Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I've spent the last two years building a new email client

ivelope.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 608 posts

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#51

Post by SyneRyder »

red_admiral wrote: post #29
_RedPanda wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This probably means that the software is not going to be free, right?

If the choice is between paying with money and paying with my personal data, managing my e-mail is one of the things where I'm happy to pull out the credit card. (That's why my e-mail accounts are on places like fastmail instead of gmail.) I get paid money for the software I develop too, after all.

For some of us, email is so important that we are prepared to pay a LOT for a really great client. I'm currently paying around $150/year for Photoshop - email is more important to me than Photoshop. For the right program, I would happily pay $99 for a major release. I think that's what I used to pay for Eudora many years ago.

Postbox currently only charges $40 for a lifetime free-upgrades license. In my case, they are definitely leaving money on the table, I would've paid a lot more.

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#52

Post by muszc-master »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #42

It looks wonderful! Finally a good candidate for a successor of Thunderbird! I just hope you'll manage to finish your project. By the way, when do you plan to release the beta?

Thank you! Version 0.9 is out right now, and I have released it to a few people in the waiting list, I'm fixing bugs and iterating, so expect to get a download link pretty soon

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#53

Post by vijaybritto »

muszc-master wrote: post #36
vijaybritto wrote: post #30

This looks fantastic, I was just thinking about so many of these features being released in gmail. Like the chat bubble. Those things really speed up reading information. Kudos!! Btw where are the electron haters?!

Thank you! Yes I was expecting some comments about Electron, however I don't think it is really deserved. It is possible to build Electron apps that doesn't use >1gb of RAM, and this is what I've also been trying to do, when I've tested it on my old Macbook Air, it consumes around 300mb of RAM

Yes exactly. Also, there are ways to offload some of the background tasks to Rust. If you can do that, your app is gonna be consuming way less memory even with new features. Please consider it!

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#55

Post by newscracker »

dogma1138 wrote: post #24

No offense but unless it’s a 1st party client email clients are something that is very hard to trust. Who controls your client has access to your inbox with most services even the few that have separate IMAP/POP3 passwords like Hushmail can be compromised through it. If your client also integrates with encryption or worse takes charge of it my encryption key is also now at risk. Lastly since email today is pure HTML…

For me, an additional concern is being tied to this client after using it. Every offline mail client has its own storage formats (mbox, maildir, SQLite, another database or a mix of these), and so moving across clients is not an easy exercise unless the clients support multiple formats for import. I would also like to see how the client behaves when one single mailbox is more than 20GB in size, with at least one of the folders being around 3-4GB by itself. Claims that searches happen in milliseconds need to state the size of the mailbox and the folders (and also include enough variability in the content for the index to be large enough).

I certainly like the idea of new email clients, especially those that integrate with Exchange calender (a weak point for Thunderbird even with extensions). But in my view, building a fast, robust and feature rich email client would take about an effort of 10-30 person years or even more, depending on the feature set. This one seems to stand at a mere two person years, and so my expectations would be quite low (though it's still in beta and states upfront some of the important features it's missing).

P.S.: I'm a supporter of Thunderbird and donate money to the project. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#56

Post by porker »

dogma1138 wrote: post #24

No offense but unless it’s a 1st party client email clients are something that is very hard to trust. Who controls your client has access to your inbox with most services even the few that have separate IMAP/POP3 passwords like Hushmail can be compromised through it. If your client also integrates with encryption or worse takes charge of it my encryption key is also now at risk. Lastly since email today is pure HTML…

I've downvoted you for your sheer negativity.

This is a person who's worked 2 years on a project, in a neglected space where companies don't go because they can't make money.

He deserves praise for taking the time, creating something that's different, and thinking through the idea. Well done!

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#58

Post by electrichead »

muszc-master wrote: post #16
tempay wrote: post #6

This looks very impressive. I'm currently looking for a new email app but my biggest concern with email applications is their longevity, do you have any plans for funding this? (I'm not so concerned what the model is, just that there is one.)

Yes there is a plan, and I have on-going conversations with some interested parties :)

There is also the option of Patreon

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#59

Post by muszc-master »

SyneRyder wrote: post #34

This looks pretty cool, I'm really pleased to see people writing new email clients, and you've clearly worked very hard on this! I have a bunch of questions that I couldn't find out from the website (but are obscure enough that I shouldn't expect to): * Is this a purely native app, or an Electron / Javascript app? Personally I'm only interested in native apps & Electron would be a deal breaker - but I'm weird, most p…

1. It's an Electron app, but it is built to use as little RAM as possible, when I run it on my old Macbook Air, it consumes only around 300mb of RAM maximum, which is less than what Finder consumes, and I consider everything over this limit to be a bug.

2. Currently not supporting Mbox/Maildir but downloading emails directly from the server, however an import of this is on the todo list

3. Re: turn off conversation view: not at this time. Do you prefer not having it in a conversation view?

4. No POP3 yet

5. I think you can achieve this using folders/labels in Ivelope

Thanks for the positive encouragement!

Edit: formatting

Re: I've spent the last two years building a new email client

#60

Post by yani »

muszc-master wrote: post #4
abeiz wrote: post #3

Looks great! I'm always curious what it means when people say they've worked x years on something. Was this a full time project @ 40/h a week every week, or more of a few hours on the weekends, or maybe something in the middle?

Hello! It has been full-time for the last 2 years!

Did someone review your code? 2 years working on your own sounds like a caveman.
Post reply on HN