Allow opt-out from Mailspring ID about mailspring HOT 139 CLOSED

Hey folks! Thanks for filing this—I actually debated what to do about the "Nylas ID" concept when I forked Nylas Mail and ended up keeping something similar in place. This is great feedback.

The ID concept in Mailspring is a bit different than in Nylas Mail: Mailspring stores your mail credentials securely on your machine in the keychain / keyring, and does not send your email credentials to the cloud. All email sync is done on your computer. (This may change in the future as new features launch, but it will always be opt-in per the Privacy Policy.) Your Mailspring ID stores small bits of metadata used for snoozing, send later, read receipts, etc., and also allows for feature rate-limiting, which can be removed by purchasing Mailspring Pro.

I know you're not interested in the features provided by the Mailspring ID, and that's totally fine! I'd really love for you to use Mailspring as your mail client even if you just want a prettier Thunderbird.

That said, Mailspring is intended to be a /product/ as well as an open source project. If everything works out, revenue from Mailspring Pro (which competes with subscription products like Mailbird, Rapportive, Mixmax, etc.) will allow me and others at F376 to allocate time to maintaining it indefinitely. Maybe one day we can find another sponsor like Nylas (which spent upwards of $2.5M developing Nylas Mail) or Mozilla to remove the financial concerns, but for now Mailspring needs to target paying customers with great pro features so I can continue working on it full-time. The Mailspring ID is a core component of these Pro features and a lot of exciting stuff on the roadmap, like team templates, read receipt analytics and shared folders. Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense to remove the Mailspring ID and make the mail client better for you, because it pulls us further away from doing a great job on the pro features for paying users that will ultimately make this a long-lasting open source project.

Hope that helps! I'm going to flag this as a wontfix for now, but I welcome everyone's thoughts and feedback here. As I dig into the pro feature development a bit more, I'll revisit this to see if we could make login optional.

from mailspring.

I find myself again searching for a Linux imap mail client that works for me (decent feature set, and attractive on Gnome 3) and discovered Nylas mail and the recent forks thereof. I would like to use Mailspring as my email client but don't want to send my email to a third party -- that's why I run my own email server!

So, long way to say, +1.

I doubt it would hurt your business model and maybe some 'imap-only' users will help you improve the client further.

from mailspring.

@jGleitz Personally, I'm very willing to pay for Mailspring in some form, even as a reasonably priced subscription. I'm not willing to send any email activity to a third party service.

from mailspring.

Mailspring stores your mail credentials securely on your machine in the keychain / keyring, and does not send your email credentials to the cloud. All email sync is done on your computer. (This may change in the future as new features launch, but it will always be opt-in per the Privacy Policy.) Your Mailspring ID stores small bits of metadata used for snoozing, send later, read receipts, etc., and also allows for feature rate-limiting, which can be removed by purchasing Mailspring Pro.

You made a point in your website's documentation to say what isn't sent to the cloud. However you should be more explicit about exactly what is sent to your servers.

from mailspring.

This mandatory ID is 100% why I won't be using Mailspring. It's a dealbreaker for me, and probably many others. I'd also be happy to pay to not have this 'feature'. Will keep an eye on the project and hopefully some common sense prevails to at least make this an optional component of the software.

from mailspring.

If Mailspring ID is a showstopper for some people, and Mailspring ID is a way to generate income from the project, wouldn’t it be an option to offer the opt-out from Mailspring ID against payment? To me, it seems like this would open another stream of income from people that can not be reached by the current business model, without losing any potential of the current business model.

Or would none of the people interested in this issue be willing to pay for Mailspring’s development?

from mailspring.

All I want is a beautiful email client. I've loved everything about Nylas N1 and, now, Mailspring but this was and continues to be a dealbreaker for me . On one hand I am so thrilled that the project continues in this new form, but that I can't opt out of Mailspring ID means that I can't support this project. I urge you to seriously consider alternatives for 'basic' email use that don't include any of the features that require joining a third party service.

Either way, good luck!

from mailspring.

+1

from mailspring.

In the end, there's absolutely no need to store anything in any server, that's beyond the target of an email client.
An email client cannot create that mandatory dependance with a 3rd party, it's really insane if you have an email provider and you still depend on another company and your data (whatever) will be in their servers.
IMHO, forcing users to be full dependant without need is not the way. This could be a nice mail client, but developer's goals are above user's needs, so it will never become extended.
You must respect user's privacy and independency, but it seems mailspring's core was built against all of that :-(

from mailspring.

I was about to create an issue for this and saw this one. Thanks for creating one.

And yes i agree it totally defeat the purpose of using own mail server if i am going to be dependent on third party server for few features.

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i am also not interested in mailspring ID and i would like to opt out.

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sudo dnf install mailspring-1.5.3-0.1.x86_64.rpm
5 minutes later and reading this thread
sudo dnf erase mailspring

mandatory 3rd party account to read my mails -> dealbreaker.

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I installed Mailspring thinking "Oh boy, this will be great.", but then I saw the registration form...

sudo apt remove mailspring

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@bengotow

I'm in favor of opt-in ID too. But if you want to keep those ID mandatory, at least you should guarantee some PII protection to users, which is not yet the case (see below).

If everything works out, revenue from Mailspring Pro [...] will allow me and others at F376 to allocate time to maintaining it indefinitely.

If you aim at maintaining indefinitely, I suggest you shall remove this paragraph from your privacy policy document, which I find disturbing:

Information Disclosed in Connection with Business Transactions. Information that we collect from our users, including PII, is considered to be a business asset. Thus, if we are acquired by a third party as a result of a transaction such as a merger, acquisition or asset sale or if our assets are acquired by a third party in the event we go out of business or enter bankruptcy, some or all of our assets, including your PII, may be disclosed or transferred to a third party acquirer in connection with the transaction.

from mailspring.

Installed to it try out. I have seen that requires ID and now I am uninstalling it. I'd rather use a proprietary client that does not require some "cloud service" than an open source one that does.

Big +1 to the feature request.

from mailspring.

Honestly, the main problem I'm seeing here in this issue, is how it's simply not being addressed as the comments are piling up.

So at this point I'm not really open to trying MailSpring any more even if this ludicrous "feature" were removed.

This isn't a problem of the product any more, but of the project itself (i.e. the developers / decision makers). Seems like a nice example of an Open Source project NOT being Free Software.

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I'm a researcher in Computer Science.

I also was looking for a good imap client for linux, and was about to click "install" on the mailspring .deb then I realised that I needed to permit a third party application to simultaneously hold my e-mail passwords AND make encrypted connections to a third party server and I decided not to install it. Just wanted to share this with the devs, maybe they can understand what this looks like, from the outside.

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Uninstall... why does everything today require a cloud account login. Blah

from mailspring.

Wow, it gets even worse. This is outright malware.

Mailspring sneakily installs a user agent to your system, even if you quit before surrendering your email address to them to get a "Mailspring ID". If you've ever even started Mailspring on your system once, you may have the hidden User Agent. To remove it, drop into Terminal and enter:

rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.mailspring.plist 

Then reboot your machine.

My god, I can't believe how sleazy this product is. I'm going to see if Github has rules against hosting things that install user agents without your knowledge or permission.

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I would have loved to use this application. The GUI is well done, flows well, and the settings/etc. are excellent. Same issue as Polymail and other clients that require the id that's mentioned here. It's data collection.

If you let me opt-out and assist another way, I'd do so. If I could have my business use this without the id, I'd have a full team of developers probably switching to this. User advocates and contributors are ways to increase your user base, add new or improve plugins, and create a community.

Our users need a local email client with GPG support that doesn't do email syncing to another cloud as we have regulatory requirements around that. We use Thunderbird + Enigmail for GPG encryption. We don't need or require the "Pro" features. I could possibly convince the company I work for to give a donation or perhaps sponsor if we could do this; however, the ID is required. Even more, my company would pay a perpetual license for a version of the software.

Like many in this thread, I'd encourage a change.

Perhaps that is allowing individuals unlimited licensed use. Target to get Pro users to make MailSpring IDs and pay for the advanced features, but don't require the MailSpring ID for non-pro users.

Perhaps also look at how you would license this at a particular version or on an annual recurring basis for enterprises. This could be accomplished by a license server or a cloud management of the keys to be handed out similar to JetBrains or Parallels from either Active Directory or a set department.

Again, client is beautiful. It's fluid and elegant. It's too bad about the MailSpring ID.

from mailspring.

I would also make one-time payment for using mailspring without a mailspring id. I want to use this client both in my personal computer and company computer but the way it is i cannot use it.

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I love the interface of this email address as much as I hate the interface of Thunderbird.

Of course I would pay for Mailspring but would never ever share my company's email with your cloud. It does not matter how to what you collect. You should not collect anything in any terms at least you should make it as a feature. For example a feature that the user would select if he or she would like to have a cloud sync between all computers which he or she has.

I almost installed this app on our linux desktops, but when I saw this thread ... Well.... I would not even get neat it as sharing data with your servers should not be mandatory.

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I went to give this software a try, and was informed that I had to start up a mandatory account on your servers.

No. Dealbreaker.

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► Requiring a Mailspring ID to access my emails...has caused me to uninstall M.S. and delete my ID.
'No idea why this is "forced".. don't care why either .

► Two licensing choices and BOTH 'fail to meet modest expectations.
** I'd like to:
• access all of my accounts ..more than 4.
• no requiring the MailSpring ID..EVER. ..'which also means to me that you're not in my email access loop, nor do you have any info from my emails...etc etc ..I think it's called something like; PRIVACY.
• not pay monthly, but rather pay one time for a perpetual license, for a version with update support for the version.
• be sure that my emails are only between me and the email server. No "middle service man" per se. Having a local email server and using the current form of MailSpring would be arse backwards.
• I'd add more here, but I think the basics mentioned here, would be sufficient.
**

- You can tell me that you don't care.. sure. I'm ok with that.
Either way, I think it would be nice if the team took a moment and stepped back to realign themselves with the users via the user-needs, wants, and of course; with the history of email since the
(I assume)bleaching or allowing access to email-service-provider-read-receipts is an overreach for a paid feature IMHO.

ok, enough with the direct speak.
I really like the client. It felt solid. I think I have used/tried every email program offered for Mac/Windows in the last 10 years or more..and IMHO, MailSpring has potential to be a strong marketshare competitor.
'BUT...BUT!!!!! ... well.. one sentence can sum up what I'm trying to say: Read the book or audible "The Go-Giver".

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Agree with above.

dnf install mailspring-1.5.6-0.1.x86_64.rpm
mailspring
# realize ID creation is mandatory
pkill mailspring
dnf remove mailspring

It's a shame because this looks to be otherwise great software with no dependency on the ID for its core features. Firefox has an optional ID and they are doing OK monetarily...

from mailspring.

After having read the justification from the devs, that they are maintaining a server (and presumably paying for it) just for the sake of storing metadata associated with mail messages, I smiled a little bit. What I would do (and plenty of people can also get there) is to use IMAP folders to store such metadata and cache it locally. Now tell me this is "technically unfeasible". Make me smile again :)

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why does everything today require a cloud account login

So they can track you, sell your personal life to a bigger business entity later down the road and generally be enticing to advertisers. It's hard to figure out how to manipulate someone when you don't know who they are. Much easier to make a buck if you make yourself attractive to those who would profit from the manipulation of your used's, er, I mean users.

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While I may disagree with not providing an opt-out mechanism, I applaud you for being honest rather than doing what most other companies would do and just ignoring or giving a BS reason. If you think that's that's the best decision to ensure the continued life of this project, then I respect that.

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Agreed. The Mailspring ID is a major turnoff.

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How about making the ID optional when on pro? Can be sold as a pro feature and fits seamlessly.

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@bengotow I paid $50 for MailMate on the Mac, and am now looking for its equal on Linux. I would be willing to pay up to $100 for a Mailspring product that didn't leak information to any third parties, didn't have this ID thing, and didn't try to upsell me. I am a different kind of customer from the Pro customer and would not buy the Pro product for any price, but would love to buy an upsell-less version of the free download. I think there are many of this kind of user.

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As attractive as Mailspring is, I won't use it unless (it's fully open source and) I can opt out of Mailspring ID and any other features that sends information to some server. I would be interested in paying for it as well.

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That's bullshit, not an open source product.
Open source means freedom and security. Both of it fucked here.

Just wonder why no one yet forked this and get rid of ID spy component.

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I was looking for e Linux email client too and installed MailSpring. As long as it prompted me to create an account without a way to opt-out, I got rid of MailSpring at once. No spying, thanks.

I am willing to pay for the opt-out but I would never allow to send my mail activity to a 3rd party server. So, bye, MailSpring.

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Uninstalling it for this reason as well. Please remove this.

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Would it hurt so much to just allow an opt-out and gain all the extra users that would actually like to use Mailspring but don't want those extra features provided by the ID?

I too find myself in the boat of "Why register yet another account, just to test a software and have extra features I don't want/need?"

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Same here. Just want to evaluate this client. But with a registration for a service that is not needed... no way.

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Fixed this today with sudo snap remove mailspring

Thx. That solved it. ;)

Honestly too bad though. I applaud any attempt to make an open source project financially sustainable, but in this day and age I pay not to have my data on your server.
Would have loved to have a look past that sign up screen.

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I came here looking for a workaround to avoid an account as well. Looks like i'm uninstalling this "FOSS" app now too. Shame.

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The client seems to be stable and robust with a nice fresh UI hence basically a real alternative to Thunderbird. But after all what I am reading in this thread it is simply a No-Go. The business model is a shame. I a willing to pay for good software but I do not want something that is violating fundamental data privacy principles - not even for free. -- Too bad.

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What is this nonsense about FORCING people to create a "Mailspring ID"???

As many, many have complained on this thread, there ought to be an OPT-OUT !

Although I entered some fake junk name/email, and it seems to go past the intrusive sign up.

Anyone who wants to create intrusive programs ought to go work for Microsoft....

More importanty, what's with the heavy-handed attempt to upsell by forcing a max of 4 email accounts, unless one coughs up $8/mo ? :o

I'm not necessarily against freemium for sort-of-useless extra features like "snooze" or whatever, but a minimum # of email accounts?!? Oh, please!

Someone ought to FORK this project, and do it as a REAL community email client program. I'll look into that myself! For now, I'll pass on this so-called "free" email client....

Edit: Someone said that the mailsync module is closed source. Is that a necessary component to the basic email function? This Mailspring program is beginning to appear more sleazy than Microsoft, just incredible!

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@bengotow Many people have commented about the technical and privacy issues around requiring a Mailspring account, but it's also a bad decision from a business, marketing and revenue perspective.

A large number of people obviously don't even try the program because of this -- the evidence is here on Github. I know it has been a showstopper for me twice, I keep hearing about Mailspring, twice now I've downloaded it, got up to the screen that wants me to create an ID but doesn't really explain why, and then I've quit and uninstalled.

From a business perspective, you give this client away for free because you want people to upsell to a paid plan later. But requiring the account results in fewer people completing the install, which means fewer people who you can sell the paid plan to.

I have absolutely no problem with creating an account to acquire paid services, but I'm not going to create an account just to try out a piece of desktop software. This is not something people who use desktop software are accustomed to doing. There's nothing on your website which makes a compelling case that it's necessary. I read the article about it - https://foundry376.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003141552-What-is-a-Mailspring-ID-and-why-do-I-need-one- Snooze? Send later? If they really need an account, rip them out of the free client. Make them paid features. The correct time for desktop software to require account creation is when someone's ready to bust out their credit card. Otherwise you are just creating more friction and reducing the number of people who use your software.

+1 to this issue from someone who loves to pay for good software, but absolutely won't create an account that stores email metadata in the cloud so that I can download and try an email client.

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from mailspring.

Uninstalled this and switched to Kube. It's still early days, but it's modern looking, easy to use and I'm really enjoying it! Thanks MailSpring team for requiring an ID! Without that, I never would have looked around and discovered Kube! <3

from mailspring.

I also hope there will be an opt-out possibility for the analytics package. Don't know what's happening here.
https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/blob/master/app/internal_packages/analytics/lib/analytics-store.es6#L94

from mailspring.

Even if I'm using Pro I need to create a mailspring ID, correct?

That’s correct. One proposal we made in this issue is to offer disabling Mailspring ID against a fee.

from mailspring.

I liked it until I found this out. Real bummer for me. Clearly the meta data must be valuable for you to consider it an option for free/open users. Usually open source projects operate a community version and then a corporate/business version. You are employing that along with meta data collection?

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Same here.
Discovered mailspring and decided to give it a chance. Googling about of getting rid of registration/ID, I decided to solve in radically manner:
Removed: mailspring-1.6.1-0.1.x86_64

from mailspring.

This mandatory ID is 100% why I won't be using Mailspring. It's a dealbreaker for me

Agree 100%

from mailspring.

+1 to this thread.

If you are not paying for a product, and the 'giver' wants something, seemingly innocuous from you, then YOU are the product.

I understand your position, but it seems like a very thinly veiled defense of a position that allows you to promote your product (to potential funders) as another data gathering platform. ie an email only alternative marketing platform, a la gmail.

Giving people the ability to opt out provides a complete remedy to that claim. Sadly, I deleted the MailSpring client and flagged it as malware on my system as soon as I found out about the requirement.

👎 It makes me sad.

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Thanks for the tip on the Launcher component. It definitely supports the theory that the Mailspring folks are trying to monetize using the "Facebook" model. It is a sad day.

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Complete show stopper, so sad.

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@BrainAnnex So because you don’t like that a partly oss project might be doing something with your emails, your prefer to rely on completely proprietary system where you have no idea what they are doing? Seems reasonable.

Other than that, people (on Linux) not liking Thunderbird should give Geary a try, they have been a lot of improvements in the recent 0.13 release.

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Revisiting email clients, I can't believe I still had Mailspring installed for some reason after being unable to get past this bug from the first run.

Fixed this today with sudo snap remove mailspring

from mailspring.

sudo apt-get purge mailspring
purge is better.

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Mailspring fork of Open Source Nylas and using proprietary mailsync core. Mailspring Pro is a paid version. All that being said, They making profit just by adding a few features on a large portion of the software they did not design or write. Meanwhile ID is required to use it. If you want to charge people for the software, write your own software instead of taking from the Open Source. If they want to continue to promote Nylas by forking the source then don't charge at all, that is good ethics.

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Forcing to create an ID even before trying the app? Great UX!

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@s-kris qué correo recomiendas? Las características de Mailspring son buenas. Lo he usado pero me preocupan los comentarios sobre uso de datos y política de privacidad. Desde ya gracias.

Yo uso el cliente de correo thunderbird con el tema monterail. ¡Es genial!
ref: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/08/monterail-thunderbird-theme-add-ons
screenshot: https://aozoeky4dglp5sh0-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/thunderbird-theme-gtk-darkest.jpg

p.s: utilicé el traductor de google, perdoné la gramática

from mailspring.

Ok, I just wanted to try Mailspring but got harshly stopped by the dialog of creating a mandetory ID. This makes no sense to me for a Mail client. I just read here that this is what the authors think is best to finance the project. I don't agree with this approach, sorry. Maybe I will come back later when this changes, but for now I will not even try Mailspring ... sadly...

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I just wanted to try MailSpring for now but I am not willing to link the application with all my mail data to a single ID, even if mail credentials arent sync, totally freaks me out the fact of having all my accounts from different servers linked to one MailSpring ID

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I agree with you 100%, After I saw this, I donated some money to Thunderbird and I decided to keep using it instead. Although it has a horrible oldish look but it works great with all kinds of features which are included in the paid version. Its a shame!

I have tried Thunderbird a number of times in recent years... It was my first go-to choice, but:

1. cluttered/ugly [not a big deal for me]

2. not-so-good search functions. On a number of occasions, I was able to find items thru Outlook's search function, but not Thunderbird - doing the same search in the same account! :o That made me lose interest in Thunderbird

3. most recently, Thunderbird is not showing some emails that are in the account - and which show up just fine in Outlook!

I've had it with Thunderbird!

Maybe I'll hold my nose and pay for Mail Bird instead. They seem misleading and over-aggressive in their marketing, and I'm not a fan of their "Window 10" style, but it seemed to work well in a recent test - and they offer a deep discount if you buy soon after installing it...

At least they don't pretend to be a "free open source project"...

from mailspring.

If the point of mandating the ID is reducing friction for the user when up-selling I don't think it should come at the cost of reducing the overall user base. Surely having a much larger user base is good for business specially the kind who don't want to use any of your server resources!

Hope the devs find some middle ground that at least allows people to use the product before trusting your servers.

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Just adding support to the idea of having a paid version of Mailspring specifically for those users that don't want to have to create a Mailspring ID to use the tool.

I honestly don't have a problem with them having an ID that lets them offer useful features that wouldn't be possible otherwise, but understand that others might not want to. Maybe offer it for a one-time payment without the Pro features?

Also support the idea of a reasonable monthly subscription service for the Pro features.

from mailspring.

The right way to do it would be to invite the user to create a Mailspring ID when enabling the pro features.
This ID is only necessary to enable those pro features, so forcing every user to create one just to test Mailspring may not be a smart move.

from mailspring.

Maybe someone should just fork this and remove the id?

Edit: Oh... mailsync is closed source. I see... well, too bad. Seemed like a good client.

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I think it would be less troubling for people if the privacy policy didn't claim that user personal information wasn't a business asset. It isn't necessarily the ID per-se, as I see it anyway.

"revenue from Mailspring Pro (which competes with subscription products like Mailbird, Rapportive, Mixmax, etc.) will allow me and others at F376 to allocate time to maintaining it indefinitely"

A lot of us are not against paying for software, we just are trying very hard to keep our data to ourselves.

from mailspring.

@s-kris qué correo recomiendas? Las características de Mailspring son buenas. Lo he usado pero me preocupan los comentarios sobre uso de datos y política de privacidad. Desde ya gracias.

from mailspring.

@gitbobbed if you want an answer, make a new issue or write directly to support, this thread seems like the wrong place to ask.

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I would love that software too, I only disagree with the payment part - I would think that there are very few people willing to pay 100 $ for a mail client, especially with free alternatives available. Furthermore, with the exception of the sync engine, the rest of Mailspring is under GPL v3 nobody could prohibit distribution of that part, afaik. Which would also make this model you guys proposed unfeasible and is likely one reason for the current model.

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@bengotow I would happily pay a subscription fee to your project on Patreon or via some mailspring account, but would never consider connecting my mail client to an account like it does now. Please, if you would make Mailspring account optional for using the client it would be fantastic!

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Yeah, I didn't even evaluate Nylas because of this sleazy business. Requiring an ID to even open the program to evaluate if you want to use it? Not to mention promoting spywar^h^h^h^h^h^h "web bugs" as a selling point? Yuck. I see this has fully inherited the sleaze of the project it was forked from.

Good luck making your money. I paid a lot of money for my last client, MailMate, and then regularly willingly donated even more to the developer after buying, as part of his "patron" program, because he made a great email client. And now I will never be a part of your user base at all.

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@BrainAnnex I subscribed this thread (and #24 as well) because I'm hoping either someone will fork this project and maintain an open-source sync engine or for Mailspring to change its direction. So I understand why you'd be upset but... I don't think the "tone" helps.

On Mail Bird: personally it doesn't fly (pun intended) because it's proprietary; I'd say most of us in this thread wanted Mailspring to be the best free and open-source mail client, no closed-source components (like the sync engine) or strings attached (like the Mailspring ID or any kind of "central control").

Geary is great and that's my "pretty and simple" alternative to Thunderbird. My only concern was that for some time it seemed abandoned (the changelog/releases stopped for ~half an year I think) and I was experiencing some frequent crashes while syncing big mailboxes at the time, but these days not only those syncing issues are gone, development seems to be back on track as well. It does lack some features (namely PGP/GPG integration), but for most users I'd say it does the job. You can track the development at their GitLab repo (IMHO it also didn't help they were keeping code in their own source code tracker; I think GNOME benefited from their migration to GitLab, because it helps with visibility).

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@ArchangeGabriel Please check Open Source license. Mailspring is not Open Source when the the core is proprietary and not separable. The Open Source license states source should be made available to modified and redistribute. If whatever proprietary code is separable as an addon and Mailspring can function without it then Mailspring is Open Source.

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All-in-all I'm sure we're excessively harsh in this thread with myself included.

Stripping out the noise / abrasiveness we can probably derive some more constructive criticism, and basically a feature request that would help improve the software and create more conversions for Mailspring.

Clearly @bengotow has put a lot of work into it, and the effort deserves compensation with a business model strategy. Unfortunately even implementing what a lot of people are clearly requiring in order to try it represents even more effort to change what's in place. And ultimately it would be up to Mailspring to determine whether that effort is worth it. Hopefully, they are doing very well even without those who aren't going to login before trying it.

from mailspring.

Surprised that nobody mentioned Evolution as an alternative to this and Thunderbird.
That said, the guys in here have a very good point. Forcing a user to register before even getting to try an email client is definitely counter to the fact that the user needs to try something first before paying for it.

Please don't be like those companies who offer free trials/experiences in exchange for user data so things would be 'profitable'. Money is the root of all evil and the bloody root of all problems that the IT industry have these days, the internet world was a much harmonious place before it became "profit focused".

So I firmly suggest for the mailspring team to, why not give it a try? Listen to all the people in here and see if it works out well? You can revert it all back to requiring mailspring ID or go become completely paid software if you fully confirm that it didn't work out well.

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@Bugsbane is it this one?

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@s-kris qué correo recomiendas? Las características de Mailspring son buenas. Lo he usado pero me preocupan los comentarios sobre uso de datos y política de privacidad. Desde ya gracias.

Yo uso el cliente de correo thunderbird con el tema monterail. ¡Es genial!
ref: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/08/monterail-thunderbird-theme-add-ons
screenshot: https://aozoeky4dglp5sh0-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/thunderbird-theme-gtk-darkest.jpg

p.s: utilicé el traductor de google, perdoné la gramática

Ok, muchas gracias

Saludos desde Chile

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FWIW, as far as I know, your email is not sent to a third party. Let alone, because hosting costs would prob be much higher if they were.
While I cannot speak for @bengotow etc, it seems that for now Mailspring requires the id. I shared many of the concerns mentioned, when the emails were actually stored on the server, as with the original N1 client. For everybody else, you could try NylasMailLives which is in the process of not requiring an ID (or maybe has already removed it by now) and might in the future use the sync-engine from Mailspring or a similar one if possible. And also fixed many bugs already.
Also, Geary just very recently released 0.12 with many improvements. This might be not entirely on-topic, but before trying to argue about business models or another fork, maybe it is best to revisit the alternatives that are there and might move in a direction that is more suitable to you and perhaps help improve them.

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Yes, the sync i am sure everyone is aware of, the only few features which need the id are tracking, pro etc. The thing is to not create another id in the process and use the app like TB/Geary etc.

@step21 thanks for the mentions. From this thread, i guess id(not tested yet) is not required anymore for NML.

@bengotow making login optional would be great, but that totally depends on your business model in the future.

For now i will try NML, and see it that fits. If not yet, i will stick to TB(old is gold sometime).

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Just two (subjective/my point of view) observations on business models -
I was wondering, have you thought of combining e-mail hosting with the client subscription? This probably was more applicable to the original 'N1' client, but the most annoying thing for me was always to have another intermediary, between me and my mail server/provider that not only stores the mail (in the case of N1) but also wants to be paid. Whereas if I could for example pay to set my mx records accordingly or use @mailspring-mail.com or similar, this would have been easier to justify a then at least for that account, you pay for e-mail but also get the client. (obv also doesn't apply to many accounts that you cannot control etc)
Second, while I guess most businesses like subscriptions, because they are recurring, the 'problem' is that so many companies, especially 'digital' ones are doing that. So in a sense, there is a new category of utilities that many people pay for, which can quickly add up and is in this case almost without limit. And while I like to have my utilities, as people do, I think that probably most people do not like paying for them, especially if they are adding up and seemingly only getting more. Sorry if this is maybe too off-topic/meta, but as we are on the topic of subscription I thought it fit.

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@egrueda, agreed! Hopefully things will become more sensible down the road.

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@muuuh I'd say it sends the name and address you registered with, for analytics I guess.

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I support the (cheaper) subscription idea for non-Pro users. Something which might be valuable is ability to opt out of analytics/telemetry - the old saying is "if you're not paying for the product, YOU are the product" - but I'd prefer to pay for it and NOT be a product.

Another issue this may also address is viability of the company, which would in turn improve Pro subscriptions. As someone using Link Tracking from another platform, frankly I'd need to be VERY sure the company doing link tracking is still in business for at least a year after the campaign starts (I still receive tracking from some emails we've sent in 2010!!!). Some of the marketing campaigns have long-lasting effect and cost lots of money - and if the company which tracks my links decide to stop doing business, this would be a major blow.

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Even if I'm using Pro I need to create a mailspring ID, correct?

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Quick question: are snoozed e-mails supposed to sync across different instances of Mailspring tied to the same Mailspring ID? Like, if you have Mailspring installed in your laptop and desktop, will a message resurface on either of those automatically? Or only if I open the instance in which the e-mail was originally snoozed?

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As I see it, with some legal knowledge, this is just informing you of what would happen in such a case. Even if it was not there, it would probably still take place in the case of the events described therein.

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To be fair, it doesn't claim to be an open source product. The readme page states "Mailspring's UI is entirely open-source and pull requests and contributions are welcome".

At the same time, the product as it is can only be distributed by its author, because while claiming to be licensed under GPL, it has binary-only modules. This means no one else - including distros for example - can redistribute it, as we won't be able to follow the GPL which requires complete corresponding source code.

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@id777 the old code was forked, ofc lacking some Mailspring improvements and the faster sync engine, and the fork is looking for maintainers. https://github.com/nylas-mail-lives/nylas-mail
At least some gui stuff could probably be ported back. @gyunaev the original product has a js sync engine, maybe even just written to open-source it, because shortly afterwards it was shut down as a product from Nylas.

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too bad this id is mandatory, would have liked to use this app... I take it an opt out option is not planned.

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in fact, it already exist an open version of nylas-mail (the base proyecto of mailspring)
https://github.com/nylas-mail-lives/nylas-mail
But its not longer mantained...

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👍

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If the ID is really about providing pro features then only force it on users of the pro plan.

Simple.

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If you came from WIndows like me, and you are looking for something similar to Outlook (column layout, allows Exchange protocol, calendar, native intregration...) you can install Thunderbird, and add the following addons:

• Exchange Calendar: To sync calendars, tasks and contacts using Exchange
• ExQuilla for Microsoft Exchange: Also required to read some Exchange servers
• Lightning: Calendar interface with a nice integration in the Thunderbird interface
• Messaging Menu and Unity Launcher integration: For Ubuntu integration

And you won't need any registration/ID.

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@howdev Please avoid such attack, especially when this is false: @bengotow was one of the main Nylas dev.

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The core is separable since you are free to implement your own version that match the API. This is not good, almost everyone here (me included) want an open-source core, but it’s not by attacking the developer that things may change.

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Snooze? Send later? If they really need an account, rip them out of the free client. Make them paid features.

@aaroncommand Sure, add features for paid... But my issue with this is, why target people who pay you money and decrease the security and user experience only for those people? I guess it's a whole other issue as far as putting a price tag on human rights, and using free services as a ticket to harvest souls.

I really doubt that Mailspring has nefarious intentions of course, and perhaps they don't even take the email addresses and automatically add them to a marketing mailing list. Adding the login feature to desktop software, and keeping data introduces a vulnerability, no matter what intention of the login is. For example, some people use the same password (they shouldn't but on the same token it's certainly convenient), and it's yet another place where that password could be compromised by a bad actor. An email client doesn't need these things to operate. It needs to communicate with mailservers to serve its function.

The justification is related to cross-device synchronization. The login is one way to accomplish that. And it's probably the first thing that comes to mind to get it done quickly. There doesn't seem to be a mobile app, so it would only apply to cases where people use more than one desktop computer. Which on first run to check it out, is no one...

I guess the main issue is that it has been implemented as a barrier to using the app at all. Seems to be along the lines of a critical UX issue. If I'm browsing email clients to try them out, I don't want to be filling a bunch of forms and potentially compromising my email address. Even though I use https://zinc.email/ religiously to remedy that, I'm looking at desktop email clients, not webmail where I would expect this kind of barrier as necessary.

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@alexanderadam - Yep! 😄 So far, the main issue is the missing search function, however... it's also "missing" the need to create and use a privacy defeating ID... 😉

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