If it's down to the user to determine what they do with their incoming mail, then they will just want what they are used to surely? Doesn't that mean that every user is going to have to optimise their workflow? Probably those who do that kind of thing already have a couple of dozen message filters set up. Is this a SaaS solution to a problem best served by user training and company policy?
Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
11–20 of 219 posts
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#12I was really excited about this, but it seems to be no more revolutionary than Inbox by Gmail.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#13This is quite an innovative approach to email, and they describe the features here: https://hey.com/features/
- screening by default
- removes email tracking pixels
- streamlined reply/read flows
- improved attachment handling
- doesn't interrupt you by default
There's also a video tour of the product from the CEO here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=296&v=UCeYTysLyG...
For me as a gmail user I'm keen to try this out.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#14The email provider approach is confusing. Superhuman costs way less and works with Gmail. No need to change email provider.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#15Honestly, the only thing I like from this is the tracker blocking and no automatic footers/signatures.
But how well do they support plain-text only emails? I've been moving more and more to plain-text as my default setting for sending emails and it's pretty liberating. I'm also starting to read emails as plain-text first before switching to an HTML content-type, but that's more painful.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#16The email provider approach is confusing. Superhuman costs way less and works with Gmail. No need to change email provider.
I think Superhuman is 3x the cost of Hey.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#17>Most of the Basecamp team's recent rebelliousness, and seemingly the initial reason for building Hey, has to do with spy pixels. How can you tell the difference between a "spy pixel" and an image? Whatever criteria you use can be worked around. Email clients should not allow emails to initiate outgoing network connections... period ... and most of the good ones don't by default.
I think the difference would be an image loaded remotely vs. an image inlined into the email as an attachment? But I'm not well-versed in how images are handled in HTML emails.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#18>Most of the Basecamp team's recent rebelliousness, and seemingly the initial reason for building Hey, has to do with spy pixels. How can you tell the difference between a "spy pixel" and an image? Whatever criteria you use can be worked around. Email clients should not allow emails to initiate outgoing network connections... period ... and most of the good ones don't by default.
If I were to guess, I'd say the same way adblockers work on browsers: blacklisting domains. Sendgrid was given as an example. They could also block using image size (1px) or location (end of message body).
That being said, I see your point. It's a game of Whack-a-Mole. What's to stop businesses from setting up a cname record on their domain to Sendgrid, for example?
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#19While I am looking forward to their upcoming new service, you can't call it "to start a rebellion" when your protocol/approach is closed: To use Hey! you need to use the web client or their own apps. If other providers would follow that rebellion, we would have many many additional walled gardens.
It's almost like it isn't a rebellion and that this is just an advertisement.
Yep.
The other day the folks at Slack were accusing Microsoft of using Teams to keep people using email and "locking users" into Outlook and the rest of Office.
Slack of course is not at all open.
I use the combo of Fastmail and EM Client (Desktop), many people think these are pricy, but the quality of the service and product are quantitatively different from Gmail because I am the customer, not somebody else.
If the Euro zone really wants to do something in the IT space they should push Apple Messenger, Facebook Messenger and Slack and the five chat applications that Google runs and Skype to interoperate.
Re: Basecamp’s founders are trying to start an email rebellion
#20I switched to https://mailinabox.email a while back and really loving it. You rely on using a mail client rather than a webapp, but I’ve enjoyed having the control.