Apexmail is going to paid service only

[Computermail.net]

Apexmail.com sent their subscribers an email today stating that they will no longer offer their free email service as of November 1st. People who are currently subscribers get a free 1 month 'trial' of their paid service beginning October 1st. that will last them through November 1st. After that, good bye.

Apexmail will charge $14.95 for those who are already subscribers if they would like to continue their Apexmail.com email accounts. Their 'Platinum' service costs $19.95 normally.

Yet another 'free' email bites the dust. What a shame....

Memo to advertisers: Web advertising works, we have all found that out. It's time you found that out and paid appropriately for it!

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally posted by Computermail.net
Apexmail.com sent their subscribers an email today stating that they will no longer offer their free email service as of November 1st. <...> Yet another 'free' email bites the dust. What a shame....

Memo to advertisers: Web advertising works, we have all found that out. It's time you found that out and paid appropriately for it!

When we started FastMail (http://fastmail.fm) 2 years ago we were convinced that we could not support the site with banner/tagline advertising, particularly because advertisers' needs for prominant display and non-cachable pages is completely incompatible with users' needs for a fast and productive interface and access through POP/IMAP (which doesn't have banners). And because the economics just don't add up yet...

So our approach is to provide a free site with no ads, with the idea to get satisfied enough users that most will upgrade to the more powerful paid package. We also reward customers who spread the word about FastMail, suggest features, or spot bugs, by providing free access. One emailaddresses.com forum regular has already been given a life membership

We believe that we can continue to support a free service, but only if we get support from interested users. So if you use FastMail, like it, and tell others (make sure they mention you referred them when you sign up) then you are directly helping to keep at least one site freely accessible.

[Computermail.net]

Originally posted by Jeremy Howard
When we started FastMail ......So our approach is to provide a free site with no ads, with the idea to get satisfied enough users that most will upgrade to the more powerful paid package. We also reward customers who spread the word about FastMail, suggest features, or spot bugs, by providing free access. ....if you use FastMail, like it, and tell others (make sure they mention you referred them when you sign up) then you are directly helping to keep at least one site freely accessible.

Jeremy,

I have read your posts on this board and I have to say it is nice to have other free email providers on the board to assist the users and provide the 'other side of the story' along with me. I need to warn you that you do have to be careful about using every opportunity to advertise your email service!! That's starts to look a little crass and Edwin will eventually drop the hammer on you....

That said, you have a good idea, and I sure hope it works out for you! I like your approach very much. Now, if you get the support of users, that would be fantastic!! You might start a new trend.

Computermail.net is still operating at a profit and is still gaining subscribers. Computermail.net has also just released a 'paid' upgrade option which includes most of the kinds of things you provide (no ads, POP/SMTP, 25 MB, etc.) and some others as well. Response has been slow, but we have had some signup action. The target is a 1% paid subscriber base which will float the rest of the subscribers sufficiently. How has your signup campaign been going?

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally posted by Computermail.net
I need to warn you that you do have to be careful about using every opportunity to advertise your email service!! That's starts to look a little crass and Edwin will eventually drop the hammer on you

Thanks for the tip. I'm disappointed that things may have come across the wrong way I started out just wanting to say that FastMail has been bucking the industry trends (never advertiser supported, not dropping free service) in reply to your concern migration of ad-supported providers to pay-only services. But I got a bit over-enthusiastic...

That said, you have a good idea, and I sure hope it works out for you! I like your approach very much. Now, if you get the support of users, that would be fantastic!! You might start a new trend.

Thanks!

Computermail.net is still operating at a profit and is still gaining subscribers. Computermail.net has also just released a 'paid' upgrade option which includes most of the kinds of things you provide (no ads, POP/SMTP, 25 MB, etc.) and some others as well. Response has been slow, but we have had some signup action. The target is a 1% paid subscriber base which will float the rest of the subscribers sufficiently. How has your signup campaign been going?

Great to hear a success story--keep it up!

To answer your question, we went live 2 years ago, and have been beta-testing with friends and family during that time while we added features and made everything really solid. We didn't mention our service to anyone until 2 or 3 weeks ago when I mentioned FastMail for the first time on Usenet in answer to someone asking about what IMAP providers are around. We got about 20 new signups from that, almost all of whom wrote to us to say how much that liked it and that they were going to tell other folks about us. Since then we've seen signups increasing steadily each day as word gets around... It's too early to tell, but given the positive feedback I hope that word-of-mouth will give us enough subscribers to become self-funding in 6-12 months. Although you mention a target of only 1% paid subscribers--I think at that rate it would be hard to break even without charging more than we want to or allowing advertising...

Anyway, we should move this to the "From one webmaster to another..." forum since it's getting off topic.

PS: The one feature that everyone who tries it gives great feedback about is IMAP--I'm sure you'd make your paying customers really happy if you added it, since then they could have the same folders and messages on their email client as one the web site. Having said that, it's a big job--we would have started publicising 12 months ago but we made the big decision to support IMAP, which took a lot of work to do properly (although it was a lot of fun too!).