Well, I was suggesting such pages (Twitter and Facebook) to first enlarge the visibility of the program. For me the Facebook page would be an extension of this official website and it could be an affordable means to make Pegasus Mail, and by extension David, present in the "mobile world". Lots of people are connected to their Facebook account via their mobile phones. About the Twitter account, I think it could be more suitable for David as a tool to give some regular updates, even little ones, instead of one big "report" after months or sometimes years. The length of the messages are fixed and traditionally they are rather short. For instance, David could post a small message after achieving a particular "coding task", a sentence like "Finished part IV of MailStore. Glad it is behind me.". Also, if there are lots of followers, it could eventually be a small source of moral support. Who knows, maybe a rich person will become a follower and will significantly help in resolving the "finance issue".

Hi all !

I apologize in advance if I am in the wrong part of the forum, but it seems there is no such part devoted to suggestions about financial issues (I suggested to create one in the past, but apparently it did not happen yet). So I think it would be beneficial to open a Twitter account and a Facebook account to go along with the present official site. In my opinion, it could raise the number of users of both programs, which means by extension the number of (potential) financial contributors.

Also, as I suggested somewhere else (I do not remember in which thread sorry), a crowdfunding scheme could be a fruitful way to deal with the financial issues. At the very least, I do not think it could hurt. There is actually a role playing game that is being done this way.

I hope some of these suggestions will be thought about.

Cheers !

I've been thinking to the crow funding thing lately and there are reasons/issues why I believe it couldn't work.

I don't have much time right now to go through my take on this, but in the meantime just let me ask: do we have a vague idea of what Pmail user base is? Usual data: age, sex, profession, and so forth... keeping in mind the basic question for a potential user: "What are the benefits? Why should I give my money to the cause?"

I do not speak for David of course, so what follows are merely suggestions. To the question about the various arguments that can be offered to shed a "donating mood" on an eventual crowdfunding attempt, I believe several are available. Those could be divided into two categories or groups, one about the program and one about the man behind it. Why ? Because, those are the two faces of the "Pegasus and Mercury mail system". On the program side, I am confident there cannot be a shortage of arguments. For instance, the program has been up for more than 20 years which, at the very least, is not something very common in computer science and is a certain proof of its quality. Also, this system has invented email filtering which is an essentiel feature of every email client these days. And I think the list could go on for quite some time, so I will stop here for the moment. On the man side, or the human side, it is quite an amazing achievement to have survive this long virtually alone in this era where programs are "team object". Of course David would have to lay some personal elements to get the donors or investors to know him, but I think it is worth the try. A one man struggle versus billion dollars companies could very well draw an unexpected amount of support, maybe enough to built up a foundation (a suggestion I also made some time ago).

I hope some of my suggestions will be picked up and if those could help to solve, even partially, the "financial problem", I would be very happy about it.

Cheers !

All right, here's a few personal thoughts on this matter.
The reasons whiskyfizz is pointing at, are the very reasons why the crow funding wouldn't work imho. Curious how in another thread I was  asking about Pmail strengths, now that becomes quite handy.
Let's analyze whiskyfizz points:
1) Proof of quality, 20 years of development: now for a moment let's try to think how a potential financier, who doesn't know anything about Pmail, should react to a statement like that. I don't see how 20 years of development for an application should push me helping the cause. What's the point? Probably I could think "Great perseverance, tough guy", but that's it.
2) Email filtering invented: Kudos to that, but still a potential financier would simply skip that part, or take it as an information or just think "that's cool, that's why nowadays in my X email client I've got filters". What's the point again?

If you have been following any crow funding lately, you'll see cool new stuff coming out, well exposed. They always come with a video that describes clearly pros of the tools, what are the benefits for the final user, what he/she can get in return.
Now, let's adapt this scenario to Pmail and let's face the reality. I know we're all happy users here, but wouldn't make any sense keep thinking in terms of how we would react to the crow funding, would it? After all I guess most of us already clicked the "Support Us" button.
Said that let's back to the scenario adaptation.
I'm the generic user who doesn't know Pmail and I've been asked to support it. What I see is an old interface that is not easy to grasp and possibly scares me as I'm used to tablets, modern clean minimalistic interfaces. Let's assume for a moment that I try it (very unlikely) and as soon as I install it I find my self lost as I don't recognize anything as familiar.
You see? the things we love about Pmail are the same things a generic user would never discover. Unless you're aiming at a very restriced user base. People who take their time to query a search engine to find out about specific issues, people to register on a forum, post on it, wait for feedback and then go through tests in order to see if the issue can be addressed. People, on the other side, who spend part of their time replying to those questions, propose solutions, and so forth. You wouldn't expect anything like that from a generic user I hope! Basically, a crow funding like this would sounds like: "Hi there, I'm an humble yet amazing program, with incredible features. Unfortunately these features are not visible on the surface to anyone at first glance. You actually need to dig deep into the program, most probably you'll need to read documentation. Sometime you my face issues that you would not know how to solve, thus with good chances you'll ask for help on forums as well. But I'm great! Please, support me!"

Now, on the other side, how could the crow funding work? (if it could at all). Assuming we're trying to catch attention from as many funders as possible, that means we should come with something that could yell "Hey! Look at me! I'm cool, fresh, simple to use, a real alternative to all the other apps out there in my category, and most important, I'll provide you tools that are simple to use that you wouldn't find in the other apps!"
Now, how that sounds compared to the humble claim?

In conclusion: why this will never happen? Despite I can't speak for David of course, I believe though is not his intention to spend time refreshing the interface. My feeling is he'll keep making Pmail more robust if possible, fixing bugs whenever he can and don't know what else if there's any time left to do more. But I'm quite positive that a new, modern interface is not an option. Why Pmail would benefit from a refreshed interface design and what that would means in terms of usability it's a different story. This thread is already long enough and I don't want bother you any further :)

P.S. sorry if all this sounds negative. Don't get me wrong, I'd be more than happy to see funding coming to Pmail, that would simply means easier life for David ergo more good stuff for us.

Hi !

Your counterarguments take the financier's point of view. I think this is a mistake because the target, for me of course, is not some financier or investor but an average user (like people on this forum). The point of helping the cause is not to make money out of it in an investment kind of way. Than one could ask, why on earth would people give money if there is not a chance of receiving some ? The answer is that monetary investment could be rewarded by something else than money, something symbolic like, for instance, your name in the list of donors on the official web site or a unique pegasus mug sent to you with your name. Those are only examples, but I am sure with imagination, lots of possibilities are available.

I would like now to stop at your remarks regarding the arguments I offered. The first one is based on the long existing period of the program. Of course, it is not because something has existed for a long time that it should automatically be helped to go on. However for the case of Pegasus Mail, those 20 years of service show several points. First, if the program has been around for so long, it is because it was used for so long. Now, if people are using a program for 20 years, it cannot be the case that this program is without merits. In the case of email clients, it is all the more true because it is a domain or a sector afflicted with fierce competition, the proof of which is the demise of the late Thunderbird. So it may be the case that this is a good program and at least, it could sparkle the interest of the potantial user to try it. What those 20 years of existence also show is that a one-man-program has been able to hold its foot against team-programs by still being alive and more importantly still being actively used. This implies that the programer cannot be without some skills and above that without some (very) good ideas. An illustration of this point is given by my second argument with the invention of email filtering. Now some potential donors or users could very well be presented with a crowd funding project based on those ideas or the mind behind them with a long term goal of turning it into multiples through the building of a community which the present official site is an important element. Giving some money to sustain Pegasus Mail is to become a part of a community that has the opportunity to offer some "good" ideas in email management so that our lives could be easier. Maybe for some, that could be enough of a reward.

I turn now to one of your argument based on the interface of the program. I agree with you that it is not very friendly, and to be honest when I first tried the program, it was the main reason I quit. At the time, it seemed to me this was a program for very smart people, not normal people like me, so I left it where it belongs with experts and geeks. However, some years after this first experience, being still curious I gave it another shot because if it was for experts, then it must have been a really quite good piece of software, and I wanted something good to manage my emails. And this is when I realized, it was not so complicated, unusal maybe, but still in the reach of the "normal guy". After two days to familiarize myself, I uninstalled what other email clients I had and started to move all my emails. Now, I believe if the interface was not that unfamiliar, I may have succeeded the first time and that is the reason why I suggested several times to make Pegasus Mail a skinnable program. This way, users that are not programmers could very well participate directly to the program and it would be able to change the default unfamiliar interface to a more friendly one.

In the same spirit something that may proved useful would be some kind of video tutorial, ideally posted on YouTube or a similar web site, that would take the hand of the average Joe in setting Pegasus for the first time and providing some examples about filters and all the other stuff. This could be a major step forward in enlarging the user base (in my opinion).

As for what you said about the difference with the "humble claim presentation", I would say that to attract donors or make it work as a crowd funding project, one should stick to the facts. For instance, I agree with you that saying this is the best email client is not a general truth, but thet fact that it has been around for 20 years is. Building on that, one could "connect" with the donors by offering them piece of thinking in the form of questions like "If Pegasus has been around for 20 years, it cannot be that bad. What about finding out why such claim could be made ?". Again, I am throwing ideas and examples, and surely some more clever people would present them more efficiently (if those were ever considered of course).

Now the crowd funding put aside, a Twitter account and a Facebook page could be helpful.

Cheers !

[quote user="whiskyfizz"]Now the crowd funding put aside, a Twitter account and a Facebook page could be helpful.[/quote]

And who would be in charge of maintaining them? If it only puts more workload on David Harris it'll be another non-starter only ...

I think there's been a misunderstanding. My use of the word 'financier' is probably misleading. I'm simply referring to people like us who are willing or will consider some donation, that's it. Of course there's no idea behind it to make any money at all. In fact, crow funding usually doesn't work that way. It's just about liking a project, supporting it, and in the best case scenario getting back a discount on the final price of the product or, like you said, some sort of marketing gadgets.

Also, sorry to disagree, but I don't see why the 20 years background should make people interested in trying something. Your statements about the glorious Pmail 20 years, despite true, it's just about the story of this software, not a hook to invite people to donate.
I guess we could keep talking about this for ever, I will never convince you as you'll never convince me. Yourself admitted that you gave up because of the interface. Now ask yourself what brought you back and, as in my case, I guess it's because we wanted to see beyond the gui barriers. You really believe most of the people will do the same?
Without mentioning the issues (just in random order):
- Reading html hangs up Pmail for seconds.
- Large images are very slow to load, even if message has been already loaded.
- Double click on message doesn't open email, only pressing enter does (not confirmed on all my machines).
- Forward doesn't show up in the queue. Queue needs to be refreshed (known issue).
- Some animated gif in the message will crash Pmail.

Unfortunately I believe there's more. I'm not bringing this on the table to show where Pmail fails, I'm pointing at this issues because I think David already has a lot to do and, again, a donation campaign should rely on some news coming to the software, and for generic users the news can't be bug fixing.

Peek at eMClient for a moment and see how many news you'll find around in just last year. If you ask why, it's first and foremost because of its simplicity. That doesn't mean is a basic email client, it actually brings lot of cool features and may suits advanced users needs. Then look for Pmail news around...

About the Twitter and FB account, besides what Michael already asked, I would add: why? To say what? After reading the eMClient news story above (I mean, seriously check how often Pmail gets updated) consider what would you post on Twitter or FB...

I'm sorry, I might sound harsh. I'm just trying to be realistic. I appreciate your passion, but without a concrete plan your efforts would evaporate the very next day.

If you ask me I would insist in redesign the interface, not only to refresh the look, that right now does a tremendous job keeping away new/young users used to new minimalistic interfaces, but also and especially because that would help re-thinking the usability. But then again, would that be doable? How much time/work would be required? Have no idea. I would be glad to help for what concerns the design part of it, but that's it, I'm a designer not a developer, know nothing about coding.

Just my 2 c.