Price Announcement

Saturday, September 29, 2007

The beta started in March. This was such an intense and exciting half year. Thank you for all ideas, bug reports, and support!

I feel that the time has come to prepare Mailplane for public availability and to announce the price for it:

A Mailplane single user license is $24.95 and includes free 1.x updates.
There is a family option available ($8), which allows you to use Mailplane in your private household on up to five Macs.
The evaluation period will last 30 days.

For a short time, Mailplane will remain in beta stage. There is still no time limit: the evaluation period will begin when the beta ends.

Special offer for beta users: Buy a single user license today and get the family option for free. (Offer expires when Mailplane goes public).

To go to the store, open "Mailplane->Registration..." and press the "buy now..." button.

If you're not a beta user and like to try Mailplane you are welcome to register for the beta here.

Posted by Ruben on 09/29 at 02:55 PM
Announcements • Permalink

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Comments

Posted by Aigokeros (09/30 at 02:01 AM)

I’d suggest you read the comments at TUAW…

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/09/29/mailplane-pricing-announced/#comments

I don’t think it’s worth $25 either. It’s not the greatest quality for something I can use for free with a web browser.

$5-$10 maybe, but $25, not a chance.

I’d reconsider the pricing plan.

Posted by Mark Florida (09/30 at 04:25 AM)

Yes, pricing seems out of line for what kind of app this is. I know development isn’t easy, but if you sold it for $10 - $15, you’d get WAY more purchasers (myself included) and make up for the price difference in sales volume (and then some).

My 2 cents.

Posted by SRSco (09/30 at 09:11 PM)

I like Mailplane but no way in hell am I going to pay $25 for this.

Posted by Spencer (10/01 at 06:49 PM)

Mailplane has been a frequently used application on my computer throughout the beta, but I’m afraid that a $25 price tag is just too much for me to stomach for this functionality.

I would have gladly bought it were it available in the $5-$10 range, but I just don’t feel that this software justifies its hefty price.

I also would refer you to the comments on tuaw, linked by Aigokeros.

Posted by Bryan (10/02 at 01:10 AM)

Based on the comments I’ve seen, seems like everyone (save a few) is in agreement that your price is way too high. Are you going to do something about that before you run off all your users?

Posted by Mark (10/02 at 04:58 AM)

As a beta user, I love you program. But I must agree with all of the comments here and at TUAW. The price is set too high and I will not buy it. Please please please reconsider your pricing. No more than $15.

Posted by Alex (10/04 at 05:29 AM)

I agree with everyone else…though I like Mailplane, and it’ll be hard to switch back to straight Firefox, it’ll be a hell of a lot harder to shell out $25 for this.

The only non-game, non-OS software I’ve bought in years was TextMate, and let me just say, Mailplane is no Textmate.

Posted by Francesco Minciotti (10/04 at 09:34 AM)

Well, I have to agree with people that have left those comments: it’s way too high for a first release of a software that is even useful, but not 25$ worth. Plus, as its first release, you should consider to lower the price in order to acquire more customers.

I think 10-15$ max would more appropriate.

Of course, my 2 cents.

Posted by manish jain (10/04 at 11:08 AM)

i’ve stopped using Mailplane, no point in using it, if you are gonna be charging USD 25.00 for it.

wish you all the best, the program was great to use.

Posted by Ruben Bakker (10/06 at 04:22 PM)

Thanks for all reactions - I have posted a new blog post on pricing. The price hasn’t changed, but I now offer an educational discount and alternative introductory price.

Posted by Sean (10/06 at 05:11 PM)

Sorry, I have to agree with everyone else. It’s a nice program but I don’t feel it is worth $25 or even $20.

Posted by Alan Ruttenberg (10/06 at 10:46 PM)

Add offline capabilities and it would be worth this much.

Posted by Sabrejack (10/06 at 11:50 PM)

I appreciate what you’re trying to do with Mailplane but I must agree this is not a $25 app (or even a $20 app for beta users.) I would pay no more than $10 for this app, since all it really does for me is keep my mail in a separate program so I don’t have to re-open it when Firefox crashes.

Without Mailplane, I can simply use Safari for gmail, and the gmail notifier. I do not use the more advanced features such as the iPhoto plugin.

Posted by Lothar Zardon (10/07 at 12:31 AM)

Um, dude. It’s all about market size. Build a great product and a ton of people will use it. Apply for a job at Google. Let’s do the math here…the general concensus your product is worth $10. Most shareware has a 90/10 download to buy ratio. Let’s assume your product is one of the most successful shareware products of all time and 600,000 people download it per year. That’s $60,000 in revenue for you. Google seems to be hiring everyone and their grandmother with starting salaries of about $60,000. The thing is…they probably are not interested in hiring you anymore because you do not understand the value you create for your users. Good luck getting your B.A.

Posted by Michel Tribet (10/07 at 11:04 AM)

I am really tired by all these whining people. I know what they really want : free things, just free things !

I suppose they are like me : unable to develop something that works ! But programming has a cost in time, money and for that, I think the price is not enough !

If they really want a free gmail program, why not programming it by themselve ? So we can compare they ability to create and maintain an app to Ruben’s one ? I am pretty sure that they won’t go very far !

So they’d better stop whining about the price, stop using Mailplane if they don’t want to use it, and don’t take the excuse of a missing option to whine… Or start buying Mailplane, use it with the missing options, and ask Ruben to implement them ! It would be a better reward for Ruben to see that people are so fully confident in himself that they buy his program even with missing options and have hopes in himself !

Posted by Johan (10/08 at 02:41 PM)

Iam not a whining person but i like free things. Gmail is free so i like to access it just as easy as with mailplane and still dont have to pay for it.
So in short.. iam working on it :-)

Posted by Ric (10/10 at 05:36 AM)

I think MailPlane is well worth spending money on… except for the price being asked. Again I want this to be successful and would gladly buy it, but at the asking price there are plenty of other applications I also want to purchase. I think there’s a mental hierarchy of pricing and this is too close (even if less) to Scrivener, Delicious Library, DEVONthink Personal/Yujimbo, etc. for me to choose MailPlane. $9.95 or maybe $14.95 and they wouldn’t even be in competition, but while they are, and having limited funds, I have to lean towards others apps and they’re greater functionality (even if I use email far more).
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