A mysterious subscription...
The origin story of Mailsweeper
Once upon a monthly budget review
I found a peculiar line item:
Google Cloud Storage $1.99
I noticed that this charge had been occuring for over a year, but I had no idea what it was. I am on the free tier, so I wasn't sure where this originated.
After some digging, I asked my wife if she knew what the charge could be. She said she wasn't sure, but she thinks she might have "upgraded her Gmail". Turns out, she accumulated emails over 10 years and exceeded the free storage capacity offered by Gmail. This prompted her to upgrade her Gmail.
I helped my wife clean up her inbox, by first deleting larger emails, and then going through old emails. Emails from shopping websites, notifications, ads, confirmations, and more. SO MANY EMAILS.
Even though most of the emails were tiny, they added up. Afterwards we were able to downgrade her Gmail storage back to the free version, and save $2/month.
A few days later, visiting my parents
My mom was sitting at the kitchen counter with a laptop, intently focused, and clicking many, many times. I couldn't see what it was at first, but I peeked over her shoulder. She was clicking through her Gmail inbox, it looked like she was bulk deleting emails.
Me: "Mom, what are you doing?"
Mom: "I'm deleting emails, Google wants me to pay for more emails"
This was now the second time in a few days I had seen the same problem: EMAIL OVERLOAD
I wanted to do something to help my mom, and my wife.
Searching for a solution
Early on, I found that email also has a carbon cost. I wanted to make sure that any product could demonstrate an environment impact.
I searched for something that would solve the problem. There are a few products or options that I found. Each one of them had one two pitfalls:
- A subscription (often more expensive than the $1.99 for email storage)
- Too complicated
With no solution meeting my criteria, I started looking into the Gmail APIs and how I could fix this issue.
Prototype
With the idea in mind for how I could fix this, I started experimenting with the Gmail APIs. The initial prototype was only 10 lines of code, and a whole lot of issues with restrictive limits in the Gmail API, but it worked!
I was able to get it working, but wanted to make the product "so simple, my mom could use it". How could I build something that anyone could add to their inbox and have it just click.
A New Email Metaphor
With email, you have a number of metaphors for the physical world: inbox, trash can, folders, etc
I invented a new one: The Dustpan
The dustpan collects unimportant emails, and these would periodically be "swept" to the trash.
This concept also gave me the idea for a name: Mailsweeper
A dashboard
Naturally, I wanted a dashboard so that users (and me) could see the impact that Mailsweeper was having on their inbox.
Launch and early reception
I sent the early product to a number of family members and friends. Each time receiving valuable feedback and incorporating into the product.
Afterwards, I did some light promotion on lower trafficked websites. The lowest price for the earliest adopter was $1, and these slots sold within just a few hours after posting.
After a few days, the numbers of emails swept by Mailsweeper execeeded 100K. I'm hoping to hit the 1M mark in the next month.
Wish me luck!
