Originally published at: Mailplane Stops Selling Licenses - TidBITS
Faced with the inability to find an official solution to Google blocking embedded browsers from its login page, the developers of the Gmail-specific email client Mailplane have stopped selling licenses and are offering refunds to those who purchased in the last 60 days.
Here is some sad news.
https://mailplaneapp.com/blog/entry/mailplane_stopped_selling_licenses.html
I don’t use the app anymore, but I’m sad to see this news.
What do you use now? I still use Mailplane, and guess I need to start deciding what to do when it disappears.
I just use the Mail app, and will use Safari when I need or want to use the web interface.
I assume Kiwi for Gmail might also be killed by this new Google policy.
I’m trying Mimestream, which looks nice, but nothing seems to have the feature I most used in Mailplane - being able to log in to multiple Gmail accounts separately and use the web interface.
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I hope Mailplane survives long enough for me to learn all the ins and outs of Mailmate. It looks like a good choice for multiple Gmail accounts. At least I hope proves to be.
I don’t understand. The Gmail API opens a special url in the browser and then the app gets a response.
As I understand it, Mailplane doesn’t use the Gmail API—it’s just pretending to be a normal Web browser.
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Exactly. Mailplane doesn’t use the API. It’s essentially a browser in an app-wrapper, which is what Google does not like, and apparently they were unable to find a way to make it work.
The way I read the announcement, it doesn’t sound like they got a lot of help from Google which should surprise literally no one, but I can’t say that for sure.
Now I understand.
There seem to be quite a few ways to wrap websites as Mac apps. e.g. Fluid, Unite, Flotato, Wavebox. Maybe they could be alternatives. I used to use Mailplane, but not recently.
There are other e-mail clients that are similar to MailPlane in that they are basically front ends for Google’s services.
So far, none of the others are reporting any problems:
Boxy ($29/yr)
Kiwi for Gmail (free/$30)
Mimestream (free while in beta)
However, if all of those are discontinued, and for some reason you don’t care for Apple’s Mail, there are a large number of third party e-mail clients for the Macintosh. Here’s a list:
Macintosh Email Software
Mimestream is completely different. It uses the API, not a web browser.
Kiwi seems like it is the same idea as Mailplane, so not sure why Mailplane would be doomed and Kiwi would be fine.
Never used Boxy, so I can’t speak to that.
I’ve been a user of Mailplane since it was first released. But for some reason, a couple of months ago, I decided to give Mimestream a try. It is fantastic. So while I am sad about Mailplane going away, I’m happy to have a great option.
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With Mailplane being sunset, I’ve switched to having my Gmail go to Apple’s Mail app on the Mac. On iOS, I use the official Gmail app.
Email is a necessary evil, but I refuse to pay for an email app for the sole purpose of keeping my gmail accounts separate from my regular domain email addys.
I like the look of Spark, but I’m left feeling like it’s the only option for me. Airmail looked promising a few years ago, but it’s a hot mess now and I won’t go near it.
It would be nice if something came along that was simple, and didn’t try to reinvent email.
Have you checked out Mimestream? Mimestream Brings Gmail Features to a Mac Email App - TidBITS
Mimestream ticks all the features I DON’T want, unfortunately.
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It’s (going to be) a paid app – I don’t mind paying for apps, but for my use case, it just isn’t warranted when there are free options (Apple’s Mail, and the web browser)
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It uses Google’s APIs instead of standard IMAP – which means the app can just stop working any time Google decides to mess with the API (which is what killed Mailplane)
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It has way too many features that don’t work – according to the developer’s site, there’s nothing he can do about it, again because Google doesn’t allow it in their API.
It’s too bad, because it looks really nice on the surface.
If Google would just use IMAP standards, the email app market would be flush with great choices. Instead, devs are forced to code around it which is expensive for them and makes for too many compromises, in my opinion.
Ultimately, the best option is probably to stop using Gmail completely and only use my own domain email. Unfortunately, much like web browsers, the world has settled on one or two (Edge and Chrome) and devs put little effort into supporting anything else.
I am also a huge Mailplane fan. I understand that it has “sunset” due to the Google API but it seems to still work fine for me. Rueben and Lars have been really great over the years in supporting the product; has anyone encountered any recent issues with Mailplane?
Best answer. I have my own domain which forwards to a commercial email account we’ve had for 30something years…maybe 40. iCloud, fastmail, and my several gmail accounts for various things all redirect to my domain account and that’s the only one I ever look at.
That makes sense, I’m just curious which entity hosts your domain account.