I’m a longtime Airmail user on both my laptop and iPhone. Opened up the phone version this morning and was presented with the ONE HUNDRED TWENTY DOLLAR per year option for push notifications.
Oh, hell no. Not sure about everyone else, but I am way, way over subscription models for just about anything (other than the $10/month Photoshop/Lightroom and $25/year for all my music in the cloud).
So, I’m in the market for a new phone mail app. Maybe SparkMail?
Dunno if they make an iphone app, but on Android I use Maildroid. Used it for years, it’s solid and a full blown email client, not a slimmed down version of something else.
I use Mac and IOS Airmail and I didn’t receive an email like this. This may be a scam you are seeing.
I’ve just checked it. It appears to be true. If you check the iOS version, it says that Airmail is now free with a subscription option. Current users will get 4 months free subscription, then have to pay.
Yikes! Time to start looking for a replacement. Airmail is good but certainly not $120/year good.
Reading the new IOS App page, they refer to existing users (who paid for the App and funded development) as “old” users!
They are going to get a great deal of bitter 1 star reviews for this outrageous behaviour.
lol - I don’t leave too many reviews (on the App Store, TripAdvisor, etc.) but alway try to if my experience was especially good or bad. I left one for Airmail earlier this morning. I hope others do as well.
It’s $9.99/year not month… Actually not a bad price for the best email app out there…
Ah, sorry. You’re right. Still, no more subscriptions for me…unless I just can’t live without it. I can live without this one.
Well, developers have to find ways to stay viable, and keep updating apps. I don’t mind paying reasonable fees annually ($9.99 for an app like Airmail that I use all the time - sounds good to me!) or Setapp (definitely a great subscription!) but some have gone overboard (Adobe - I’m looking at you…)
While I don’t disagree - $10.00/year is not a lot of money and Airmail is probably worth it (I’ve used it and Outlook for several years on my iPhone), imo they went about it totally wrong. They know who their customers are - did we get any advance notification? Any justification for taking away what I’d already purchased? Heck no- we opened Airmail this morning to be greeted with a notice that my built-in features are now subscription-based.
As for Adobe- I couldn’t agree more. I’m not sure what I’ll do next year when my free year’s worth of Adobe Fonts is up (I have two Adobe accounts- one paid for by my employer that covers Ps/Lr/Adobe Stock…and includes Fonts for free) and my personal account (Fonts, for my side websites). But they took away the $50/year subscription a while back, replaced it with a free one year subscription, after which a subscription of some sort will be required (they don’t offer a subscription just for Fonts anymore) and I won’t piggybank off my employer’s subscription. Perhaps when the free year runs out, I’ll move my other sites to Google Fonts. :-(
Everyone in my company uses Airmail. We just bought the Mac OS one at $27 - which was up from $15 from last time we purchased. I notice the subscription is for IOS only (for now).
This actually violates Apple IOS rules that state “if you are changing your existing app to a subscription-based business model, you should not take away the primary functionality existing users have already paid for.”
It is a potentially dangerous game that Airmail are playing here by suddenly dropping the news and creating confusion with conflicting messages.
It will be interesting to see how Apple respond to MacRumours request for a comment on the App Store rules which appear to have been broken. Perhaps Apple should reqire that what is considered core functionality be stated clearly during purchase.
Looks like the 4 month grace period may only apply to recent new buyers. I bough the IOS app for £4.99 and the Mac App for £9.99 (now £25.99) ages ago, and now I get IOS messages “reminding me” to start paying the IOS subscription now, or I will lose multiple accounts and notifications. Multiple Accounts are supposed to remain for the original buyers.
Airmail must be up shit creek. Raising prices for the last 6 months then this? Look at other premium email apps; Newton relaunched a few months ago and is $50 a year subscription, Polymail $10 a month, Canary $20 one off, Mailmate $50 one off. Plus some charge extra for the IOS app.
It looks like email apps cost a lot to support. The big problem with Airmail is they haven’t updated it significantly in a while.
My thoughts are that they will lose a lot of customers but those that stay and pay for the subscription will potentially make it worthwhile for Airmail to sell the app, I think this is part of the plan.
Selling a subscription app will fetch far more than a one off payment app.
Airmail is on setapp, check it out, for only 9USD per month you get all the apps you need for included in the package. Rapidweaver included!
Thats the Mac OS version.
Interesting update. I really need push notifications and multiple accounts. I tried Spark and others for the last week, none of them are good for what we do. We have so many email accounts smart folders become too complicated.
Anyway, so as a test i signed up for the subscription, if it went seamlessly then the rest of the company could do it.
Big fail. It registered my purchase and subscription but the app on my phone and iPad didn’t register it, I paid but the benefits of the subscription haven’t been unlocked. So now i have only 1 email account (instead of 12), no push and i still have the green star and constant notifications to subscribe.
I’ve contacted Bloop but they’ve basically told me I’m lying or wrong. They said i haven’t subscribed based on my serial number. When i sent them the Apple subscription proof they told me i must be in the beta group, which i’m not. Then nothing for 2 days despite emails from me asking for updates. It’s now 5 days in and not looking good.
@dave I had the same knee jerk reaction. I still feel the same way, annoyed as hell by the way they conducted it. They could easily have end of lined the current version and introduced a new version with subscription. AND they could have sent out an email, or posted on their blog, or twitter, explaining what they were going to do. Instead, we found out via app update notes? That’s insane, and stupid.
The fact is, $10 a year for basically push notifications is nothing. But I’m like you, I’m resisting the subscription model - especially since I already paid for this app, with full functionality. I’m struggling with alternative options. As a bit of an email client conoseour, I’m always trying new apps, but I have issues with all of them, and have always come back to Airmail.
MailPilot 3: Still in beta, and with no iOS companion, it means any messages snoozed that get returned actually don’t appear in your mobile inbox. And there’s no unified spam box. So that’s out.
Outlook: iOS outlook is stable, has a focus mode, and snoozes. A unified spam mailbox also makes it easy to keep on top of misdirected email. However, the desktop app lacks the ability to snooze, so you’re only able to triage/manage your email on the iPad/iPhone, and I like to do my mass triaging on my desktop.
Spark: From what I understand their business model is reading everything. That makes me very uncomfortable. Not to mention their snoozing feature is inconsistent, with stuff snoozing on desktop occasionally showing up early on iOS, etc. Unified spam box makes it easy to check spam.
Canary: Snoozing is generally consistent, it has a focused box, supports PGP encryption, unified inbox and spam box. It’s just ugly, and not as stable and streamlined, and I know they’re currently hard at work on their next version, and the current version isn’t getting much love.
Apple Mail: Still way behind everyone else, with search being their only strength. And the version for iOS 13 (I haven’t tried Catalina), hasn’t introduced anything to bring in up to speed.
Airmail: Not the prettiest, but it has support for every service, Spam-sieve, Unified inboxes and spam, Markdown composition… they just sucked horribly at introducing a rather inexpensive subscription service.
This one is a struggle. I’m tempted to give in for the subscription - as an old user, the only thing I’m missing is the notifications. Multiple accounts still work, and honestly, I have VIP email settings on Apple Mail on my phone set to trigger my watch, so I don’t really use notifications in Airmail anyways. But they really screwed the pooch, and annoyed their user base with their sloppy introduction.
@dave @SanityBox wonder if any of you have tried MailMate. Been using it for years now and it’s fantastic. Markdown friendly. Tagging: easy. Custom mailboxes: easy. Keyboard links to OmniFocus and other apps: easy.
It might not be the right fit for you, but definitely worth taking a look at.
Thanks, Mathew! I have not, but I’m off to have a look right now!