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Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations

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31–40 of 68 posts

Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations

#31
post #24

Finally an answer to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22854641

Plum has some interesting ideas, if you're interested in a different approach to this problem, check out https://www.twobird.com Disclaimer: I work on it!

FYI your home page doesn't display quite right on Firefox: https://i.imgur.com/kjs0nPR.png

Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plum has some interesting ideas, if you're interested in a different approach to this problem, check out https://www.twobird.com Disclaimer: I work on it!

FYI your home page doesn't display quite right on Firefox: https://i.imgur.com/kjs0nPR.png

Thanks for the heads up!

Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations

#34
post #30

I watched the demo video and I'm intrigued! It's like a better interface for group conversations. Some feedback/questions based solely on the demo: - Will I be able to see who has notifications on or off? - Relatedly, if someone has notifications off, is there way a way to notify them anyway? Say for example during the branding discussion they've decided to use Pears instead of Plums, and they want to bring you back…

> Will I be able to see who has notifications on or off?

As of now you will not, but we have been asked this question by other users and are looking for feedback on the right way forward.

> Relatedly, if someone has notifications off, is there way a way to notify them anyway?

We want to introduce @mentions so that in larger group conversations you can highlight messages for a particular participant, this would notify that user even if they were not receiving notifications for every message.

> If someone who is not on plummail signs up, will the conversations they were previously included in be in their inbox?

Yes

> You should put an invite link on the bottom of the fallback emails

All fallback emails allow a user, new or otherwise, to immediately access that conversation on plum mail.

> so when/how would you be notified that the message failed? Would there be a way to fix the email and resend?

If we get a bounce back from an email address you will be able to see that in the conversation.

> When someone is added to the conversation I assume they get the full history?

Correct, if they are added to a conversation with history, they will be able to access the conversation from the fallback message this will give access to all previous messages.

> How do you get my inbound email? Do I forward it from gmail to you? Do you act as my MX recipient?

For now we don't handle inbound emails sent directly to your inbox. plum mail is the place for your group conversations that benefit from our unique features. We don't see much value in forwarding other transactional emails into plum mail. But we might look into it in the future.

Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations

#35

This reminds me a lot of aether pro which is also a backwards-compatible email enhancer. Their main feature seems to be Slack-like channels. https://aether.app/

Cool product, thanks for sharing. It looks like it's focused on inter team communication. plum mail is somewhere you can talk to anyone who's email you already have.

Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations

#37
Interesting. Could Plum Mail be suitable for communication in an open source community? There's a range of group communication platforms, including email newsletters, Slack channels, and Discord (and originally email lists and UseNet) that can be either distracting, hard to search, difficult to thread, or difficult to join. Is there a mechanism for people to invite themselves to a Plum Mail conversation from a sign-up form?

Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations

#39
post #7
post #4

Congrats on the launch. Was pulling my hair out trying to coordinate tasks in applying for a mortgage between me, my wife, the banker, the insurance company and the title people. I thought to myself it'd be great to have something like shared inbox but for personal use. Would love to test this

Separately, why there isn't a tool used by the mortgage broker to facilitate this, I have no idea. It's a nightmare of documents and tasks that makes the whole process 8 times as long.

There’s a million tools like this out there but brokers just want to get deals closed so they fall back to whatever is preferred by the borrower which is always email.

Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations

#40

Interesting. Could Plum Mail be suitable for communication in an open source community? There's a range of group communication platforms, including email newsletters, Slack channels, and Discord (and originally email lists and UseNet) that can be either distracting, hard to search, difficult to thread, or difficult to join. Is there a mechanism for people to invite themselves to a Plum Mail conversation from a sign-u…

Why would you want to use a closed-source solution for an open-source solution? Zulip, Mattermost, Matrix, Rocket.Chat all seem like more ideal communication and community platforms. There is also Odoo that handles CRM/ERP type solutions.
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