You’re talking about Cordova. Cordova can actually be pretty good, if it’s made well (for example, the Voyager Lemmy app is a Cordova app), but no, I make apps with native UIs.
A webapp sometimes works fine for phone users. There are things that websites can’t do on mobile. For example, on iOS, only the latest OS version has support for push notifications from PWAs, and even then, they can’t make noise or vibrations. They are always delivered silently. PWAs are also always rendered with WebKit on iOS. WebKit doesn’t support a number of features.
Yes, a mobile app doesn’t help desktop users, but there are waaaaaaaay more mobile users than desktop users.
As I’ve gotten older and more busy, it’s been harder to get into games. I can’t play 4 hours a day any more, so the game has to fit into my schedule. Plus a lot of games take like 60 hours now. I liked Stray a lot because it was fun and I beat it in like 3 hours.
Most apps would do fine without a website. Most everyone has a phone, but a fair number of people don’t have a desktop or laptop. And pretty much everyone who has a desktop or laptop also has a phone.
A number of currently popular apps don’t have a website, let alone a mobile friendly website.
Building a great mobile website is much harder than building a great mobile app, so I understand when they just don’t build a great website to begin with, but taking away an existing website, yeah, that sucks.
I feel you. Technically, the service is in a public beta test, only because I don’t have all the features complete yet.
I have the IMAP spec printed out in a binder at my desk. I have to write the server myself because of how Port87 works (I can’t just use an off-the-shelf server, like Dovecot). But I’m working hard to get IMAP support out soon! :)
PS: also, once I do write it, the IMAP server will be open source, just like the CardDAV server I’m working on.
I don’t have it on the promotional site right now, but here’s the breakdown:
Receive unlimited mail, 500MB storage: Free
Send unlimited mail*: $1/month
2GB extra: $2/month
10GB extra: $6/month
20GB extra: $10/month
100GB extra: $20/month
1TB extra: $40/month
There are upcoming features that I haven’t done the market research and cost analysis for yet to determine pricing, but these are the features that are still in development:
Native mobile app (right now it’s a PWA): Free
IMAP/SMTP/CardDAV for third party clients and to import/export/sync: Undetermined price
Custom domain with unlimited addresses: Undetermined price
Additional users for you custom domain: Undetermined price
The reason for charging $1/month to send email is so that spammers won’t use my service to send spam. A spammer is very unlikely to divulge their real payment information.