Mailstrom, the 410 Labs email helper, lands ex-competitor’s users

A Baltimore email-filtering service just got a new shipment of customers.
410 Labs’ Mailstrom will receive all the customers of The Swizzle, a similar service now headed on its way out the door.
“We’ve had a ton of fun bringing it to you — but our hopes of keeping it free have been dashed,” Swizzle administrators wrote last week in an email to users. “It was designed to be advertiser supported but that just hasn’t come to pass.”
Swizzle’s users will be transitioned to Mailstrom over the next few weeks, according to the email.
410 Labs CEO Dave Troy said the deal will bring all of Swizzle’s users onboard with Mailstrom’s free trial. Paid subscriptions cost $4.95 a month or $49.95 a year. He declined to say how many paid members Mailstrom currently has.
“Twelve to 15 percent that sign up for the trial become members,” Troy said. “We’ve only been charging for subscriptions since last October, but we have about 150,000 people in our trial universe.”
The agreement with Swizzle also allows Troy’s company to license some Swizzle technology as that service’s owners move on to new ventures.
Troy said the deal was fortunate for Mailstrom, but it wasn’t something he was specifically on the hunt for, and couldn’t talk about any similar moves in the pipeline.
“We’re not really looking for these sorts of things,” Troy said. “They kind of emerge when they emerge.”
An iOS app for Mailstrom is currently in development.