Recently, I ran across a program called Everdesk. It's at .

First, it's a powerful program that tries to solve the multiple repository program by combining emails and files into the same OS folder structure (on windows). All emails are saved as *.eml files. It also seems to have rules for auto assignment, with harkens somewhat to Zoot.

Second, I'm stunned that there seems to be no talk about this program anywhere on the Internet including in this forum. Just plain odd given that it seems to be a fairly polished program.

Does anyone have experience with this program?

Yes. I?ve been using it for some years.

It is such a simple idea and so obvious that I cannot understand why it has not taken off, using the 'My Documents' folder as the basis for the email system

I started using Everdesk when I was running an art gallery because it allowed me to keep incoming/outgoing emails with artists bios, letters to artists, previous exhibitions, homepage links etc. - everything in one place - without having to save files from whatever program I was using before - Eudora/Thunderbird/Opera ... you name it I've tried them (even Evolution), but always come back to Everdesk - and then I use Everdesk to 'file' the emails I received in the other program!

Similarly, at work I have to use a really dreadful program called ... something like 'Look Out!' ... I use Everdesk to back up the emails to 'My Documents!

Whenever I mention it to anyone else they ask me about ?the security issues?, but I?ve never had any problems ? I have had a number of different anti virus /firewall / security products over the years and they have never caused me any issues with Everdesk.

I am what they call an 'early adopter' and Everdesk is one of the few programs that I have stuck with since I first discovered it! The lack of a Linux version is one of the things that's stopping me from converting completely to Linux!

I'm wondering why this program, if it's been around for so long, is so well hidden with so little written about it. The principle seems very logical and worthy.

Perhaps you users could clarify some things which I was unable to find on the website:

- Is the pricing one off or per annum (I found reference to it being a subscription on the Internet but not on their site)
- Where do the developers hail from? I am always very suspicious of software providers who provide so little information about themselves and yet want one to download and try their (potentially dangerous) software.

As for my experience, Everdesk crashed spectacularly when importing my Outlook files, wouldn't work at all after that, and when uninstalling left large files that I had to remove manually. Outlook may be a monster, but it can handle my 12 years' worth of e-mails.

Graham

I would expect treating every mail message as a separate file to have certain limitations. For one, it would lead to much greater disk use and I would question its speed for large numbers of emails. My inbox has grown to almost 10,000 items in two years and I can't fathom having them all in a directory.

That said, originally e-mails were relatively small bits of plain text, so it made good sense to keep them in a compressed format within a single file. Nowadays, with messages regularly including attachments of several Mb, this approach is much less convenient and leads to very large mailbox files.

I might give Everdesk a try; it could make sense for specific uses.

By the way, I would also like some background on the developers. I assume that 'US patent pending' means that they are based on the US, but I didn't find much more than that.

alx

Hello Graham,

I am one of EverEZ Systems, which is developing EverDesk.

- initially pricing for EverDesk was based on a subscription basis. After presenting the program at DEMO 2005 we have released several editions of EverDesk, including freeware. Pricing structure was also changed and now the program is offered for $39.95 for EverDesk Mail and $59.95 for EverDesk Optima.
- the company which develops EverDesk is from UK, with offices in USA (Wichita, Kansas) and Cyprus (Nicosia). Developers are working in both locations as well as in Russia on an offshore programming basis.
- what version of EverDesk did you use when it crashed while importing emails from Outlook? You may want to give it another try since in the recent versions we have completely re-done the importing feature and since then didn't have any report about problems with Outlook or any other email client. It would help us a lot if you give us more details regarding this problem so that we could fix it.

I may assure you that there is no danger at all by downloading and installing EverDesk. You may use any security solutions to make sure it is totally safe application. EverDesk was tested by Softpedia and it was confirmed that it doesn't contain any spyware, any adware or viruses.

EverDesk can handle as many emails (in fact files, as each and every email is stored as separate file in Windows file system) as your computer can. You can compare the speed of EverDesk with the speed of Windows Explorer - it takes the same time to scan the directory and populate the filelist with the files, and in some cases it is even faster due to some solutions implemented in EverDesk.

I'd be happy to answer any other questions you may have.

Regards,
Vladimir

Hi Alexander,

I will try to address some of your concerns regarding EverDesk.

1. Having 10,000 emails in a folder in EverDesk is not different from having 10,000 other documents or files like MP3, Video, etc. In fact, My Documents folder structure contains more than 100,000 files, out of which roughly 35-40,000 are emails. And I experience same delays I see in Windows Explorer or in other programs, including email clients, which I use in order to compare them to EverDesk. With the power of modern computers the delays are really not annoying and they exist in any program which handles large number of files. In any case, your concern is valid and that is why we are considering adding archiving feature to EverDesk, which will make it possible to have old emails and files be moved to an archive and stored there in a compressed form. However, due to the fact that we use regular Windows file system, this solution may not even be needed, as EverDesk users may simply move old mail and files to a separate dedicated folder within My Documents folder structure and keep old stuff there - no need to create special archiving solution for this purpose. The existence of special archiving solution in other email clients, like Outlook, for instance, is dictated by the fact that they use a single pst file for storing all emails and attachments and that file may grow to a really big size and slow down the performance of the program significantly. Not to mention, that if that pst file gets corrupted or lost, you lose all your correspondence. This is simply not the case with EverDesk.
Another issue is the size of attachments. Unlike other email clients, which store attachments inside email messages and inside special storage file (pst, for instance), in EverDesk all attachments are separate from the respective email messages. So in EverDesk, if you do not need the attachment but what to keep a cover message, you simple delete the attached file and that's it! It is not possible to do in other email programs for the reasons described above.
Finally, with the capacity of modern hard disk drives, having gigabytes of files and messages stored within your Windows folders is not a big deal at all. It is, however, a big deal, if you have all these gigabytes as one file as in Outlook, for instance.

Since you mentioned "Patent Pending" I assume you had pretty old version of EverDesk, since we have received a US patent quite some time ago. I would suggest to check out www.everdesk.com and download the most recent version of EverDesk from there. We are also planning to make a new release of EverDesk within a week, which will also include instant search functionality based on Windows Indexed Search enabling for instantaneous search inside files, as well as pretty cool address book search, which will search inside contacts' properties (so if you type say 316, which is are code in Wichita), search will produce results of all the contacts which have 316 in their properties. Which means it is possible to search contacts not only by name, but by any data you may need to search by.

Regarding the background for developers and the program in general. EverDesk appeared in 1995 as an internal program for communication between our executives in different locations. It was written specifically for this purpose and at that time was targeting to eliminate multiple holes existing in the way we do our computer work. After that we had a lot of very positive reactions from different people who saw the program all over the world and some of them suggested to make this program a commercial product. we thought it was a good idea and decided to go ahead with it. It was since then in a continuous development with a long wish list of features we want to add to EverDesk. However, we do not advertise it yet and that is the reason why it is not known to public. We hope this will change in 2009 and EverDesk becomes a much popular application than it is now.

Hope this helps :)

Regards,
Vladimir

Hi Rob,

It was really great to read your comments about EverDesk. Glad you liked it.

We do have Linux version in our plans, but it is definitely not going to happen soon, as EverDesk is extremely complicated application and not all the solutions used in Windows version can be easily replicated in other OS. However, the work on Linux version has already began :)

Regards,
Vladimir

VS wrote:

It was really great to read your comments about EverDesk. Glad you liked it.

As I said, I keep trying others - simply because I'm interested in the way things work - but I always come back to Everdesk because it works the way I think - everything in a logical place, and all things that meet the same criteria together.

We do have Linux version in our plans, but it is definitely not going to happen soon, as EverDesk is extremely complicated application and not all the >solutions
used in Windows version can be easily replicated in other OS. However, the work on
Linux version has already began :)

That's nice to hear. Real nice!

As to the problems with large numbers of emails - by my count I have some 8763 *.eml files in 'My Documents' and subfolders - but most of them are tiny files and, importantly for me, attachments are with them as are other, relevant docs all in the same folder.

Now, an issue that I do have with the program is that, unless you also use ED as a File Manager, you have to set up Outlook to read the files when you access them through Explorer - but it's no biggy - unless you wish to reply.

Finally, I've seen Vladimir's moniker before - ED support is brilliant - every time I have asked a question - and according to my records the first time was 07 Dec 2005 - I have received almost immediate advice and help.

Rob

Now, an issue that I do have with the program is that, unless you also use ED as
a File Manager, you have to set up Outlook to read the files when you access them through
Explorer

Sorry, that's Outlook Express :-(

Hi Vladimir,

Many thanks for the information. I will definitely try out the program; the message-to-file approach may solve an important issue --backup- which can take ages with large Outlook --or, in my case, The Bat!- mail databases.

By the way, 'U.S. Patent Pending' is mentioned at the bottom of your website.

Cheers
alx

Rob Fuscate wrote:

Now, an issue that I do have with the program is that, unless you also use ED as
a File Manager, you have to set up Outlook to read the files when you access them through
Explorer - but it's no biggy - unless you wish to reply.

Yes, we are aware of this issue and it is in our plans to resolve it rather sooner than later.

Vladimir

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Many thanks for the information. I will definitely try out the
program; the message-to-file approach may solve an important issue --backup- which
can take ages with large Outlook --or, in my case, The Bat!- mail databases.

You are absolutely right. Instead of backing up the whole email database file from Outlook or The bat! or other email clients, with EverDesk it is totally different - simple synchronization is all you need to keep the back up up to date, which means only updating several files instead of the whole database. Another thing is that you can access your mail and other documents on ANY computer, even if your mail program is not installed on it, since eml files can be opened on any Windows computer (which is not the case if you have The Bat! database file and want to access it on a machine which doesn't have this application installed). It makes it possible to keep your backup copy on USB drive and have it with you all the time.
The only drawback we currently have is that EverDesk Address Book is located in a different folder and needs to be separately backed up. We will fix this in the future versions.

By the
way, 'U.S. Patent Pending' is mentioned at the bottom of your website.

Sorry, our fault. Corrected. Thank you for pointing this out.

Regards,
Vladimir

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

I would expect treating every mail message as a separate file to have certain
limitations. For one, it would lead to much greater disk use and I would question its
speed for large numbers of emails. My inbox has grown to almost 10,000 items in two
years and I can't fathom having them all in a directory.

Windows Live Mail (successor to Outlook Express) also uses this simple structure: 1 file per email. IMO, it has many advantages over a single repository. NTFS is a very efficient database, optimized for files and can handle this no problem. I've hear of numerous Outlook PST files going corrupt... NTFS? none

Other advantages: Can easily create a reference to an email (without using the outlook:ewojafoi... link format), in any other programs, fast and easy backups, in theory, you could put the folder under dropbox and have it sync across PCs, you can use 3rd party tools to remove attachments, portable, etc

Pierre

Vladimir, could you provide a direct e-mail address so that I can send you the information you require, with screen dumps?

Thanks.

Graham

Hello Pierre,

Windows Live Mail (successor to Outlook Express) also uses this simple
structure: 1 file per email. IMO, it has many advantages over a single repository.
NTFS is a very efficient database, optimized for files and can handle this no problem.
I've hear of numerous Outlook PST files going corrupt... NTFS? none

Absolutely correct. It is obvious that storing emails as separate files has numerous advantages and finally MS comes to the same conclusion. The only problem is that the messages are still stored separately from other documents and files and no attachments are extracted to be handled in the same way as any other documents.

Other
advantages: Can easily create a reference to an email (without using the
outlook:ewojafoi... link format), in any other programs, fast and easy backups, in
theory, you could put the folder under dropbox and have it sync across PCs, you can use
3rd party tools to remove attachments, portable, etc

Also true. All this is done in EverDesk. :)

Regards,
Vladimir

Done. And thanks a lot for all the reports and screenshots you have provided.

Regards,
Vladimir

Graham Rhind wrote:

Vladimir, could you provide a direct e-mail address so that I can send you the
information you require, with screen dumps?

Thanks.

Graham

I'm quite intrigued by Everdesk, and it seems to provide the "single access point to all content related to a project" solution that I prefer for organizing my work. I noted the support for POP3 and IMAP4. But for those of us clogged up in a corporate Outlook environment (no POP3 or IMAP enabled on Exchange servers), are there any plans to add support for MAPI to Everdesk?

I would love to use Everdesk if MAPI support ever came along.....

PIMfan

Hello!

Well, this is something we were seriously considering some time ago, but due to other priorities from our very long "wish list" and anticipated problems in penetrating Outlook-dominated corporate market, where MS Exchange is used most, we decided to remove MAPI feature from our immediate plans. However, this is something we always wanted to have as in our opinion EverDesk with Exchange support would be great tool for corporate users and for business community in general. Probably we should re-visit this idea again.

Anyway, thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts - we always highly appreciate comments and suggestions regarding EverDesk. :)

Regards,
VS


PIMfan wrote:

I'm quite intrigued by Everdesk, and it seems to provide the "single access point to
all content related to a project" solution that I prefer for organizing my work. I
noted the support for POP3 and IMAP4. But for those of us clogged up in a corporate
Outlook environment (no POP3 or IMAP enabled on Exchange servers), are there any
plans to add support for MAPI to Everdesk?

I would love to use Everdesk if MAPI
support ever came along.....

PIMfan

Update: I've been trying out EverDesk (originally Optima, now settling on Mail). I like the core concept and will be registering the program. It represents the most convenient way to back up my e-mail and be able to access it wherever I can carry my portable hard disk --I'm actually considering using an SD memory card which I can take anywhere. ED also makes it very easy for most info managers that I use to link to mail messages directly.

Another advantage is ED's ability to import mail from many other programs, including Eudora, Calypso and The Bat! All in all, a lot of development time seems to have gone into the program to satisfy differing requirements.

Caveat: as always, applications that try to cover different needs may not be as capable on all respective fronts; e-mail power users will probably find that ED's mailing capabilities require additional development. For example, the ability to control mail on the server side is missing, i.e. leaving mail on server (which I often do as backup) provides no option to delete it later on. Also, rules seem to apply to all mail received rather than specific accounts.

That said, I think there's future in the program. EverEZ Systems seem to have taken a moderately ambitious development path, potentially offering a powerful option for SMEs. Vladimir has been kind enough to provide support through Skype on Sunday evening, and has made quite clear that they are open to outside opinion and suggestions.

Alexander,

Please see my comments below:

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Caveat: as always, applications that try to cover different needs
may not be as capable on all respective fronts; e-mail power users will probably find
that ED's mailing capabilities require additional development. For example, the
ability to control mail on the server side is missing, i.e. leaving mail on server
(which I often do as backup) provides no option to delete it later on.

Agree. We currently miss the functionality to delete old mail, which was initially left on the server. This will be added along with the addition of full IMAP support.

Also, rules seem to apply to all mail received rather than specific accounts.

Do not quite understand what you mean. You may add different conditions to a new sorting rule. One of such conditions may be selection of the account to which the rule will be applied.

Regards,
Vladimir

VS wrote:

You may add different conditions to a new sorting rule. One of such
conditions may be selection of the account to which the rule will be applied.

Thanks Vladimir; now I see how it is done. I have been used to programs creating separate filters for the various accounts. Actually, EverDesk's approach may be even more powerful.

Although this thread is a little old, I'd like to contribute with my 2 cents.

I've just started using Everdesk Optima (last version, 4.36c)

Concept is really great, and, as said, it is intriguing that other vendors did not use it. After years digging for a "manage-all-stuff-in-same-place" solution, I think I finally could say that I've found it.

Product is not perfect, in my opinion. Mail client is very poor in resources, compared to standards like Outlook. There are some issues regarding Win7 compatibility, too. But is usable (I use it everyday and it is part of my life now)

Folks at Everez say that developers are finalizing a new release this month, so maybe some issues will be solved

Regards,

Jorge