How does this compare to Outpost? teamoutpost.com
Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations
41–50 of 68 posts
Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations
#42Congratulations on launching. I have to say honestly my #1 feedback is the video - it is way too long and does not convey to me the relevant details about your product as you described above. Attention spans are short, and if there is a broken icon image in the video (at 1:49) I will immediately stop taking the product seriously. Definitely agree that communication software can be improved.
Thanks for your constructive feedback on the video. We realised yesterday the video says literally nothing interesting until 30 seconds in! Had quite a lot of flak about this lol. Still, there’s a first time for everything and I hope the video can be succeeded by a V2 in fairly short order. Thanks for your congratulations.
Nice to see this on HN because someone commented that I should try Plum Mail on one of my tweets about email [1]. The service looks quite compelling. Kudos on the launch.
Regarding the video, may I suggest that you use the first 10-seconds as the “trailer” for the service. The trailer should cover the top-5 unique features —- your service’s USP —- and dive into each feature one by one for the rest of the video. This way, you’ve hooked users of all attention spans to view the rest of your video. This is similar to an executive summary, only in video form!
Good luck. I’ll sign up for an invite.
1. https://twitter.com/_adontai/status/1296512040442433538?s=21
Update: punctuation and minor clarification
Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations
#43Interesting. 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.
Anyone have experience with Odoo?
Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations
#44Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations
#45Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations
#46This would reconcile with email but for one thing : In my social group nobody uses emails to communicate, because of the very problems you're trying to solve. Meaning I would need to get my friend on the service or else it won't be a very efficient tool to communicate.
It is although quite unclear that you act as an email provider and not an app that accesses your emails (Did I even get that right?).
It is also unclear if there's a price tag or how you intend to make money.
Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations
#47I may be in the minority, but there's no way I'm using this if it's cloud-based and requires access to my full inbox. When your main inbox is also your second factor of authentication for many services, your backup to your work accounts, and a repository of lots of financial and medical information, it's too scary to share with a cloud service. You could have 100% great intentions and still get hacked.
We do not require any access to your inbox, messages sent directly to your email do not pass through our service. Messages within Plum Mail, are stored on our servers. Central coordination is what enables us to offer features like concluding a conversation and pins that show the same state to all participants. It is a fair concern, one that always needs to be considered when using a cloud service, it is certainly pos…
Wait. I might be reading your comment wrong or missing something, but my understanding from your comment is that you are just using email addresses as the identities of a group chat system, instead of actually using emails as the group chat?
Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations
#48This would reconcile with email but for one thing : In my social group nobody uses emails to communicate, because of the very problems you're trying to solve. Meaning I would need to get my friend on the service or else it won't be a very efficient tool to communicate. It is although quite unclear that you act as an email provider and not an app that accesses your emails (Did I even get that right?). It is also uncle…
Agree. A system with none of your friends or colleagues on is pointless because there is no one to talk to.
I'll try to be really clear about what Plum Mail is and is not! We haven't done a great job of communicating this thus far.
Plum Mail is NOT an email client.
Plum Mail IS a communication platform using a central server similar to how an instant chat platform works.
Where we differ is that Plum Mail isn't a 'walled garden' where you need to invite users in to use it.
Users are identified in the system by their email address. If you write to someone that is not a Plum Mail user, then we send that message out as an email to that user with an option to reply. That reply button gives the user immediate access to Plum Mail in order to write back to you. We're doing this passwordlessly. Right at the genesis of this idea we didn't want to build a system that required you to invite all your friends to it before it became useful.
Revenue wise, referencing the above point, Plum Mail has to be free. We will offer premium features for a modest fee.
Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations
#49Earlier 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!
Seems great. What's the pricing or how do you make money ?
Hi again, I answered this one up above too.
Free to all (system is open to all) with premium features for a modest fee.
Re: Launch HN: Plum Mail (YC S20) – Email alternative for group conversations
#50How does this compare to Outpost? teamoutpost.com
Nice looking site. Plum Mail just isn't an email client or a shared inbox. We can offer shared inbox functionality in Plum Mail if users would like it but you can also do simpler public support channels.