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Show HN: A personal Gmail

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Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#31

Post by andrewcooke »

k3n wrote: post #23
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that like Gmail is the market leader here, they're not. Most of the features you mentioned do exist in other services and other services do have features that Gmail doesn't. The OP can definitely make a business out of email, it is far from a solved problem.

> You say that like Gmail is the market leader here, they're not. They are as far as I'm concerned. I'm curious, though, who you do consider to be the market leader? I'm going to have a hard time keeping my composure if you say Hotmail (or "Live" mail), Yahoo, or something similar.

when i looked for a replacement for gmail, http://www.runbox.com seemed best, but that was a couple of years ago (instead i use procmail, mutt and mairix, but i imagine that's not for everyone...)

huh. has hn always inlined links? maybe i have never added the http: prefix before...?

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#32

Post by lucb1e »

Goranek wrote: post #7

Awesome UI, but I wouldn't pay for it. Email is and should be free

Actually, you're not paying for e-mail. Every common OS nowadays is equipped to be able to send mail, so paying someone else for that would indeed be not-so-great.

You are paying for the interface. He wrote software and probably devoted many hours, and that's what you are using. I can imagine you still say it's not worth paying for, especially since there are even entire operating systems that are free (of cost), but I think it's reasonable to ask. If it works better than Gmail, I can see why many would pay and switch. You may not, that's your decision of course :)

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#34

Post by farmdawgnation »

k3n wrote: post #23
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that like Gmail is the market leader here, they're not. Most of the features you mentioned do exist in other services and other services do have features that Gmail doesn't. The OP can definitely make a business out of email, it is far from a solved problem.

> You say that like Gmail is the market leader here, they're not. They are as far as I'm concerned. I'm curious, though, who you do consider to be the market leader? I'm going to have a hard time keeping my composure if you say Hotmail (or "Live" mail), Yahoo, or something similar.

Gmail may be a leader in the US, but Hotmail does have a much larger market penetration in Asian countries. And in the UK, form what I recall.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#35

Post by jubari »

vishalsankhla wrote: post #27

I like it, I think people will adopt it if it was a Chrome plugin that converted Gmail into this UI. Their infrastructure and your skin. You could charge for some features for power users that Gmail does not have.

I like your idea as it would eliminate a few of my "bottlenecks". I will check out if a chrome plugin might just do that, OR even see how http://www.streak.com/ accomplished their goals. Haven't looked into that, yet.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#36

Post by farmdawgnation »

old-gregg wrote: post #20

Wow, very nice! Please reach out ot me: ev@mailgunhq.com I want to make sure you're not paying too much for Mailgun. We love smart and ambitious customers.

I just want to say that things like this have instantly added to the respect I have for Mailgun as a company. I know that's unrelated to the OP, and I may get down voted for this, but I feel as though for as much as a complain about an absence of good customer service - I would be remiss not to acknowledge it when I see it.

Thank you.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#38

Post by hchinchilla »

I would use it if I could host it on my own server and run it on top of Gmail using IMAP and Postgres as a cache.

I could pay 30-50$ for it, but I think this would be even more awesome as an OpenSource solution, your product rocks compared to other alternatives as SquirrelMail, and you can always offer a hosted plan as a way to make money from it.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#39

Post by bti »

davedx wrote: post #8

I've had similar thoughts to you, and it looks like a good start. However, for me, one of the main reasons I'm dissatisfied with GMail these days is the clutter and UX. Unfortunately your app looks too similar to GMail for me to find it an improvement. For me, the ideal GMail killer would be simpler with more clearly labelled user controls (i.e. less cryptic symbols and more standard UI buttons). It would also have s…

I had the same problems with GMail's UX until I (1) turned on button labels so that buttons displayed the action word instead of symbol and (2) learned GMail's keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts were the biggest help because now I barely ever need to take my hands off the keyboard to perform standard actions.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#40

Post by karatehammer »

I would consider using the app and I would pay for it.

The primary motivator for me to change from Gmail is the privacy, security issues. So long as you make for sure everything is encrypted and I only have the key to unlocking that, I would switch in a heartbeat.

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