I'd like to know everything there is about email synchronizing
software: software that can update my emails (i.e. Sent and Inbox)
across several nodes (i.e. PC/ Handheld/ Cell phone), over several
email accounts (I have more than one i.e. hotmail, yahoo, aol etc.).
I'm researching this for two reasons: First, I need software that does
this for my personal email management needs; Second, I'd like to know
if it's worthwhile to potentially invest in companies in this niche
market (I find oftentimes that if there is software that I'm in great
need of, that others are in the same boat. This often turns out to be
an up and coming high growth
market worth investing in).
I think Pumatech produces software of this nature with Intellisync:
http://www.pumatech.com/is_desktop_main.html
I've heard before of Jarna (jarna.com), but can't find them online
anynmore maybe they went out of business?
I've also heard of Avantgo but it's offline and I'm not sure that this
would be very effective for my "real time" needs.
I'd like to know:
1. I own a Treo by Handspring. I logon to the Internet often. I have
several email accounts and ideally I'd like to find software that
allows me to access all these accounts and send/receive email from
them while maintaining my corresponding email identities. What is the
best
software out there for this purpose and for synching all my accounts?
If you find both server (web) based services and client based ones,
what are the pros and cons of using either service?
2. What other types of software of this nature exists (competitors)
3. How is their software different?
4. Is there a market leader and what makes them better? (in terms of
revenues, number of customers) who are next in line?
5. Where is this market niche headed? Is it a promising niche to
invest in? or is your research revealing that large companies such as
IBM, Microsoft, AT&T are developing this technology into their
products and thus might be stealing the show? Has there been
consolidation in this market (i.e. bigger companies buying smaller
companies that produce this software)?
I am in a hurry to find this information by Wednesday Aug. 20th 8 am
PST as I'm flying abroad. Hopefully you can help me research this
subject by then.
Thanks,
svenyard |
Clarification of Question by
svenyard-ga
on
24 Aug 2003 10:47 PDT
First disregard my note on the time limit at the bottom of the
original question - I would like to get my questions answered by Aug.
26 though, if possible.
From my personal research so far I'm coming up with this: there are
numerous email hosting companies (such as Yahoo! Mail) where you can
upgrade to a paid account membership which allows you to aggregate all
your emails in one location (on the Yahoo Mail server in this
example), view emails of your other accounts, and respond while
maintaining your original identities. This is perfect for someone
who's on the go using a PDA etc. However, there are issues with
whether or not your other email accounts are on POP or IMAP. For
example, if my main email is on POP, then the Yahoo Mail cannot show
the sent folder of those emails that have been previously sent from
the client because those emails aren't anymore on the POP server
(unless I specified the POP server to leave a copy on the server in
advance - which is a hassle and not that reliable I hear). To me, that
is a big flaw: I want to see all my emails, inbox and sent, as well as
other folders (templates etc.), and know that they're all there. Also,
I don't like deleting emails and there is a storage issue: most email
hosting companies give you up to 150 MB...
I'd like to revise the question below, to ask of the researcher to
focus on this POP vs. IMAP issue: what software is out there to solve
synch issues? Should I consider only using IMAP email accounts if my
interest is to view/send emails while i'm on the road and wish to have
everything synchronized using a "Yahoo Mail Plus" for example?
|
Request for Question Clarification by
joseleon-ga
on
26 Aug 2003 03:30 PDT
Hello, svenyard:
This is more a comment than a request for clarification, but I have
read your question and maybe my experience is useful to you.
In our company we use an IMAP server because:
-All the e-mail is stored on the server
-We backup the e-mail using a centralized backup solution
-The e-mail can be read from:
-The LAN using Outlook or any other IMAP client
-The WEB using Squirrel Mail
-From HOME using any connection to our IMAP server
-The e-mail is synchronized between locations, including:
-INBOX
-Sent mails
-All the folder structure
We don't have any handheld device, but I'm sure you can connect to
such device, if you like this solution I could post a more detailed
answer.
Regards.
|
Clarification of Question by
svenyard-ga
on
26 Aug 2003 11:55 PDT
Hi joseleon,
As I specified in my original question and in the followup
clarification, I am interested in a full fledged market analysis of
the arena including:
1. comprehensive list of companies that are developing software for
this niche(comments from user snsh already mentioned several including
mollymail.com)for retail/ end users (as opposed to Squirrel/
development software).
2. comparison between their software, including features enabling POP
and IMAP. i.e. Mollymail enables both:
http://www.mollymail.com/webmail/features.html
3. How other companies such as Microsoft etc. (clarification:
especially ISPs and portals such as Earthlink, Yahoo, Google, etc.)
addressing this topic?
for example, Yahoo Mail it seems, only supports POP accounts:
http://mailplus.mail.yahoo.com/help and aren't even mentioning
anything regarding what to do with IMAP accounts. Earthlink only
offers a few PDAs that come with an earthlink subscription and get you
only a partial list of email synching abilities i.e. w/ blackberry:
http://www.earthlink.net/wireless/blackberry/faq/
in this product you can't view attachments. However it seems as though
you can sync the data into your pc so you can see the emails you sent
in your "Sent" box, when using a POP server.
Why is this so convoluted? You'd think companies will have this down
pat as email is so critical to most everyone who's online...
If you wish to take this research to the level I'm asking, please let
me know. I'm looking for comprehensive work on several levels, the
kind of research that will make me understand whether this is a market
to invest in with a single startup or whether this is stuff that's
just as easy for the big guys (i.e. Yahoo) to enable all features
including IMAP etc. Also it would be nice to know my choices when
going to subscribe to a service that will give me the most bang for
the buck. My main email address is a mindspring account. I'm not sure
that they have IMAP servers and even if they do I'm torn between my
desire to keep my emails for future access (my client inbox is upwards
of 1 Gigabite)on my desktop; On the other hand, my inability to go
beyond 100 MB when using a mollymail account etc. is just as
frustrating, despite their ability to sync email by using an IMAP
account (in which case I may have to switch from mindspring)...
othewise at this point, I believe that I've researched a lot on my own
and should probabaly close this question/ open it to comments only.
For example I learned a lot by going to the the forum on
emailaddresses.com (again per snsh below, thanks!) and reading on the
difference between POP and IMAP:
http://www.olympus.net/olympusnet/olympusonly/usingEmail/IntroToIMAP.html
|
Clarification of Question by
svenyard-ga
on
27 Aug 2003 16:52 PDT
Any researcher want to pick up this open account? I'm still interested
in comprehensive research/ answers as per the above. I'll increase the
list price and we'll see if that triggers a response ;-)
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