SnapperMail, the premiere mail application for the Palm OS platform, just recently released version 2.1. All the new feature details can be found here. Aside from that, I managed to get an exclusive interview with Will Lau (Company Director, Snapperfish Ltd.). Here it goes...
First of all, let me congratulate you and the whole SnapperTeam for bringing out the most innovative e-mail client when everyone is craving for features like auto-fetching, FingerNav viewing, junk feature, etc. And this was a year ago. Wow! I couldn't believe how time flies.
Will Lau (WL): Thanks for the complements...
After releasing two major versions of SnapperMail, are there any more features (killer features) that haven't been explored on the previous versions?
WL: Yes - the next big thing will be background comms and push capable email. We want to deliver the blackberry email pager experience, only better since SnapperMail is content rich and supports native attachments. Push email really moves the email experience to the next level.
With Version 2, I understand that SnapperMail is now more focused on developing Enterprise class e-mail. What are your insights about this?
WL: Well I guess I don't really see it as a change of focus, rather an expansion of the SnapperMail customer envelope. We wanted to deliver the goods to a broader customer profile. Really when you say Enterprise focus, you really mean IMAP capability and that's what a lot of our existing customers wanted anyway since IMAP has become very widespread. For example the consumer level AOL Mail uses it. We made sure when we rolled out our IMAP it was useful to enterprise folks, so we built in advanced SSL in the form of STARTTLS support used by MS Exchange and we tweaked our comms to be compatible with MS Exchange, Lotus Domino and Novell Groupwise which covers nearly all businesses (not many email apps support all 3).
SSL and IMAP is too Enterprise centric. What made you guys consider jumping into the Enterprise market?
WL: When we took a look at the marketplace, in our view there wasn't really a cost effective solution for small businesses. I'm talking about companies who have say a 5-pack user license of MS Exchange and need a relatively cheap email solution. Typical solutions by RIM, Visto, and Good can cost beyond $1000 and yearly fees anywhere north of $100 per seat. SnapperMail can provide and excellent email experience for a one time charge of $60 per user.
What makes SnapperMail any different from say VersaMail (that has long been there in that market) and Iambic Mail (that has added feature like SMS)?
WL: Well if you asked me 2 years ago, I would say architecture. Iambic Mail has its roots based on the old Palm Mail app that we used to HotSync our mail with and VersaMail is really old code originating from MultiMail of 1999 vintage. I know because I was part of the MultiMail beta team and designed the early interface for it. With Snapper we rewrote a fresh architecture specifically for 3G networks - things like unlimited mail storage and no limits to email length. So it's only now that you see SnapperMail come into its own. We're the only mail app on *any* mobile device that supports storage of messages (not just attachments) onto memory card media - that's because we virtualized the mail storage to support swapping out to memory card kind of like a Windows swap file. With SnapperMail, our users keep months or years of old messages to reference right in their pockets, that's hundred of megs of mail - way beyond the 22MB of free RAM a Treo 600/650 has. And even now, we're still the only app supporting rendering of unlimited length HTML messages - I think VersaMail truncates at about 60k of text. These things are all about architecture.
Our other core competency is building really good UI. We deliver the best usability and if you really follow this stuff you'll see successive versions of VersaMail copy SnapperMail's UI. I see the latest version cloned our Quick-Keyboard functionality which omits the need to hold the Menu key down to do menu commands, a huge bonus for one handed operation. You'll continue to see SnapperMail lead in usability as we try new ideas.
Oh... I almost forgot. We run the most active dev team for any email client, you'll find we put out releases nearly every month. Bugs are fixed very quickly and our tech support is the best you'll find on the planet (they're gurus!). In comparision our competitors post updates at a very slow pace forcing customers to live with an old bug. If you're a VersaMail user, you probably will need to buy a new device or wait for an OS firmware patch to get an upgrade! We've made an effort to foster a great customer community, our Yahoo group is lively with 4500 members and very active discussion providing tips and update news.
The latest buzz surrounding SnapperMail nowadays is its ability to sync with GMail. Would you please give us some insights about this? Can this be doable to other e-mail app as well?
WL: Well Google opened up POP3 access last week and are rolling it out in stages so only some users have access to it right now. It requires SSL access on alternative ports which SnapperMail Premier and Enterprise Edition supports. I haven't tested GMail with other apps other than the basic Mail app on the Treo and in my trial it failed to send, I haven't investigated any further.
Are there plans for Snapperfish to venture out to other apps aside from e-mail (in the near future)?
WL: No not really, though we've not said "no" to it. The majority of our team is focused on the next generation of SnapperMail codenamed "Triplex", it keeps us busy. Triplex is a portable cross-platform mail engine that marks the expansion of SnapperMail onto other platforms. We intend to rollout SnapperMail (Triplex) on Symbian UIQ, PocketPC, MS Smartphones and a few more starting next year. We're looking to bring on an additional 4 engineers to maintain the drive onto new platforms. That's not to say Palm OS development will slow, it's still a favorite of ours and we'll continue to push the limits on this platform first. Actually if anyone knows of some local mobile dev talent here in NZ, tell them to check out our jobs page on www.snappermail.com/company/jobs.cfm.
Thanks Will, and more power!
WL: Thank you too!
