alt Hacker NewsI hope for the best but plan for the worst:
I don't think people want to change email addresses very often. How do I know Mozilla will still be doing this in 5-10 years? (Edit: Others have pointed out that, if we can bring our own domains, technical users can retain their address. However, for non-technical users that's not an option.)
Also, I'm not sure about charging a fee at the start (except for TB contributors) and providing a free tier later - reverse of the usual way of launching a product. Maybe this is a soft launch to shake out the bugs and build a little momentum, and you can pay if you want to take part?
Mozilla could do something awesome here. I hate to say it, but here is a chance to start fresh and make big, legacy-breaking changes to Thunderbird. The new audience - which should become the vast majority if they are successful - won't care if it's not like the old Thunderbird (possibly unlike many on HN). Here is a chance to do something special and the mail client is all most users see or understand.
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I'm deeply skeptical as well.
If firefox doesn't have enough compelling ideas and features in its primary domain of the browser, then how are they going to develop a new mail competency in such a complete way that they can take on gmail?
Whether they succeed or fail, this will sap resources from the browser team. And it seems overwhelmingly likely to fail.
> I don't think people want to change email addresses very often.
You probably know this already, but people should have their own domain. Then they can change provider without changing the address.
Do people still use Thunderbird client? I would guess 99% of people use their browser.
> I'm not sure about charging a fee at the start and providing a free tier later
I think this is a smart move. Email isn't a platform where you need to conquer the world to be successful. Hey has been doing great business with an only-paid model. Might as well serve the paying customers first and build up revenue.
Also, whenever you're launching something new, you generally need to limit onboarding. Google did it with Gmail, Bluesky did it with their service. You can't have a flood of 10 million new users all at once before you've had a chance to scale things. Seems reasonable to let paying users in first given that email doesn't have network lock-in effects.
I think there is reasonable skepticism around how committed Mozilla is to this. However, I think that starting with the paid tiers is a smart move given that they'd have to limit signups initially anyway.