me it's been farmed (not cool).
3) I've never used CloudMagic before in my life, and since I'm a Windows user, I really don't see how this product is relevant to me.
4) I am now wondering - if I was using CloudMagic, would it have the ability to filter out unsolicited spam?
General consensus from other commenters seems to be that there should be a LITE version of this app (if a trial isn't possible), which would allow users to explore base features of the product before committing to a full purchase.
Hello Product Hunters!
I’m super excited to be here. Thank you @kwdinc for hunting us!
A little background-
We launched CloudMagic mobile apps around 2 years ago, with the aim of providing the best emailing experience on mobile devices. We take pride in the fact that we are a 4.5 star rated email app on both Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and being used by 3 million users.
Why we built a Mac app-
After iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Android, a desktop app was the natural next step. Our mobile users had also started banging our doors for a native Mac app. Moreover, we wanted to provide a consistent user experience across all devices.
CloudMagic for Mac (https://cloudmagic.com/k/mac?ref...) is the most ambitious thing we have ever done, and perhaps the most opinionated email app ever made for the desktop. Here are some of our best features so far:
- We support all types of email accounts, including all versions of Exchange: ActiveSync (EAS), EWS & IMAP
- Handoff: Automatically “hand off” what you’re doing from iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch to Mac.
- Easily manage your emails from Inbox View with one-click actions (Archive, Delete etc)
- Keyboard shortcuts that help you get things done quickly (A - Archive, R- Reply etc)
I’ll be here all day answering your queries.
*FREE Promo Codes*
We love the PH community and to show our love, we are giving away 25 Free Promo Codes exclusively to Product Hunters :)
ALL the Product Hunters stand a chance to win 1 of the 25 promo Codes when they visit our website. Read how - http://help.cloudmagic.com/artic...
@nikitakorotaev@rohitnadhani We are giving away promo codes at random to hunters who visit our website through product Hunt. We reserved 25 for Product Hunters. Apple only provides 100 and hence the limit. Let me see if I can get you a promo code :)
@rohitnadhani@karthiksuroju I'll do whatever it takes to get one of those Promo Codes! I'm a poor kid in Brooklyn just trying to make it in this tech world of ours, so any help I can get on the monetary side of things is much appreciated. ;-)
@cohix right there with you. Been quite happy with Polymail so far, but would love the "organise by person" feature of UniboxApp then I could die happy :)
@lassejansen@cohix I took a look at the website but didn't see any support for email tracking, send later, dropbox/grive integration etc? I would definitely use Unibox if I knew those things were available.
Love the design of this, but I prefer email clients that have a list of emails along the left, then when you click on one, the preview of that email appears on the right. This allows me to jump between emails really fast because the list never goes away. It looks like in this UI the inbox list is full-width, then when you click on one the preview takes up the whole screen. Seems like this would add a lot of clicks going back and forth between viewing your inbox and viewing a specific email (Gmail also works like this).
Other than that, solid work!
@jmsuth Thanks! But, don't you think this will help you focus more on the email that you are reading/composing? You can use arrow keys to navigate between email easily.
@karthiksuroju Not really, there's enough screen real estate to focus. I can understand why on smaller devices the paradigm works, but it doesn't make sense to me on larger screens
@jmsuth our philosophy is to keep the experience clean, remove the distractions while reading emails. Once you start using the app, I'm sure our opinions will align :)
@karthiksuroju@jmsuth I think this is fair for reading/writing long emails, but when you want to quickly process a whole bunch of short/irrelevant emails, all the clicking and switching views would be frustrating.
@bellebcooper@jmsuth Our Mac app allows you to act on emails from the inbox view itself. Just hover over an email to take quick actions. You can discard the unwanted emails from the inbox view itself and then 'act' on the important ones. Yes, the important ones are the emails that we 'read'/'write'. By allowing you to focus on what matters the most, our Mac app will make your emailing pleasant. I say, give it a try and decide :)
@romainbarissat@orliesaurus they harvested emails from Slack communities, without the permission of the community mods, and most importantly the users. In my opinion, starting off your product launch with something as dishonest as this is not cool, not cool at all.
So I've been using Cloudmagic for a really long time and love it.
And I actually paid the $20 for it because I do love the iOS versions on my iphone and ipad (and everything is already setup in Cloudmagic anyway).
But unless I am missing it, the Mac version does not have the integrations with Evernote, Asana, and Trello. And if true, then it's really disappointing. And not worth the $20. Please say it isn't so?!
There was a time at my previous company where we did not have the resources yet to put everyone on google for work, and we used a standard postfix server with unix accounts. Cloudmagic has been incredibly helpful in that, because:
* it's the only highly configurable smtp/imap ready app working on both iOS and android I found
* its middle man login made it easier for user to manage their password, compared to unix passwords
* I could setup account for users, configure their account, then they just download the app, log in and they're ready to go
Cloudmagic is the perfect solution if you're after something cheap yet not a pain for your collegues :)
We are seeing some confusion around how our Promo Code give away strategy, let me throw some light on it -
Because of the app store restrictions, we had to have a limit on number of promo codes that we can offer. We saw others on Product Hunt commenting the promo codes and felt it is an unfair advantage for early birds. hence we tried something new -
Hunters who visit the website from our Product Hunt page have a one-in-a-hundred chance of winning an exclusive PH promo code. We have randomized the entire process so that the 1st person is as likely to win as anyone else. Here's what you'll see if Lady Luck smiles on you -
“The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance.”
- Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
@karthiksuroju Does it ONLY tell you if you've won and say nothing at all if you didn't? That's a bit confusing. You would eliminate much of the confusion if everyone that landed on the page from PH was shown a Win or Lose message accordingly as opposed to only showing WIN messages to those 25 people
@mobilegreg@karthiksuroju Only the ones who win will see the form. We didn't want to show any message to all the others, as we thought it'll not add much value. But, didn't think it would confuse people. Like I said, this is something we tried for the 1st time on PH. We'll keep this in mind if we do something similar next time :)
@karthiksuroju@bvatere Don't understand what the inbox look like. Is there a left side nav? Do you have cards like in the mobile app? Based on the screenshot, it looks like a web app, not a native app
@bvatere The inbox is in the centre with Grey area around. This will allow you to focus on your emails. No, cards are not part of the 1st version of our Mac app. We'll get them on Mac soon.
@gratefuldays I'm not that surprised, actually. For me, email on the Mac hasn't been solved yet. Most of the available desktop apps that are widely available (i.e. not Polymail or Nylas N1, which are still testing early versions) are buggy, clunky, or ugly. Since Sparrow was bought out by Google I think the space has been open for something as good and nothing's really filled that spot.
* Update *
Hey Product Hunters!
Just wanted to let you know that we've exhausted the 25 exclusive PH promo codes. Congratulations to the lucky winners! Hope it was a pleasant surprise and we managed to bring a smile on your face :)
We tried something new and hope you've enjoyed it. I've always hated the 'first-come, first-served' policy. Hence we tried to come up with something innovative to even out the odds of winning a promo code. Let us know what you think of our approach. Or please share your ideas, if any, around this.
Cheers!
It's a sad/tough app world out there. People these days expect everything to either be for free or for dimes. People cry at freemium AND premium. Even here on PH. PolyMail will even eventually charge for premium features (I know, I'm in the Alpha and specifically asked). This client and any other app is designed for a specific crowd. I happen to enjoy the minimal approach thus appreciate he design. My only suggestion is that CloudMagic be more proactive in the marketing for features to still come to the Mac client. This way to reassure my $20 will be worth the investment in the future. Re: Cards, label support, etc.
@wilwired thanks for your thoughts. Making a business out of selling email apps is very difficult. Major reason for Mailbox's shutdown is their inability to monetize the app. We'll be proactive with adding more features and marketing them. We'll be more transparent about our roadmap. Follow our blog - http://blog.cloudmagic.com/ to know the latest on CloudMagic.
Rohit, Karthik, Umesh, Vinit,
I am so excited that you released CloudMagic on Mac! Theres something I want to tell to the makers of this app: don't get shaken by some of the negative comments on here. People can be crabby. Although it is good for you to get feedback and ideas - you have the vision - you know your customers better than anyone on this thread. Plus - I have been using CloudMagic on iPhone for a while now and I think that it is a pretty damn good indicator at what the Mac App is like so not having a free trial isn't as big of a deal for me than for others.
Thanks for making such an awesome product!
Take care,
John
I was on the CloudMagic beta for about three weeks before they launched the public version. I consider myself a power user: inbox zero, can navigate Gmail completely on keyboard, use a bunch of extensions, have also been alpha testing Polymail, prefer Slack over email, etc. I've been using CloudMagic as my primary desktop client for several weeks. My thoughts below.
Pros:
— UI: The UI truly is a zenlike experience. After just a few minutes of using it, both the Gmail and Polymail interfaces felt visually stressful in comparison. The "message list" view is nice and clean, and the "compose message" experience in particular really lends itself to focus. Really nice.
— UX: *Some* of the UX features are super slick: for multiple inboxes, being able to ⌘+1, ⌘+2, etc. to go to each of my different inboxes, and ⌘+0 to show messages from all inboxes, is awesome; sending attachments is also remarkably fast.
— Speed: Super fast app.
Cons:
— Navigation: The number one thing for me, the one that will end up being a dealbreaker if it's not resolved, is that the keyboard shortcuts are (1) completely different from Gmail's for the most part, and (2) not as comprehensive as I'd like (e.g. can't easily switch between composing a message and the inbox view; can't use "n" and "p" to move in between messages within a thread, so on several occasions now I have replied to the wrong person). Given the app's wonderfully minimalist UI, this is a real shame, because if one *could* navigate the app entirely by keyboard, it would really complete the uniqueness of this user experience. A further note: This didn't bother me as much when I first started using the app over the holidays, but since I've returned to fast-paced work mode, it's been a real pain point (e.g. hitting "A" to reply all but instead archiving the message) and I've already sent several messages to the wrong people, or prematurely. I imagine this will be a similar point of friction for other Gmail power users.
— UI: The UI is awesome, but as others have mentioned, customization is fairly rudimentary at this point. I'd like to be able to condense spacing, for example, the same way Gmail allows for a "compact" display vs. "comfortable."
— Search speed: For the most part, navigating the app is super fast. The exception is the search feature, which comes nowhere close to Gmail's. Not sure how much can be done about that given that it's working off of IMAP. (And CloudMagic search thankfully uses the same search operators as Gmail.)
A few other minor limitations, that I believe the team is already planning to resolve in future app updates:
— Limited formatting within messages: Currently, there's no way to include an image within the email body as opposed to attaching the file separately. And copying and pasting things like spreadsheet excerpts doesn't convert well.
— No extensions or special Gmail features, like Full Contact, Sidekick, Undo Send. I'm told these are on the way as well.
Bottom line: This app has *enormous* potential to streamline my workflow, and I would fully switch over to it and fork over the $20, IF the limited pro user functionality (i.e. having to click around way too much) wasn't such an impediment.
@miamabanta Thanks for your honest and comprehensive feedback. We are already working on some of the pain points that you've mentioned. This is the first version and the app will only get better.
We won't disappoint you :)
@itsnblackburn why not? Unlike numerous email apps that are thick IMAP/ActiveSync clients, the CloudMagic mobile and desktop apps are thin REST API clients. This architecture makes it straightforward for CloudMagic to deliver a native app on any other new platform in the future - http://blog.cloudmagic.com/2016/...
@tnsrig No simple way to do trials on the Mac App Store. CloudMagic is free to use as long as you want on iOS and Android and if you like it, you will be right at home on the Mac too. You are paying for the cohesive experience of emailing with all your preferences intact on all your devices.
"Our 3M mobile users have been asking for a native Mac app. This is by far the #1 feature request." So why not gouge $20 out of those requesters?
I know that desktop email clients are very difficult to monetise, but seriously, $20 and no trial?
Lots of people provide trial versions of apps, and sell through the Mac App store, it's not rocket science. Saying it's difficult is not a valid response. Some might say the lack of a trial is a cynical ploy to grab as much revenue as possible.
@frassmith Yes, its difficult, not impossible. We wanted to keep licensing as simple as possible on launch. For a lot of our users, the "trial" is our mobile apps. In the future, we might figure out to offer trials on desktop apps as well.
@rohitnadhani Hi there. Good to see all the PR on the launch. Two questions, both related 1. Why should I buy this when Spark is due out anytime for free. 2. What is the reason for the price? Is it because you don't farm people 'be aware of geeks with free gifts etc'?
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