Alternative introductory price and education discount
Saturday, October 06, 2007
I received numerous reactions on the Mailplane price announcement released last week.Many have immediately bought a license - thank you so much for your support!!
Some of you are still missing some features and are not ready to buy Mailplane for the set price. If you feel this way, please be assured that I will add more features to the product and continue to improve on it. I suggest you to follow the Mailplane development closely and register when it fits your bill.
I received quite a few requests to make Mailplane either free or very low cost. For several reasons, this cannot be considered since it is not what I have intended for Mailplane.
Introduction price:
I really do appreciate YOUR support building this app, and I will therefore offer an alternative for the beta users that do not have the need for a family option: Buy a single user license for $19.95 (regular price
Again, this is an alternative to the free family option. The current "family" offer is unchanged: Single user license + family option for $24.95 (regular price
Remember: It's for beta users only - the offer ends when Mailplane goes public.
Education discount:
I am also happy to offer an education discount. If you learn or work at a university and you have an EDU email address, you can generate a coupon code. The discount is 30% off the single user license price.
If you already bought a license and you want the reduced price instead of the free family option and/or you qualify for the education discount, no problem. A separate email with instructions how to get your refund will be sent soon.
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Comments
Posted by Jared Shucha (10/06 at 05:25 PM)
Posted by Ruben Bakker (10/06 at 05:46 PM)
Hi Jared,
Many thanks for this problem report. Many payments are correctly processed right now, it looks like some kind of temporary PayPal problem.
Could you retry a bit later and if it still doesn’t work please let me know!
Posted by Paul (10/06 at 07:14 PM)
So no students outside of the U.S. get the discount? Here in the U.K. we have addresses that end in .ac.uk - just to let you know! Great app btw, I’ve enjoyed testing it.
Posted by Ruben Bakker (10/06 at 10:56 PM)
Paul, don’t worry. The educational discount form recognizes many universities worldwide. .ac.uk works by default. If your university isn’t recognized, you’ll have the chance to submit more information for manual approval.
Hope this helps.
Posted by Ruben Bakker (10/06 at 10:58 PM)
@Jared,
The “unrecognized seller email address” is a PayPal problem. I found a workaround and it should now work. Let me know if you still get the error.
Thanks!
Posted by Shane (10/06 at 11:35 PM)
Hi,
I signed up for the beta with very few expectations, which is good because I’m less disappointed than I could have been otherwise.
Sorry but I just can’t justify paying the amount you are asking - even at the reduced beta discount - for essentially what is an app that puts gmail specific buttons and scripts around a web browser window.
I am sure it has taken you time to develop, and I hope you find some kind of market for it. Good luck.
Regards,
Shane.
Posted by Mark (10/07 at 04:04 AM)
Thanks for listening to your users regarding the pricing. The education discounted price is exactly what I was willing to pay for the app. I purchased it earlier today and enjoy it immensely.
Posted by Hannes Mueller (10/07 at 06:18 AM)
Hello! I just wanted to point out that the generated coupon codes for the edu discount are case sensitive - which i did not expect (okay, it cost me only about 40 seconds to figure it out, but it is a non-standard behaviour)
So if you coupon code is rejected, check the case!
Posted by Vickram (10/07 at 08:08 AM)
I am not sure exactly how your pricing is structured.
1. You have single user licensing and ‘family’ prices. Which one fits a person with multiple GMail IDs (I am the impression that multiple GMail accounts is a feature, not a privilege)?
2. I have multiple User IDs (and GMail accounts in each one) on a single Mac. Is it wrong to use Mailplane in each ID if I buy a single user license?
3. I don’t mind paying for the app, but it is a little expensive at local prices. I can see that it isn’t from an international perspective, and you don’t live here, so unless you have a lot more users like me from 3rd World areas, I don’t suppose you can afford to care.
While my life is built around education, I don’t belong to any recognised university, so can’t take advantage of your ‘educational’ offer. Also, that might interfere with the way I use Mailplane. I can’t see that you have any simple workaround for that, but there is a real world out here, you know!
Gripes and calls for more features:
1. Mailplane seems to be causing occasional crashes in Adium. I can’t be sure about this unfortunately because both applications are under constant upgradation, but the crashes in Adium (hangs, actually) only began after I started using Mailplane (which also hangs).
2. I live in India, and poor connectivity is a daily situation. Sometimes Mailplane is cool with this, and simply shows the ‘offline’ symbol (nice graphic!), but at other times I have to shut it down.
3. I have to use Force Quit about 50% of the time, when Mailplane hangs (as above).
2. I use Google Docs a lot. It would be really good to have a googledoc open in a Mailplane tab rather than waiting for the browser to bring it up (I guess it would be cool to have all Google apps open inside Mailplane tabs instead of other browsers - after all, it is more or less a browser in any case). But with Google docs, it would be great if I could have the doc persist inside Mailplane, allowing me to work offline, and sync when I go live again. This would overcome a big ‘real-world’ problem with googledocs.
Posted by Ruben Bakker (10/07 at 10:21 AM)
Hi Vickram,
1) Yes, this is feature. No need to buy family for using multiple Gmail accounts.
2) Are there different users using the different accounts? If no, a single user license is enough. You may even install Mailplane on two Macs, as long as you are the only user.
3) The edu discount is based on email address validation; this allows me to approve applications automatically. If I would do it by hand (case by case) this would take all my time :).
Gripes:
1 + 3) I don’t see how Mailplane could crash Adium. Please don’t hesitate to send me Adium and/or Mailplane crash reports.
2) Google docs: http://mailplaneapp.com/blog_files/open_word_attachments_as_google_documents.html - better integration would be nice, but I focus on email features.
Hope this helps.
Posted by Ruben Bakker (10/07 at 10:22 AM)
@Hannes: The bug has been fixed - thanks for pointing this out.
Posted by Buno (10/07 at 11:53 AM)
I tryed the educational coupon request yesterday and the page says that my email address was right.. but no code arrived in my mailbox, what can i do?
Thank :)
Buno
Posted by Michael Guy (10/09 at 10:54 AM)
i have trouble with understanding the cost, as i guess a few people do, considering it is a shiny browser interface, a la AOL online or MSN, rather than a dedicated mail app, database application, or GUI interface, it’s a web browser.
i like the beta, it’s a decent app i’ve always got running in the background now instead of keeping another tab open for my email, which is really just plain useful.
to be fair to mailplane, it is more than just a derivative web browser, but there is a lot of potential integration in OS X such as Mail.app replacement, integration with Firefox/Safari/Opera, Google Docs/spreadsheets, Skype/Adium (perhaps a video/voice compatible jabber/gtalk client), iPhoto, iDisk and other popular apps, all of which would help justify a $20 price.
Posted by Ruben (10/09 at 11:05 AM)
@Buno: If it was approved then an email was sent to address you entered. The message may have been marked as Spam :)
If you don’t find it, just generate a new one.
Hope this helps.
Posted by Patrik (10/12 at 01:34 PM)
I think Mailplane is great and I do not think the price is excessive. Yes, I have bought a licence.
Posted by Susanna Singer (10/17 at 04:09 PM)
I think Mailplane is great, and even if the price is higher than I would have hoped, it’s not excessive.
But, I have a question. I have three computers, and would like to use it on all of them, but my family doesn’t use gmail. Is the family option only for more than one account, or is that OK for 1 user, 3 computers?
Please let me know, and I’ll send payment.
Posted by Ruben Bakker (10/17 at 04:32 PM)
Hi Susanna,
Many thanks for considering a license purchase.
Here are the “rules”:
Single User:
- Use as many Gmail accounts as you want
- Install on up to two Macs
- You are the sole user, e.g. do not share the license.
Family License: Same as Single User plus:
- Install on up to five Macs
- Share license with family members living in same household.
Hope this helps.
Posted by Susanna Singer (10/17 at 05:02 PM)
So one Gmail account/ 3 computers = Family License?
Posted by Ruben Bakker (10/17 at 08:03 PM)
Hi Susanna,
Yes, three computers means Family.
Posted by Bryan (10/20 at 08:26 PM)
No offense Ruben, but what is this supposed to mean: “I received quite a few requests to make Mailplane either free or very low cost. For several reasons, this cannot be considered since it is not what I have intended for Mailplane.”???
You’ve got to be kidding! How about providing even 1 of your various reasons for the incredibly high price for your software? And, for that matter, what have you intended for Mailplane?
Overall the consensus opinion is that your software is not a necessessity and therefore is easy to walk away from. I mean - all you’ve done is repackage a web browser.
I would never pay this kind of license fee to a company that consists of “just 1 guy”. What happens when your real job starts taking up more of your time and you can no longer afford to dedicate time to the application. For $5-$10, I’d be OK with that, but not for $25 (or worse - $33 for that poor family above that you’re trying to sell to.)
I just don’t get it. Good luck getting rich off this application dude.
Posted by (10/24 at 03:37 AM)
now that gmail is rolling out imap support, I guess that also puts a kink in your “plans for the app”
Posted by Ruben (10/24 at 07:36 AM)
IMAP support is good news for users, it gives them more choices.
If you are like me and find the Gmail web interface most productive, then IMAP is no alternative to Mailplane.
Posted by Mark (10/25 at 11:48 PM)
Mailplane has been very useful to me up until now, and the education price was reasonable. Many thanks.
I do find the non-edu prices unreasonable. In any case, now that gmail is rolling out IMAP, I’ll be using mail.app for my gmail when I upgrade to Leopard tomorrow.
Best of luck, I hope enough people still find interest in this software for your sake, and you can lower the price point for their sake !
Posted by Jay Soffian (10/26 at 12:59 AM)
I’ve been a beta tester and I like this application, but its price is too high. I’d be willing to pay $15, and I’d expect to be able to use it on my three machines, which all login to the same gmail account (that is, the license should be per-user, not per-machine).
Just for perspective, here’s some other OS X apps I’ve purchased:
TextMate, iBank, Chax, PasswordWallet, Ascent, Audio Hijack Pro, iPhoto Library Manager, OmniGraffle Profressional, Parallels Desktop, VMWare Fusion, SuperDuper!, Transmit, Unison.
I also just sprung for family editions of 10.5, iWork, and iLife.
So as you can see, I’m more than willing to pay for useful apps, but price needs to be inline with functionality. Market competition obviously has some effect as well.
Mailplane is basically competing with free, since there is no reason I can’t just use a browser to access Gmail. And now that IMAP access to Gmail is available, Maillane is even less compelling.
I think this is a nice application. It certainly improves the UI of Gmail in a few areas, but not to the tune of $24.95.
j.
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Ruben
there is a problem with your email address with Paypal and it can’t process transactions.