My inbox used to get an average of 53 emails per day, with one simple trick, they're down to 3
My inbox is busy, whether it's newsletters I'm subscribing to, salespeople who somehow got my address or random emails that are not technically spam but are from people I don't know.
The number of emails totaled up to 74 emails per day with an average of 53 emails.
Now don't get me wrong, those weren't SPAM. They were emails that had value for me but were too distracting and occupied crucial real estate in my Gmail inbox.
The 53 daily emails I get are post-implementation of strict filtering rules on Gmail. The only filter I couldn't implement was the most obvious: Filter emails from people outside of my contact list.
My contact list usually delivers the most value to me through emails. If there is a sender I'm particularly interested in, I add that to my contact list.
This is why I built Emailgurus to catch emails from outsiders.
Because data is sensitive, I made it open source as well.
Today, my inbox is free. I do check the EG:OUTSIDERS (The special folder) once a day, but I do it twice a day so my head is free to focus on the more important stuff.
I hope you like it
I am a hardcore user of email filter rules (I pray on the altar of Inbox Zero), so, naturally I am interested in a product that charges for something that comes free with any decent client.
How does the product work? That little detail is missing from the website :)
Happy to meet another Zero-Inbox fellow!
Essentially, once you give Emailgurus access to your Gmail and Google contacts, Emailgurus pulls your contact lists and hashes it (SHA256) to make sure that only you own your contact list (Other tools don't do that and that's a risk that they're using your contact list data).
Then Emailgurus starts watching your inbox.
When there is a new email, Emailgurus reads the FROM field, hashes it (SHA256) and compares it against your hashed contact list saved on the database.
If there is a match, the email is from someone you know we don't do anything.
If not, then depending on your preferences, but by default we label the email as EG:OUTSIDERS and we archive it.
If your FOMO is big, you can choose to only label it but not archive it, until you feel like Emailgurus is accurate.
I hope this helps.
How do you ensure this is secure and not a privacy nightmare?
It sounds totally fine from a technical perspective, but how do you convince people and companies to give you access to their emails?
I think being open-source is the ultimate proof.
No matter what we write in our privacy policy or marketing copy, showing the actual code is the ultimate proof that your data is not our business model. You pay for a service (Thank you for that); hence, you're not the product.
I also think being open source is the way to go here.
But maybe offering self-hosting + additional code modules (which are open source, but you have to pay for their use + support) is how you can win companies over? Not sure. This might be wholly dependent on target group, country, etc.
Interesting product! Good luck!
Interesting ideas! I would love to chat more.
Drop me an email at aymane@emailgurus.xyz?
Done