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I've switched to SmarterMail and have been happy
with the switch. I get quick, accurate answers to my inquiries, it's
inexpensive and it works.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 17:51
Subject: [IMail Forum] Some thoughts on
Ipswitch
While 8.2 seems to finally start addressing some functional
improvements that are commonly sought after by IMail's users, I'm far from
accepting of the company's new direction.
My last service agreement
expired earlier this year. For that service agreement I got squat, in
fact I got burned. The only releases that came out were minor version
releases that are generally available without the service agreement. I
never contacted support during that year. Then to top things off,
Ipswitch violated the terms of my service agreement by killing IMail as a
product, and introducing IMail as a part of a much, much more expensive
bundling of existing products that I never asked for or desired. While
the company somewhat backtracked from this decision to completely shelve IMail
as a stand-alone product, they still refuse to sell IMail to the public and
one can't build a business counting on them to deliver what is clearly within
their means. So we were all faced with an increase in a service
agreement by some 40% over what it was previously increased to, and a product
that you couldn't count on buying or upgrading in the future. They even
had the gall to state that they were not sure as to whether or not a new Web
messaging client would be provided to us plebes that had service agreements
but weren't using ICS. It's clear as day that Ipswitch is only selling
service agreements because they saw the opportunity to extract money from
their existing customer base, yet when those decisions were made, it was also
clear as day that they had no intention of abandoning their desires to become
a major player in the collaborative software sector and migrating not just
those of us that were willing, but giving us a choice or being willing and
staying by migrating to ICS and the expenses that go along with it, or
leaving.
If Ipswitch wants to turn this boat around they need to do
four things from my perspective:
1) Fire those that forced the abandonment of their IMail
customer base in favor of the pipe dream of becoming a major collaborative
player. If not for the fact that these people are creeps that have
very little regard for their customers, then for the fact that they are
ruining the business.
2) Sell IMail publically as a stand-alone,
unbundled product as was the case before.
3) Reorganize so that they
can produce quality software for less money, and therefore compete at the
pricing points that the rest of the industry is following ($695 for a
service agreement is absolutely ridiculous, and probably breaks the
elasticity of demand in addition to costing them a ton of
goodwill).
4) Continue improving the core product so that it can
compete more readily with other solutions on the market. Following
multiple notable improvements in 8.2 this will include scrapping their
outdated and very problematic Web mail interface for a modern solution that
utilizes IIS.
Others around here might be more diplomatic, but
I'm quite sure that at least in part, this is what the majority of us are
thinking. Ipswitch might make some inroads by attempting some or parts
of these things, but they will never earn back the goodwill that existed
before the changes were made last year.
Matt
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- Re: [IMail Forum] Some thoughts on Ipswitch Jeffery Rehm
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