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    Jul 12

    Thunderbird-based Postbox Drops Price Massively

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    Postbox's mailbox application iconCredit: Postbox, Inc.

    Postbox's mailbox application icon

    Postbox, the Thunderbird-forked e-mail client I’ve been playing with for the last month after a discussion with Alan Cann about e-mail clients, has just substantially dropped in price from $29.95 US to $9.95 US. The previous $10.00 US discount if you tweeted about it has been reduced to $5.00, but it means you can buy Postbox (Mac OS X or Windows) starting at only $4.95!

    This price drop comes probably not coincidentally as Mozilla’s chairperson announced Mozilla won’t be putting resources into further feature development for Thunderbird. The price drop also makes Postbox more competitive with Sparrow, another Mac e-mail client. Both applications tout their wonderful Gmail integration features, but I’m a long-time POP/IMAP user keen on keeping my mail on my laptop and not in the cloud, so I’ve been appreciating the robustness of Postbox’s POP/IMAP Thunderbird heritage.

    Postbox’s recent blog post highlights some features they’re most proud of: unified folders/account groups; integrated social networking features with Twitter, Facebook , and LinkedIn; conversation view (across multiple folders!); Dropbox, Evernote, Things, Alfred, and Omnifocus integration; various bits of Gmail support including labels and keyboard shortcuts; quick reply; and quick move. I didn’t find the social features that compelling, but some of the others have been useful. I’ll write more fully about my Postbox experience in a separate series of postings, but it’s worth taking a look at—at least on the Mac. You can try it for 30 days and there’s a 60-day money-back guarantee too. Download it from http://www.postbox-inc.com/.

    Enjoy!

    Updates
    I wrote most of this article on Google+ on July 10th and there have been some developments since then.

    Update 1: I bought my license less than 2 weeks ago and so was dismayed to discover I could have paid only $4.95 US instead of $19.95 US (that includes the discount for tweeting about it). I contacted Postbox’s sales support team who told me they’d be happy to refund me $15.00 US, but I should be aware that the new pricing doesn’t include any one-on-one support. The Postbox team will be concentrating their efforts on improving the self-support options available (currently knowledge base articles, a user guide, and a FAQ. So you might want to consider that prior to asking for a refund.
    Update 2: Some concern was expressed that with Mozilla ceasing active development of Thunderbird, Postbox wasn’t that compelling anymore. Postbox, Inc.’s co-founder Scott MacGregor was previously Thunderbird lead engineer and Sherman Dickman, the other co-founder, was previously a Mozilla director of product management. They started Postbox, Inc. in 2007. Postbox has its own developer team and has been developing independently since forking. It’s therefore, in my opinion, just as viable to purchase as any other software, with the bonus benefit of building on top of an already proven application.
    Update 3: The tab on the right-hand side of Postbox’s buy page that gave details of the Twitter tweet discount seems to have disappeared. It probably was too successful! No more discount, I guess.
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    One comment on “Thunderbird-based Postbox Drops Price Massively”
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    • ECC says:
      September 2, 2012 at 23:05

      You think you got a bad deal? I had paid $29.95 for Postbox 2, then bit the bullet and paid $9.95 on 1 June 2012 for the upgrade to Postbox 3. Only to find that the new Postbox 3 is ‘only’ $9.95 for new buyers.

      I’ve just e-mailed Postbox Sales to ask for a refund. As for one-on-one support, if they mean posting your question in their user forum (which no longer exists) to get an answer from Postbox, $29.95 still seems far too much for the privilege which… no longer exists, either!

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