Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development • Hacker News Board

Re: Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development

#21

Post by mslate » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 6:37 AM UTC

gramakri wrote: post #4

jacquesc wrote: post #2

Glad the Nylas team is focusing. I really wanted to like the frontend client, but I stopped using it about a year ago due to reliability issues. Mining organization data from email seems like a great opportunity. Context.io wasn't able to make it work, but Nylas looks a lot more capable.

https://blog.context.io/ seems very much alive. Do you have any other information what they were not able to make work?

They were acquired by ReturnPath and now their unknowing "users" serve as the basis for ReturnPath's data products, feeding information back to email marketers about what typical consumers' email behavior is like on the aggregate.

Re: Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development

#22

Post by jasonkester » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 6:45 AM UTC

These guys need to work on their message. Here was my read of the article:

1. Some company I've never heard of is shutting down. I'll go read about it.

2. "Exciting Year", "Incredible Journey" They're shutting down their Mail Thing. Raising prices for old users to keep the lights on until "sunset" date. Ouch.

3. I wonder what their "Mail Thing" was. I'll click the homepage.

4. Strange. Looks like the rest of the company hasn't got the memo yet. They're still talking about their mail thing on the homepage as though it still exists. Looks like some Sync API for email providers. Shame. That might have been useful.

5. (later) Read discussion here. Evidently the thing they shut down was some tiny side project and the company still exists. Did not get that at all from the shutdown notice.

Re: Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development

#23

Post by anoother » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 7:15 AM UTC

Was client-side Exchange sync ever released?

Tried N1/Nylas Mail a few times in hope of this killer feature... But was put off first by having to give Nylas credentials, and then by the fact the new local sync engine didn't support Exchange.

Re: Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development

#24

Post by maxyme » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 9:45 AM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #22

These guys need to work on their message. Here was my read of the article: 1. Some company I've never heard of is shutting down. I'll go read about it. 2. "Exciting Year", "Incredible Journey" They're shutting down their Mail Thing. Raising prices for old users to keep the lights on until "sunset" date. Ouch. 3. I wonder what their "Mail Thing" was. I'll click the homepage. 4. Strange. Looks like the rest of the comp…

It was my understanding that they made a desktop (electron based) mail client to showcase their serverside features. But now they're saying they will only sell the serverside features now and the desktop client is too expensive to maintain.

Is this correct? I haven't kept up with Nylas, all I know is they stored all your emails on their server at first, but then got rid of it because of server load and people didn't like it.

Re: Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development

#25

Post by grandinj » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 10:27 AM UTC

Maybe the Thunderbird developers can take over, some of them were keen on a rewrite using "modern" technologies, this would be a good bootstrap.

Re: Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development

#26

Post by AsyncAwait » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 10:49 AM UTC

maxyme wrote: post #24

jasonkester wrote: post #22

These guys need to work on their message. Here was my read of the article: 1. Some company I've never heard of is shutting down. I'll go read about it. 2. "Exciting Year", "Incredible Journey" They're shutting down their Mail Thing. Raising prices for old users to keep the lights on until "sunset" date. Ouch. 3. I wonder what their "Mail Thing" was. I'll click the homepage. 4. Strange. Looks like the rest of the comp…

It was my understanding that they made a desktop (electron based) mail client to showcase their serverside features. But now they're saying they will only sell the serverside features now and the desktop client is too expensive to maintain. Is this correct? I haven't kept up with Nylas, all I know is they stored all your emails on their server at first, but then got rid of it because of server load and people didn't…

Yeah, mostly correct, but Nylas Mail did no longer store your emails on their servers, only the previous version, (Nylas N1) did.

Re: Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development

#27

Post by marbletiles » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 11:30 AM UTC

As always with Nylas, I've got very little understanding of what's going on here. The API business must be successful, but I wonder who is using it, other than people making e-mail clients, and they all seem to have their own!

N1 was the first good desktop alternative to Outlook for Exchange in a loooong time, so I was hopeful this would be a flier. Is it going to be possible at all to use the new open source app (or any forks) with Exchange?

Re: Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development

#28

Post by chrismatheson » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 11:58 AM UTC

Maybe I'm just missing something here, but I really can't figure out what Nylas (the api side) offers?

Am i right in understanding that its essentially a Mailserver? AD / Gmail alternative kind of thing?

or is it an API facade interface over IMAP / SMTP, that i would use if i were creating a product and wanted to access a third parties email, contact etc which they would give me access to somehow?

Re: Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development

#29

Post by chrismatheson » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 12:00 PM UTC

chrismatheson wrote: post #28

Maybe I'm just missing something here, but I really can't figure out what Nylas (the api side) offers? Am i right in understanding that its essentially a Mailserver? AD / Gmail alternative kind of thing? or is it an API facade interface over IMAP / SMTP, that i would use if i were creating a product and wanted to access a third parties email, contact etc which they would give me access to somehow?

That sounded kind of negative. Which i didn't mean it to be, I'm just confused.

The client i really like, and I'm happy that its being open sourced. I recently tried to run it locally as a jump of point for a project i had in mind, but fell down at the sign-up screen, so I'm happy to hear that that has/will go :)

Re: Sunsetting Nylas Mail Development

#30

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 12:18 PM UTC

chrismatheson wrote: post #28

Maybe I'm just missing something here, but I really can't figure out what Nylas (the api side) offers? Am i right in understanding that its essentially a Mailserver? AD / Gmail alternative kind of thing? or is it an API facade interface over IMAP / SMTP, that i would use if i were creating a product and wanted to access a third parties email, contact etc which they would give me access to somehow?

[deleted]