I do want to present another angle at the market-share, the “4-5% of desktops” number doesn’t really fit your users. Your whole pitch is being the privacy-respecting full-featured Outlook alternative, and those are exactly the people who jump off Windows the moment Microsoft pulls the next thing. So your actual loss to Linux is probably way bigger than that general stat.
And with life time licenses you don’t even see it: no cancellation, no reason, people just stop opening the app at some point. In many years, after all those users have jumped ship, what’s then going to be your USP?
There is still no proper full-featured email client on Linux. Whoever does it first keeps those users for years, nobody migrates their mail twice.
Your whole pitch is being the privacy-respecting full-featured Outlook alternative, and those are exactly the people who jump off Windows the moment Microsoft pulls the next thing.
Everyone I personally know at home and business / commercial spaces on Windows “have stayed on Windows and not gone to Linux”. They haven’t abandoned it due to privacy at all and are also not worried about Windows AI integration either.
They have either upgraded to Windows 11 if their PC had TPM support or bought a new Windows 11 PC, as they have invested a lot of money and time into custom Windows apps over the years and also staff training to just abandon it and go to Linux and start again rewriting programs.
Also Linux is a lot more complicated for the average users installing stuff and IT staff looking after it as you have to get Linux specialists in who actually know it and 90% of IT support don’t know Linux.
So your actual loss to Linux is probably way bigger than that general stat.
No I personally don’t believe there is a big loss at all going to Linux on the desktop and mainly “only on the server” as @skybat posted in this extract below from the following thread as of 2025.
Linux desktop market share has grown significantly, exceeding 4% globally in 2025
to reach over 5% in the US.
Over the same period Windows still dominates desktops at around 68% to 71%M
MacOS maintains about 16% to 20%
Linux dominates servers at about 44%+
Linux has 100% of the top 500 supercomputing
Ubuntu is the top distro and has rising popularity wih devops
I found your statistics to be true, however your analysis of the market potential is either missing or flawed. As your own stat quote suggests, Linux on the desktop is growing very rapidly, more so than at any other time in its history. No respectable market analysis can dispute that grown, or that it will continue to accelerate and Windows will continue to contract.
While the market is still small relative to Windows overall, it is ripe for a player to come in and dominate the eMail client space. There really is no decent email client on Linux, with Thunderbird/Betterbird and Evolution being the only real choices with emClient being far superior.
That said, the real question isn’t that emClient would be the most usable option, but if enough of the growing Linux community would pay for it. I’d suggest most coming from Windows who have experienced better email clients very well could.
Same here! I have switched to Linux but want to use eM Client as it’s the best in my opinion. The number of users who have switched to Linux has grown significantly in the last 12 months. I want to pay and hope very much eM Client have a change of heart.