Creator of said program here, I sent this to a very tiny segment of the waiting list. People in the waiting list will still get access to the beta - as stated in the email.

With this email, I wanted to see if there were people who were really interested in the beta (which there were, at a healthy %) and to let them get early access as well as the ability to influence development and get weekly updates by joining the Patreon community. I'm sorry if you were offended by this in any way, and once again, you will still get access to the beta when it's your turn without having to become a patron.

Well, you don't have to invite anyone to join the waiting list, it is totally optional.

Yes I have and in the latest release which I'm working on, I've included features trying with the goal of fully complying with this tool.

Indeed it was and is. My goal is to put Ivelope on that list

Thanks for your feedback!

To give some examples: quick-move folders, conversation view, feed view, one click filter-creation and newsletter/promo filter

Seems like a lot of these are covered by Thunderbird plug-ins with the added advantage of having a native application.

This is what Ivelope is currently doing :) However there will be a setting for people who want to download all attachments as well.

I'm sorry if it came across as manipulative. One of the reasons for having it like this is also so it can give me a metric on who in the waiting list are most interested in the program. And of course also to offer an incentive to share it.

That is not a good metric. There's no way I would take part in that even if I were interested. It's just a big turn off.

Your first sentence isn't supported by your second and third. It is incredibly common to track not just interest but level of interest -- and lots of companies find it a valuable metric for marshalling their resources. Is this perhaps not the best way to get that metric? Now that can be a helpful question to ask and a good thing for this dev to think about, rather than outright dismissing the attempt.

I'm more just saying that I don't think people doing/not doing that action is a good indication of their interest level. My interest level could be an 8 out of 10, but there's no way I'm pestering my friends about it.

A different option I'd suggest that will likely provide higher engagement/response rate is putting some kind of a 1-to-5 star or 1-to-10 ranking - something quick for the user to click (or ignore) - simply asking them "How interested or excited are you about this product?"

Re: Incentive to share it - Just build a good to amazing product - which the comments and upvotes you have on HN are already significant proof of - and you'll get higher adoption in the long run with exponential growth, without adding friction of little tricks like this which will be relatively inconsequential in the long run, other than perhaps causing friction with early adopters who will get turned off by them.

That's a good idea, and in hindsight, you and the other commenters disliking the wording are correct. I just haven't received this feedback on the wording before, will change it!

An interesting question might be, what other ways could you allow people in the queue to jump up in position, without requiring them to share with others?

Maybe a quick survey with questions like, - what email client do you use now? - what is your favorite/least favorite feature of said client? - how often do you check your email? etc

I'm extremely interested.. Me sharing it with other people is a poor way of measuring my enthusiasm.. I'm not going to share it until I've tried it, so that I can vouch for its quality.

Noted. It was a poor choice of words / trick on my part it seems.

Don’t call it a trick. It isn’t a trick. It is a marketing ploy.

Trick is a synonym for trick.

Ahhh. Trick is a synonym for ploy.

I'd advise you to reword it as "Want to join as a beta user? Share".

Frame it as a reward not a punishment.

Oops, second typo found. (I'm not a native speaker if that's an excuse :P)

Haha "pressed to disk and posted" that was a fun remark :)

I'm baffled as to why I have to queue for something that's neither a physical product nor a service platform. Doubly so when the link posted seems to just bump someone else up the queue.

As a hacker news link it does strike me as a form of clickbait (and it honestly winds me up); "Hey HN! come look at this thing I've built that I'm not letting you look at!"

Since I am only one developer currently, and there will probably be bugs, I don't want thousands of people having the same bug, this is the reason I'm not releasing it right away.

This seems like a totally legitimate reason - but in that case maybe the announcement on HN (the tech website keeping the slashdot* effect alive) should have come once there was a public RC.

Also, if it's bugs and the reporting of that you're worried about, maybe publish a proper bugtracker (github is both adequate and free) rather than just an email address?

* slashdot effect; as in taking a webserver down just with the amount of people viewing it. Or to put it another way, if you wanted lots of people viewing your project, let them. If you don't, then don't advertise it to them!