Postbox loses its mind; decides to charge
A single-user license for Postbox 1.0 will be sold at a regular price of $39.95 giving the user the option to install the email client on any computer that is personally used. Two add-on purchases are available. The first is a family pack for $19.95 which allows up to five family members in the same household to install Postbox with the same license on their computers. The second a lifetime upgrade option for $24.95 which guarantees that all Postbox upgrades will be free forever.
I don’t know where to begin with this one.
First, I feel dirty using a client based on open source code. I’d be more willing to give up some of the more polished features and use an open source client (in this case Thunderbird), than pay for an open sourced based product. The more important issue for me personally, is that Postbox doesn’t support Linux and given that they are not charging for the client I doubt it ever will.
Second, lets be real, the desktop emailing era is over. Not only does Postbox have to compete against Gmail, its numerous features and it’s free price tag, but also the general move towards cloud reliance. iPhones, netbooks, Chrome OS, will people really be willing to tie themselves to a desktop client? Lifehacker recently ran a survey that seems to indicate they won’t.
I wish Postbox’s developers the best, hope they do well, but I don’t hold out much hope that people will willingly fork over money for a desktop client (at least one not called Microsoft Outlook)
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