[outcoldman]

It is very interesting, but there are plenty of stoppers for me:

1. Subscription model. I will be willing to pay even $250 for a good email client, that is superior to the native macOS client. If it really adds more features that I need. Meaning, I can use mostly all the email related features offered by Fastmail. But I am not willing to support subscription models.

2. No iOS client. I use email on macOS and iOS. Not having support for iOS is a dealbreaker. I want the same client.

3. No trial. As it seems like. I actually tried to download the app. There is a Sign-In page with a disabled Sign In button. I guess I need to subscribe to try it. I can spare $3, but I don't want to support subscription models. Seriously, give me an option to try it for 14–30 days, I will pay for it $100-$200, and you can ask me to pay you again for an upgrade in 3–4 years.

4. The main reason I don't want to try it, also because I am sure, there are probably some nice features, but at the same time, there are most likely so many issues with integrations between other apps. Like links from Reminders to the Mail client, or from Notes to the Mail client. And based on the roadmap [1] it seems like this is mostly MVP product.

--

[1] https://feedback.swiftmail.io/roadmap/roadmap

[WirelessGigabit]

2. For 3rd party clients you cannot have a mail client without an intermediate server.

Consider a mail service that only has IMAP-IDLE [1]. iOS's mail does not support that.

So ANY 3rd party to be able to deliver notifications you either have to go through Apple's push notification service (or ask for Local push connectivity [2]). But regardless, it implies that in order for you to trigger the notification (either via Apple to the device, or directly) you must thus know that a new email has popped up. The only way to keep track of this is to use an intermediate server that maintains connection with IMAP-IDLE, and thus needs to know credentials.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAP_IDLE

[2]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkextension/l...

[outcoldman]

Can you just use the background refresh, and fetch for new emails like every 5-10 minutes or something? Email is not messaging, don't really care if I receive some email 5–10 minutes later, unless I am expecting email (like email verification), than I will be opening the mail app by myself.

[WirelessGigabit]

Problem with that is that

    earliestBeginDate

means that you can request a no-earlier-than begin date. iOS does not guarantee it will run ON that date, or within x time-units. It merely provides a minimum delay until it MAY get scheduled.

[outcoldman]

Sure. I understand. But that is something I can leave with. Even just once a day pull the email for me and notify that I have new emails. If I expect anything right now, I will open my email app and refresh it.

I don’t get notifications when my real mail arrives, I just go every other day and check.

[knr2345]

Thanks for following up below to update some these points. Just want to touch on a few, if I may:

2. An iOS client is planned going forward. The first few iterations of Swift Mail were actually deployed to both iOS & macOS, so there's quite a bit of shared platform code in place already when the time is right. I have a visionOS build up and running already as well, which I think bodes well for that effort.

3. (Trials do exist, as you mentioned below)

4. Swift Mail does provide support for mailto link handling, and it can be set as the default macOS mail client as well. I'm not familiar with linking from Reminders or Notes directly to the Mail app, however, so can't speak to that workflow at the moment.

Any and all feedback is appreciated & encouraged though so please don't hesitate to reach out as needed.

Note - that roadmap is not valid and was meant to be deactivated long ago after I cancelled my subscription during the beta (great experience but couldn't automate release notes with Xcode Cloud). A replacement roadmap and feedback portal should be back online very soon at that same link, however.

[outcoldman]

Actually, spoke too soon. There is a trial. 7 days trial for annual subscription, 3 days trial for monthly. But I was right about that being MVP/Alpha product:

1. No reply button to email. You can only compose a new mail message.

2. I have received new mail, got notification, but don't see it in the list (inbox). You need to restart the mail client to do so.

3. No images are displayed in the message body.

4. The interface is very not-intuitive in some parts yet. Like in the Threads - to expand the message you need to click a tiny button on the right, clicking on the message or on the body does not do anything.

Anyway, I am excited about this email client. But I don't see how I can justify paying for it yet. It is good maybe for read-only mode, but if I don't replace mail app, I don't see how it is much different from me just opening fast mail in the browser.

[knr2345]

A few of these are not correct.

1. Reply button is below the sender's profile symbol in the thread message header.

2. Thank you for the feedback on activating the notification. This should work as anticipated but it's been quite some time since I received feedback related to notification behaviors so I'll certainly take a look.

3. Images and remote content are blocked by default (similar to Mail.app); clicking the 'photo' button (next to the Flag button) in the message header will reveal these images.

4. Expanding threads by clicking in thread message header white space would be a welcome addition and feature request. I'll add this to the planned feature list. Expansion via body content click will require a bit more investigation, however.

Appreciate the detailed feedback!

[outcoldman]

These are just a few issues discovered opening the app for 5 minutes. I wish you and the product all the best. And I will be happy to try it again later.

But at this point, I just don't see myself paying a subscription for an MVP/alpha product, with so many visible bugs, and not working (or not intuitive) basic features.

- Clicking a button for every message to see images is a weird decision, to be honest. I understand some people are more paranoid. But both Mail.app and Fastmail web client provide features for privacy to hide your IP for loading images. There are I guess some WebKit context menus, which suggest that I can download the image or open the image in a new window, and when I click it - nothing happens.

- You are right, there is a reply button. Just not where I expected it, considering I was expecting the same behavior/view as Mail.app. But even that - another bug / unexpected behavior - the reply email (From) chosen first from the list, but not the same email account that received the email. Say I received an email on [e-mail], and when I click Reply - the From account is selected to [e-mail].

- I don't see any ability to attach inline images to messages. Drag and drop of the image from Finder to the Compose does not work. I see that I can attach documents to the messages, but don't see the ability to create inline messages.

So at this point. I already wasted a trial period to see that the state of the app in a very early alpha/beta. I would call it alpha because I believe there are many basic features are still missing. And it is definitely beta because some basic features don't even work, like lists don't update when I receive new emails.

I am sorry. It is just too early. I can't try again later in a few months, assuming you will release some updates soon. Which is very disappointing. I will give it another try, when I see it again, maybe mentioned somewhere else.

Really wish you actually had a TestFlight first to build the app to v1 and collect feedback. I do feel like there is a good potential of the app. And despite even that I really hate the subscription models, I went ahead and gave your app a try.