In the past several months, we have contacted many people in the email industry for feedback and conversations about how email infrastructure can be better. The KumoMTA goal is to build a better engine, to make it more flexible and useful, and to ensure it is community-influenced. The vision is to build a product that is truly open-source while crafting a company around it that runs on Professional Services and Support. Much of that vision is influenced by how we see the world today and how much it has changed in the last few years.
We are not a startup in the common way people think of it. There is no VC funding, there are no SaaS-like growth expectations, and there is no 5-year exit plan. We are in this to build a better product with and for the high-volume email community. We have a succession plan and a sustainability model that is designed for long-term survival, not rocket-ship growth curves. Sometimes, it is better to be the tortoise than the hare.
When @KumoMTA was percolating in our brains, there was always a constant theme of “How can we do this better, and in different, unconventional ways.” With every feature and function we discuss, we always look at how it should be done instead of how it is now done by everyone else. Sometimes, the conventional method works well, but in many cases, a re-think is in order. Removing the concept of a license fee was only the beginning. KumoMTA is and will always be free-and-open-source software. There is no better, paid version; We don't operate that way.
Aside from the whole Open-Source as a business model disruption thing, one indication of how we are rethinking things is the complete absence of a sales team. KumoMTA is Open-Source software that was built to compete with powerful commercial software but with no license fee. Our financial model is based entirely on Support and Professional Services, so we don't have to have any painful license conversations. This means there is no need for a sales team to sell licenses that don’t exist. No cold calls, no sales calls, no pressure to buy more.
I know what you are thinking – we must sell the support part, right? Well, no, because if you are in the business of sending high volume email and your business depends on that software working properly, are you really going to operate it without a support agreement? The answer to that should be a resounding “no.”. The support part really sells itself. In addition, we promote the idea that "support" has two meanings. Your fees pay for us to put your service requests first in a ticketed and tracked manner, and also that you support us as a development team financially. Every supported customer has focused customer success attention that is truly about Customer Success and not concerned with license renewal. How’s that for a breath of fresh air?
So, if we reach out to you to have a conversation, it is not a cold call – we are probably already connected in some way. It is not a sales call, as there is nothing to sell. We genuinely want to know how you would do things differently if you had the chance and if you are willing to install KumoMTA to test it for yourself. Of course, if you do test it and fall in love with it, as we know you will, a support agreement is available to make sure you are never operating alone without backup. No one needs that stress.
When you are ready to take control of your email infrastructure on your own terms, without the threat of a third-party licensing squeeze, get in touch. We’ll be here, and we care about email as much as you do.
