Discussion on:

Review: The revolutionary mail client PostBox

Do you use an email client other than Gmail or Outlook on your Windows PCs? What do you use and why do you recommend it? Have you tried PostBox?

TB has always been my email client of choice. I may have to take a look at Postbox if Mozilla is dropping support for TB and no one picks it up.

Looks like a ripoff of Outlook

A couple of year's ago I installed PostBox on my mother's PC as a cheap and easy alternative to Outlook. No problems to report and she loves it.

In response to Mozilla's recent announcement on Thunderbird, we've lowered the price of Postbox to just $9.95. We encourage everyone to give it a try, as it contains some really unique innovations that can really improve your workflow.

For a quick overview, please see:
http://www.postbox-inc.com/
http://www.postbox-inc.com/features

Sherman Dickman
Postbox, Inc.

Thanks for dropping by! Appreciate the update. Yes with Mozilla's announcement about the impending sunset of Thunderbird, people are going to be looking around for a viable alternative that will fit their needs.

I use Postbox and think it is a good product. The pricetag includes installation on
ALL computers that you own which is outstanding. The Mac version has an Evernote
plugin which the Windows version does not. Otherwise, a decent product at a great price.

I guess aesthetically, almost any e-mail program will look similar to Outlook?

Thanks for your commentary. Although paying for an email client for most folks seems a bit out of line, Postbox is still cheaper than buying full on Outlook (not the crippled Express or Windows Mail variants).

Does ANYONE actually PAY for an email client nowadays?
Er, NO!
With so many clients that WILL DO, we adjust our needs to what is available.
Enough said!

I was about to pull the trigger on the $10 PostBox 3 purchase, but while I was looking for a support contact address, I found this statement on their web site: ""Please note that we do not offer one-on-one support offerings to new users at this time. All support efforts are currently dedicated towards providing better documentation and self-help solutions so that our users can more quickly find the answers they need."

So, if I can't find an answer to my question in the provided "self-help" content or through Google, then what?

I would be surprised if there isn't a massive uptake in Postbox community support after Mozilla's recent misstep. Sure, paying for a product should merit some form of complementary support from the company, but perhaps their approach to refine documentation might be a better move for something like an email client.

As a software developer, I know there are frequently customer cases that simply can't be diagnosed by other customers. Many times, the only way to determine the cause of a problem (and hence its solution) is to review the code and see which conditions might cause specific logic to be executed (or not).

Community support and knowledgebases are acceptable for the common "how to" questions, but a good percentage of software support is researching problems that are bugs or issues fairly unique to that customer's environment or usage. As a sole source of product support, a user community alone is acceptable for open-source projects, but not for a profitable company's flagship product. I just think the "we'll take your money -- just don't ask us any questions..." paradigm doesn't make a good statement.

I agree with your assessment of this lack in direct customer support. Hopefully with the recent price drop, it makes that pill a bit easier to swallow in the end. Granted, I consider myself to be a hardware / software guru, so I never really needed to take advantage of any customer service, save for some defective hardware or a bad software product key for instance.

I can't think of the last time I actually contacted support. Forums, google are all I usually need.

First off, your headline, "revolutionary," is factually wrong. Most of the base code is right from Thunderbird which is where some of the PB developers came from. They have added a lot of new features to it and have been good about support - until last month!

Im a long-time Postbox user, but I wouldnt switch to them now! The same time they lowered the price, they cut off all tech support!
http://support.postbox-inc.com/entries/21694767-how-to-get-help-with-postbox_forums
So, they tell us all to help each other, but they dont have the forum to do it in or allow us to post to their facebook page
http://support.postbox-inc.com/entries/21702158-where-are-the-postbox-forums
Ive now got 2-year-old bugs in their system that theyve closed and wont allow updating or entering new bugs. And, they havent responded to this in the last few days.

I just downloaded version 16.something - looks like they have pulled the versioning in line with Firefox (what's with that, anyway? A new major version no every couple of months?)

My problem is that the Mac version, like many other Mac mail clients, is buggy, and there doesn't appear to be *any* client that can handle a large database of email (e.g. 47,000 messages taking up 11 GB) - what do other people do? This can't be a unique requirement, I know any number of people who use their email as a filing system.