Mutt is an excellent MUA. What is the reason for developing Elmo then?

* that Mutt is nice doesn't mean that it's impossible to write something 
  better

* with Elmo you don't have to install an SMTP server

* Elmo will happily fetch your mail for you

* Elmo contains a friendly implementation of Bayesian spam filter
  -- say goodbye to spam today

* Elmo is being developed much faster than Mutt

* Elmo already contains some features you may like, and we will add
  much more in the future

* Elmo is _very_ fast and very efficient. You will appreciate it 
  as your mailbox grows

* Mutt has a large user base, which means many people with their
  well-formed habits. Even if some smart person liked to
  introduce some really useful feature that changed Mutt's 
  look-or-feel in a fundamental way, such a change would be 
  a difficult one. In Elmo we still have some space for
  experiments and "revolutionary" improvements

* Elmo is a new project. We learn from succeses and failures
  of others. We adapt useful features and try to avoid
  some common pitfalls
  
* while developing Elmo, the main developer cares very much
  for others' opinions and suggestions. If you request
  a feature, there is a really good chance that it will
  be implemented. And if it is useful for more than
  one person, you can be sure of it.
  
* Elmo contains many other good things(tm) you will probably
  not notice directly, like for instance an extremely efficient
  implementation of hashing tables -- much better than in Mutt
  and way above pine

* if you are a Mutt user -- don't worry, all useful
  functionality of this excellent MUA will eventually find
  its way into Elmo's codebase, although they may take a 
  different, more user-friendly (but even more flexible!) form