BEWARE: Big problems with an arcane licensing model... becoming one big headache.

1

I am giving up on this product. Watch out.  If your email is accessed by a machine that is in a business location, even if that machine is rarely used, you will be classified as a business.  Your machines home office or laptop will be marked as a business and at 32 bucks a machine that’s steep.  I understand that it may be difficult to determine how the machine is being used, but my communications with em client tell me that any affiliation with google apps, a .com name throws the product into the professional vain.

I signed on as a Beta 2 Tester, but big database problems happened and cause duplication and message count problems… so I went back to em client 6.  Now my account has been tagged commercial!  A problem, since em 6 is at end of life and the beta 7 is so buggy.  Seems no good deed goes unpunished.

In this world of seamless communication, chat and mail from any station and varying kinds of devices, I have constructed a mixed personal / business setup.  Blended.  In fact most of my communication is family related and the business machine, an xp doesn’t handle the program well.  So I ported my com address to google apps so that my android could use a non-g-mail extension.  I forward all my personal email addresses to the one android address.

Em Client’s licensing model seems to conclude that if you have any business use what-so-ever, then you have to by seats for all pc machines that use their program.  So the free for home use is out the window and it gets real expensive. fast. Even if I remove the program from the work machine, I am now a commercial user because I choose to use a ‘vanity’ .com name.

I have no issue with buying a seat for the business, fair enough…   but having to purchase addition seats for what is just another laptop or home computer makes little sense, particularly in the blended world where an android or iphone address is at the center of the hub.  Em has tagged all my email addresses, time warner, gmail and com as business.  Most all of what I do is personal family and hobby related.

PB

2

You said EM tagged your email addresses as business related?

I assume that you are speaking about those email addresses you have used for registering the product, right?

In the first place I thought that the client itself reports to EM which accounts have been created and on that base they decide whether you are a business or private user.

OTH, I too, bother about the license problem. That said, I run two PCs and I can use my Pro license just on one of them. Since I’ve got a lifetime license it would be fair enough to use unlimited installations on any PC I use myself but that’s a different story.

Michael

3

Thanks for sharing, Mike.  Nope they noted it during beta testing…
I suspect that my .com name was noticed by my signature on the emails that went back and forth during the beta 7.  And there were reasons to go back and forth… message duplication, miscounts and a host of buggy things to toy with.  All expected during beta.

But it would have been reasonable to bring up the issue and work things out, instead I was back stabbed and my machines tattooed at the wrist.  And I learned of this underhandedness while trying to revert back to version 6… All of my machines were noted and put on the sh*t list.

I would pay the 65 bucks in a heartbeat were it not for the strangle hold they have placed on my machines.   An insulting way of doing business that has not only caused them to lose my business, but my trust!

My gripe is not that I might have to pay.

Being prepared to buy a pro license for the business and separating personal from business by resurrecting my unused Time Warner address (for personal,) I have come to find that my machines have been tagged as business!  I just tried installing under my wife’s email, nope tagged!

So what has been a chatty bunch of techs during beta 7, have become the mute terse, messengers of a very strict unyielding heavy handed policy.  In trying to separate the business from the pleasure, which is what they want, the machine is forevermore a business machine.

In several emails, I explained why and how I am utilizing email and asked them to clear the decks and work with me and I got the same dogmatic BS back.  I tried to locate their phone number in Sunnyvale and got the building’s landlord.  I wrote sales, no response.

Lastly, NOW, I need to discuss this unfairness on a FORUM rather than the courtesy of a heart to heart.  Not the way I do business… This is a conversation that I would have rather had face to face but I am so annoyed by their unprofessional-ism and what seems to be 'computer antics."

Great product… unforgivably bad customer service.

P.S. It may be by co-incidence but in trying to download the trial to verify that the machine had been tattooed, it seems that the download is now being blocked.  I am receiving a 0 byte file!

PB :frowning:

4

Hi,

we are truly sorry to see that the situation escalated this way but I will try to explain this a bit more. 

Although we value every user of eM Client we need to follow some basic principles. One of the essentials is our licensing policy which restricts Free users from commercial use. Free version is for home use only thus our system checks the domains used for Free license registration regularly. In this case we discovered that Mr. Borisoff used at least 2 Free licenses registered with his business domain so the licenses were banned. 

When he get in touch with our sales department we explained the situation and offered 20% discount for his help during the Beta testing stage. Sadly, we could not reach an agreement.