Re:Nylas Mail is now free
by nopzor on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @04:00PM
(#13421139)
It's a lot harder to monetize free->paid if you don't even know who your free users are. Requiring the creation of a Nylas ID for the free tier addresses this. Your ecommerce example doesn't fit the situation here; the ecommerce business wants the order $$ at the expense of the account, and their UX reflects that.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
I remember a few years back after I got my first decent Android phone looking at "top 10" lists of the best apps out there.
One of those apps was Lumosity, and I installed it. The first step was setting up an account. I promptly uninstalled the app, and to this day, I have no idea whether it is any good.
It felt odd to me that for a game with no multiplayer component would require me to sign up for an account, and I'm not interested in leaderboards or cloud based backup either. I have the same feeling about email clients, especially when Thunderbird exists and is mostly decent.
Giving up an email account for a free "app" (and not a service) continues to feel odd to me. It almost feels wrong to call it "free", especially since it is unclear to me how my email is used.
A non-main/throwaway mail for that purpose would be a good one for you to have so you can test without giving away anything.