eM Client acquires Postbox and ends its development
The Postbox email app for Windows and macOS has been acquired by eM Client. Unfortunately, this also spells the end of Postbox.
It is a bad week for apps, first Syncthing for Android was discontinued, and now Postbox is dead. Postbox was launched in 2008, and was based on Mozilla's Thunderbird. You can read Martin's review of the app here.
(Image courtesy: eM Client)
Postbox acquired by eM Client
eM Client is based in the Czech Republic. The details about the acquisition have not been disclosed, but the company has announced that Postbox will no longer be sold or developed, and support for the app will be available until December 22, 2024. The Help Center will be around for one more year, until December 22, 2025. Users can continue using Postbox as long as it is compatible with your operating system. Well, at least they aren't killing the app immediately.
Refund requests for recent purchases need to be submitted by November 22, 2024. eM Client is offering some discounts for Postbox users who are switching to its email app. A similar announcement on Postbox's website goes into more details about the offers. Users who had purchased Postbox on or after September 22nd, 2024, are eligible for a 100% off discount, on a one-time purchase or first year of subscription to eM Client. All other Postbox customers can claim a 50% off discount for their purchase.
I recommend reading the eM Client Acquisition FAQ to learn more about your options for a refund. The Migration FAQ will be helpful if you're switching to eM Client.
An FAQ page says that Postbox was sold to eM Client to offer more advanced features for users, and because the company has a larger development team, etc. That's PR talk. See, this is often a problem with software that offer lifetime licenses, such as how Postbox did. The company used to sell annual subscriptions, but decided to discontinue the options in 2020, to solely focus on lifetime licenses. I don't think this was a sensible thing to do, from a business' perspective.
I remember when Malwarebytes switched to a subscription model and there was an uproar, but given its large user-base, I think the company could not have sustained with a lifetime licensing model. That said, eM Client does have an option for a lifetime license, if that interests you, and you have $50 to spare. The email software is available for Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. It does not have a Linux version, and the app is not open source. eM Client's free version for desktops only supports two email accounts for personal use. The premium version has many additional features, but I'll leave it to you to decide if it is worth using.
What are some alternatives to eM Client?
There are some good free alternatives to eM Client. How about the Mail app on Windows? No, I'm just kidding. Don't use Microsoft's Mail app, it's just a garbage web-wrapper version of the Outlook website, and you can't block the ads.
Mozilla's Thunderbird is great for desktop users on PC, Linux or Mac, as it offers good privacy, supports add-ons, and many protocols including Microsoft Exchange. Mailspring (a fork of Nylas Mail) is also open source, and the email app is available for Windows, Linux and macOS. You can skip creating a Mailspring ID to use the app without premium features such as read receipts, snoozing, translation, etc.
Linux users have even more email clients to choose from there's Geary, Claws Mail (also available for Windows), Evolution and KMail (Kontact by KDE).
Android users may want to take a look at FairEmail (Google Play, F-Droid) and K9 Mail (Google Play, F-Droid), the latter is undergoing some changes that will turn it into Thunderbird for Android. iOS users don't really have much of a choice when it comes to privacy-friendly email clients, but, fortunately, Apple Mail is an excellent app that offers great security. Apple's stock Mail app is also available for macOS, and iPadOS users. Proton Mail is also a good option that you could consider, and it is available across all major platforms.
Which email app do you use?
I just switched to Mailbird, and it is the perfect alternative for me. They have an offer for Postbox users currently.
Postbox users can get Mailbird for free (with an exclusive free version) or get a big discount on their paid plans.
Check the offer here: https://www.getmailbird.com/postbox/
I just switched to Mailbird and it is the perfect alternative for me.
Mailbird is another email client that now also has a MacOS build.
I don’t recall the pricing scheme or how much it costs but the pricing page seems unreachable on my end right now so I couldn’t say much more about it.
TheBat is another email client that comes to mind.
I feel like the email client has a very long way to go. I am disappointed by the offerings for one reason or another.
It would be nice if extensions support comes to Thunderbird/BetterBird in full and not just the token implementation it is now.
As soon as I received the sad news, I went to the eM site and decided against paying again. I instead went with Thunderbird. A very nice, robust and fast program. Happy I did so.
Sad to see Postbox go away. Used it for years.
The most expected news is Microsoft buying Yahoo in order to compete with Gmail.
The Bat is also a good option on Windows
Bring back Eudora!
Been using Thunderbird since dumping Outlook more than a decade ago. I’m happy with TB… free, open-source, reliable, large-ish user base. I have no idea why anyone would pay for an e-mail app (or almost any app) when there so much excellent FOSS these days.
Only other client I’ve tried in recent years has been Betterbird, but didn’t find it better, so returned to the original. I live in a police-state dictatorsip, and e-mail use here is almost dead. Much on-line communication here has shifted to more-secure chat apps (especially Signal).
When I first read the article title I thought development of eM Client was ending. Almost had a heart attack!
Em Client is not a Microsoft product. I’m not sure what comparison you’re making.
Sad, now there’s less options. This needs to stop.
This is what Microsoft does all the time: buy up competitors products and then shut them down even if it stifles innovation.
I’ve never used the Postbox app, but it’ll be a shame to see it go just because it was a competitive product for the company that acquired it.
There is also free email client as Betterbird (fork of Thunderbird) which is better than Thunderbird.
https://www.betterbird.eu/
I use Betterbird portable on Windows and have absolutely no problems. As far as I can see, Betterbird follows the current version of Thunderbird, and it is also possible to download those based on older ones.
Well, just because they claim that they are better, they are not better than Thunderbird. If you read up a little on the subject, you quickly realize that the quality of Betterbird patches is often very poor.
Betterbird is actually an older version of Thunderbird + updates. In comparison, the NEW version of Thunderbird is a revised code base and includes many fixes that didn’t make it into their old code base. On my ARM64 Mac Betterbird is not signed and, in order to prevent MacOS from treating it as a corrupted app, I have to issue an “xattr -cr /Applications/Betterbird.app” command for it to work. On Linux Betterbird is not available in RPM or DEB format and you have to download the *tar.bz2 file and manually install it. I think they are trying hard to carve out a niche for themselves but I doubt they have the resources to make a real go of it. Betterbird has a somewhat limited set of extensions and they’re old ones at that. I’m not sure I would agree that Betterbird is, in fact, better. However, since I have different projects each with different groupings of email addresses, I do appreciate having a choice of email clients. It’s too bad the selection is steadily shrinking.
Same here. I saw the writing on the wall with Postbox a year ago and switched to Betterbird. It works well. For my Android smartphone and tablet, I use FairEmail.
I’ve used emClient (free version) for years. I find it quite adequate. I also get free help every time I request something. Perhaps that is meant to be for paid users only, but for some reason I’m included.
Me, I’m using several e-mail clients, sometimes three on one device concurrently. Postbox is one of these (macOS, Windows), but Spark is my default (on iOS and macOS). I have Outlook configured on devices on four platforms. I use more.
long time user of pegasus mail, move to betterbird. but, always checking pmail.com for updates from mr harris. i hope that as announced, he publishes news more frequently about pmail and mercury and release a new version of pmail very soon.