First Class - Corporate E-mail and Collaboration

Corporate E-mail and Collaboration

By the mid-90s FirstClass had evolved into a small-to-medium sized internal e-mail system, but its BBS continued to receive attention. A FirstClass client for Microsoft Windows was introduced, along with a Windows NT-based server.

During the mid-1990s FirstClass evolved to compete in the groupware marketplace. The product was successful to some degree, besting Microsoft Exchange in number of installed users until 1997.

FirstClass added internet functionality and a scripting method by 2000 but both Lotus and Microsoft had introduced these features earlier and FirstClass lost market share to them The Mac market simultaneously declined through the mid to late 1990s, eroding the product's primary customer base. Even among those organizations that considered using the FirstClass system, the lack of a robust calendaring component during this time (until FirstClass version 6 in 2001) was an obvious flaw. Nevertheless, FirstClass was recognized as a notable (though not top) vendor of worldwide integrated collaborative environments by International Data Corporation in 2004.

During this period FirstClass added a voice mail solution integrated with the server. The feature, commonly known as unified messaging, allowed users to receive voice, fax and e-mail in their mailbox.

In 2007 with the release of version 9, FirstClass redesigned its interface and introduced an automatic server-based and policy-driven archiving service for legal compliance purposes, and full Unicode support.

By the end of 2010, version 11 was released, with mobile clients for Apple iOS, Android and Blackberry made available during 2011. IMAP mail and RSS support was added in version 11.1 in 2012.