Looking for feedback and potential partners for a tool that makes email chains readable
Hi indie hackers.
Since last year I’ve been getting a lot of forwarded email chains, and honestly I find them hard to follow.
You get layers of quoted text, missing context, weird formatting, and you spend more time figuring out who said what than actually reading the content.
I ran into this often enough that I started to build emailsreport.com, which is basically something that restructures an email thread into a cleaner, chat-style format that’s easier to read and share. You can copy it directly back to the email client app or export as a pdf.
However, after making it public, I’ve found it surprisingly hard to get any users, which has made me start wondering whether this is actually a problem others care about.
So I’m curious how people here feel about it:
• Do forwarded email threads bother you too, or am I overthinking it?
• Do you have a workflow or tool you already use to make them more readable?
• If someone sent you a “cleaned up” version of an email conversation, would that be helpful or annoying?
I’m mainly looking for honest opinions and feedback. If anyone is interested in trying what I built, I’m happy to share more details privately — there’s a free trial, and I can also provide a tester account.
I’m also open to connecting with anyone who has experience in marketing and thinks this kind of tool could have potential.
My email address for following up: shawnxu0208@gmail.com
web app URL: https://emailsreport.com
a demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seNsEMmUGvo
Interesting problem — long email chains are painful.
Quick question: how are you thinking about access control or plan limits if you introduce paid tiers?
Hello Aerith,
I have felt that way about email threads before so you're not alone and you're not overthinking, I never thought of an app fixing it though and I don't think I would pay for it as an individual.
BUT I truly think that this would have a better potential with a B2B approach. I think this would be useful for businesses or teams, helping them to save time and make things clearer and more organized.
For example, legal teams would love this, it makes things structured for them regarding documentation and evidence. I also think about a SaaS company where there is a long thread of support email with a customer having issues and let's say the success manager or CEO requests to see the conversation, this would save him time going through everything.
I think this is a great idea, I would just recommend refining your approach and I think you could succeed by doing that even if you may have to so some repositioning.
Hey @Aerith 👋
I’d like to share my honest feedback on EmailsReport. It’s a great tool, visually impressive and very well thought out for managing email threads. I can definitely see its potential, especially for people who deal with a large volume of email conversations every day.
That said, here comes my small “but.” As an individual user, I personally wouldn’t pay for a tool like this, simply because most of my email threads usually stay within 2–3 messages. I imagine there are quite a few people in a similar situation.
From my perspective, EmailsReport feels like it could be an even better fit for a B2B model rather than a B2C SaaS. For example, larger companies could get a lot of value from it in departments like HR or Sales, where managing long and complex email threads is part of the daily workflow.
These are just my sincere thoughts, shared with the best intentions. I hope they’re helpful and don’t come across negatively, I really just wanted to provide honest, constructive feedback.
Cheers 🍻
Thank you so much for taking the time to share such thoughtful and honest feedback. You’re absolutely right that for many individual users, email conversations don’t always grow long enough to justify a paid tool. I will think about making a free tier that offer small size email threads converting.