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Show HN: A personal Gmail

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Show HN: A personal Gmail

#1

Post by jubari »

Hey guys,

so I've been building my own Gmail for the past few weeks and would like your feedback.

Find a preview here: http://i.imgur.com/UDz2y.png (Mouse cursor is over the "REPLY" button, to show the hover-effect)

The app you see in the screenshot is what I've been using in the past week and it starts to feel better than the gmail interface.

Just a quick explanation:

- It's conversation-based like Gmail. - Conversations with new emails are on the left. - Conversations may be labeled ... based on predefined filters or manually. - Every conversation stays in the left sidebar until marked "Done" or "Pinned". - Done emails are accessed through the "check"-button next to the "MailApp"-logo. - Pinned emails are moved to the right sidebar. This is basically a to-do list or for future reference. - Both sidebars may be filtered by attributes or labels. - The "list"-icon, next to the filter in the left sidebar, gives you the classic gmail list in the center-panel.

Some technical background:

- It's build with Rails and PostgreSQL. - E-Mail sending/receiving is based on the MailGun infrastructure. - Turbolinks (https://github.com/rails/turbolinks) and Memcache for a speedy UX. - All mail data is saved in a multi-tenant PostgreSQL db and for backup purposes in a IMAP mailbox on MailGun. - Hosted on heroku.

I'm quite happy with the app by now and only go back to Gmail for older emails.

So my BIG QUESTION right now: Would you even consider using the app, in case I'd make a commercial product out of it? Would you pay for it?

Searching HN yielded that quite a few people are looking each month to leave Gmail (for various reasons), but of course there are quite a few gotchas with my approach, especially considering trust-issues.

Let me hear what you think.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#2

Post by hosay123 »

I'd consider paying for a clone of Gmail classic, but their new UI sucks IMHO. Another compelling feature I'm looking for is the ability to self-host. It's clear that many governments and cloud service providers don't consider hosted data "really all that private", despite best intentions. It only takes a single national security letter to remind us why it's nicer to have our data reposed locally.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#3

Post by peteforde »

Here are the first three questions:

1. Is this something you host, or something I host? 2. How are you handling searching existing mail, tech wise? 3. Does this start to slow down after you have 10k emails in it?

If this supports custom domains and is plugged into decent spam filtering, I'd take a closer look at it.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#4

Post by ommunist »

If you can give a trial, and nice transition option, as well as backup option to mbox format, I'd pay around the same rackspace is asking for managed email. [Added on a second thought]: I'd also consider to pay a license fee for a domain or several domains for client websites.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#5

Post by maratd »

> Would you even consider using the app, in case I'd make a commercial product out of it?

No.

I use Google because of the stuff that happens in the background, that I never see. Their infrastructure, SPAM blocking, Android app, intrusion detection, seamless support for custom domains, filtering and search, etc.

GMail looks like a simple app, but it's actually a herculean effort on behalf of Google, a multi-billion dollar company. There's a reason they have very little competition in that sector.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#6

Post by welker »

I think people are leaving google because of privacy concerns. Providing a new service does not change anything from the privacy perspective.

Privacy concerned people want to host their own mail server.

Cheers, Jan

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#8

Post by davedx »

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 separate FORWARD and REPLY buttons. (Why on earth these most used buttons are in a drop-down is beyond me).

Don't get me wrong - I think you're onto something - I just think you need to be very careful which parts of GMail you copy, which you improve, and which you axe completely.

If you could deliver a non-bloated, snappy GMail I would consider paying for it. I would probably prefer a cloud solution though (like GMail) because I hate setting up my own email.

Good luck with it!

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#9

Post by MatthewPhillips »

maratd wrote: post #5

> Would you even consider using the app, in case I'd make a commercial product out of it? No. I use Google because of the stuff that happens in the background, that I never see. Their infrastructure, SPAM blocking, Android app, intrusion detection, seamless support for custom domains, filtering and search, etc. GMail looks like a simple app, but it's actually a herculean effort on behalf of Google, a multi-billion do…

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.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#10

Post by jubari »

peteforde wrote: post #3

Here are the first three questions: 1. Is this something you host, or something I host? 2. How are you handling searching existing mail, tech wise? 3. Does this start to slow down after you have 10k emails in it? If this supports custom domains and is plugged into decent spam filtering, I'd take a closer look at it.

1) Considering the hosting: It's currently basically a SaaS.

I initially had a prototype, which used Dropbox-as-a-Database. Basically I stored all emails and metadata (labels, etc) in a private dropbox in JSON-format. It actually worked, but the performance was so bad, that I ditched this approach.

2) PostgresSQL comes with a great full-text search. It's not perfect right now, but it does it job.

3) Honestly, no idea :)

Spam filtering is done by MailGun. CustomDomains are a must, of course.

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