Tuffmail under new management.

[filbert]

To add a bit of balance, looking back at my emails, I see that I had a very helpful response from Derek in April last year. Hopefully, that is the norm and current experience is an exception...

[zinneken]

A little update on tuffmail, Derek tells they now have new storage systems installed in Vancouver, an that they're developing the applications. They have trouble finding/hiring people and they now expect to be fully functional sometime in December.

[aynrandgirl]

Originally Posted by zinneken

Derek has been promising features such as better integration with mobile devices, more disk space, better webmail, etc. ever since 6 months after he took over.

I got promised "new webmail next month". Twice, months apart. Obviously that has not appeared. The disk and transfer quotas aren't competitive either, but that doesn't require hiring anybody to fix. I stay with them because the customization options are the best around. I also like the unlimited individual email addresses for my domains.

[William9]

Derek indicated that he would improve the account management console so that it would work with mobile devices. That was roughly 2 years ago. Hasn't happened. I think it's too late to retrain me as a customer.

[TnIan]

Originally Posted by zinneken

A little update on tuffmail, Derek tells they now have new storage systems installed in Vancouver, an that they're developing the applications. They have trouble finding/hiring people and they now expect to be fully functional sometime in December.

That's good to hear. I'm under increasing pressure from my company to move our email to Google, mostly on storage costs & ease of use.

[William9]

Is it good to hear that he is having trouble finding and hiring people? In my opinion, the value of Tuffmail has been that this service is the result of the wonderful, geeky development by John Capo, the previous owner.

[TnIan]

It's good to hear that forward progress is underway. We'll see what comes of it.

[William9]

Not holding my breath.

[David]

whenever I see this thread 'Tuffmail under new management' I wonder (and hope) if the most recent post will tell tell me that 'Derek' is gone, and that John is back.

[SethM]

Originally Posted by David

whenever I see this thread 'Tuffmail under new management' I wonder (and hope) if the most recent post will tell tell me that 'Derek' is gone, and that John is back.

Well, there is a huge difference between someone who programs and implements stuff firsthand (even if that person has some developers under them they still provide vision and drive) and someone who can only try to hire other people to do stuff for them.

[William9]

Excellent point.

[aynrandgirl]

1) Does the current owner know about our concerns (unimplemented features, broken promises, uncompetitive storange and transfer limits), and
2) Does he care?

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by aynrandgirl

1) Does the current owner know about our concerns (unimplemented features, broken promises, uncompetitive storange and transfer limits), and
2) Does he care?

Not much confidence. After his mea culpa we have heard nothing more from him.

[William9]

Tuffmail looks dead compared to the vibrant services undergoing constant improvement such as Runbox, LuxSci, Fastmail, Polarismail, and others. What a shame. I still have a Tuffmail account -- but the prospect for longevity of the service is worrisome. The lack of mobile support for the account manager is frustrating.

[aynrandgirl]

Originally Posted by William9

Tuffmail looks dead compared to the vibrant services undergoing constant improvement such as Runbox, LuxSci, Fastmail, Polarismail, and others.

Too bad really, I use (and love) Tuffmail's fine-grained MX filtering and spam scoring. I like the fact that MX filtering, spam scoring, and allow/deny can be set on both an account and per-address level. I have legitimate senders whose email forward DNS is screwed up. Tuffmail lets me turn off the forward DNS filter, for that one incoming email address, without turning off MX filtering entirely or affecting filtering on other addresses. At Luxsci or Polarismail, for example, it appears you have no control whatsoever over what their MX filters do. You can only control the spam and virus filters.