I think this is essential to offer.  The service must push advices out to users.  The lack of this service is a deal breaker, and will probably cause us to sadly switch from this promising product to a different ont.

We have the same problem.  Our users are not getting email advice when they are assigned bugs, and their email settings appear to be correct.

I fear that the repeated request for examples of custom statuses hints at the possibility of the developers simply adding more predefined status options.  Two comments :

First, there's a danger of having 'too many' status options.  If a company has a workflow with only three or four status options, it doesn't want additional unused options that just confuse users and lead to problems.

Second, the underlying issue/request is basically to have all status options as fully soft.  By all means suggest some to make it easier for new users to get onboard and start using the service, but allow all of them to be custom defined, and/or deleted.