[vonklaus]

There are tons of reasons why this is so hard. Leaving aside all of those there are 2 that I see as the biggest:

* A 100x improvement over current email is needed for a switch.

* It has to be 100x cheaper than the current product.

While you can't multiply by 0 and I meant that facetiously, users won't pay for the software or only niche consumers. Which is why email providers that get paid focus on things like security, collaboration and and backup. These products are essentially 90% other things and 10% email. examples:

* dropbox * slack * telegram * silent circle * sms

obviously I am not going to name everything in the space. I can't think of a company that has email at it's core. maybe 'hushmail' or some small encrypted mail providers but what profitable business is at it's core an email provider

[AlexB138]

MailChimp? Constant Contact? I may be wrong, I'm not terribly familiar with either, but I believe they're largely focused on email.

[bradlys]

Mailchimp and such aren't for everyday emailing between you and me. They're for emailing large lists of users one email a day or week or whatever and using tracking information based off referral links users click on in the email.