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Show HN: A personal Gmail

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21–30 of 105 posts

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#21

Open source the app. There's a huge lacking in good web based open source mail clients. Fill it. Offer a pay-for premium hosted version. Have us pay for service, not software. If you released this, assuming it doesn't suck balls, I'd be running it immediately. I'm currently using Rackspace for my email hosting; check them out. They're good, good be better. ;)

Haha, thanks for your frank words. I actually like your idea for 2 reasons:

1) OpenSource would definitely improve the quality of the app while still maintaining a way to profit from my work.

2) Finally giving back to OpenSource. Always felt kinda bad I haven't contributed much to a great community.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#22
It looks quite nice. I'd pay for an alternative to Gmail. Here are my suggestions / needs.

* Shortcut keys, preferably the same as Gmail but customizable

* Custom domains

* Both IMAP and ActiveSync support

* Everything stored in an encrypted state, no back doors, privacy and security as core components of your service

* The same or more storage space as Gmail provides

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#23
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.

> 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.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#25
I will use it because of the UI (but for free). I love the simplicity. I'm also happy that you are using your own product. It's a good start that you satisfy needs with it.

If it has a very special feature, or will revolutionized the email, I'm sold! And I might pay for a subscription.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#28
post #19

This looks really well done, but as a consumer I wouldn't trust a small-timer (no offense) with something as ubiquitous as my email. As a company looking to self-host, however, your product looks very appealing, but then your battling other players than just GMail. I think in the corporate sector, it would be very hard to dislodge Outlook, which is a shame really.

This is actually my biggest concern, so no offense taken:

Despite Google's privacy policy and ad behaviour (yadda yadda), they ARE still a trustworthy company, regarding uptime , backups and everything technical. Though I remember them losing quite a few accounts about a year back. But still, your point is very valid. Why would anyone trust a small company (or even single hacker) to maintain your precious emails.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#29
To me, this looks like a reskinned Gmail. If it were that, then yes I would use it as it's an improvement over the current layout, albeit marginal. However, there are no ads which Gmail needs and imagine if Gmail didn't need adds they would use their real estate more wisely as in your design.

I use Chrome, which allows you to add styles to custom.css to override the look of any website. As such I'm able to add my own styles to customize the look of Gmail to look cleaner, hide ads and customize like in your mockup. If you package the new look as a Browser Plugin to restyle Gmail, then yes I would use it, but now I would not pay for it.

If you are attempting to recreate gmail itself, then also no I would never use it. Because once again this only offers an improvement in design. Gmail is great compared because of Google. Aka, best spam prevention, far better than Apple, Yahoo and Outlook and scaleability and up-time. There is simply no way you can compete with the resources Google has. Which is why even Apple who has incredible resources and Money and amazing design sense still can't compete with Gmail's infrastructure and servers.

There is a market for retheming however, whether in the web interface or through Apps such as with Sparrow.

So in reality stick with theming Gmail and be aware that Gmail can change their look at any time and that you won't get any direct money out of it but will get your name out there. Good luck.

Re: Show HN: A personal Gmail

#30
post #23

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.

Is market leader defined in terms of quality/features? Or number of users?
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