Thoughts on Basecamp's HEY
The people behind Basecamp (great company) launched a highly opinionated paid email service called HEY. You can check it out here: hey.com
After playing around with it for a little while, I like the intentions, but the 'aha' moment is just not there for me. I think the UI is a bit off and some features feel like they're missing, but that's fine – I'm gonna treat it like an MVP (even though they've been working on this for a couple of years).
Also, as I tweeted here, I think that someone like Apple could easily whip out another cool domain, some added security and similar rules. All for free. Not that I wish for that to happen, but it has happened many times before.
Any further thoughts?
Edit: Thanks everyone for sharing their thoughts. I've since ditched HEY for BYE. It's EXACTLY what I needed.
Honestly , I don’t get it. It’s really nothing spectacular, it’s just email with $99/year price tag and a refreshed UI.
I made a comment on twitter yesterday about the same thing and realistically any non-tech person isn’t going to make the plunge. It’s solutionism at its finest, and it’s the exact same solutionism that brought that startup Juicero to its knees.
I get the intention of Basecamp and some new UI would be nice in the current email environment, but its really nothing that I can’t live without, so I’m not going to be jumping on this bandwagon.
As a GSuite user, I’m content and happy with Gmail and if anybody tells me the argument “but oh! Google sells your information” I really couldn’t care less, Gmails does what I need it to do and it works for me.
The missing feature for me is an email address at a custom domain name. But even Google won’t let you do that for free — it costs $6/mo, which is barely $2 less than Hey. I pay $5/mo for my email now through Fastmail, so Hey’s price doesn’t seem ridiculous to me.
I guess that if you are happy with Gmail, you are not in their target group :-)
On the other hand, I'm not happy with Gmail, my inbox is out of control, and HEY has been a pleasant surprise to me.
I find it interesting that by not supporting POP3/IMAP, they got the freedom to implement features that would be conflicting with these protocols. Gmail has been trying to balance between a proprietary approach (many of its features are not available through IMAP) and IMAP, and this causes a lot of inconsistencies, bad UX in many cases and at the same time limits what they can do.
I don't understand why people refuses to use Unsubscribe button. I use it almost every time when I see something that I have not subscribed to. This keeps my Inbox clean.
Reading/cleaning inbox is part of my daily routine and it does not take more than 10 minutes, if you do it daily🤷🏼♀️
My Gmail inbox is usually empty, as I have filter setup for most of my emails/subscriptions so I only receive important email in inbox. Their search is also really, really good. They have a few UX/UI issues, but I see way more in the Hey's design.
I read comments from people like you, saying "I don't understand why people have a problem with Gmail, I use filters, I use the unsubscribe link, etc and everything is fine".
I have the impression that most of these people are in a different place than I am. I got my gmail address more than 15 years ago, a bit later after its public launch. (Getting a Gmail invite was a big thing back then, btw, so what was old in new again :-)
Since then, I've shared my email with hundreds of online services, I've given it to more people than I can count at events, conferences, etc. I've been in mailing lists, I've switched 4-5 jobs.I can safely bet that my email address is available to thousands services and people. And email has changed a lot in these 15 years, how we use it what we use it for, etc.
So, for me, gmail has slowly degraded. HEY feels like a great solution for me (once they implement custom domains). It fits my workflows, it protects me from the pilled up "mistakes" I've accumulated in the last 15 years. For other people Gmail may be a better solution, I get it. Maybe because they are at a different stage in life, or maybe because they had a different professional path, or maybe just because they were wiser than me and set the right rules from the beginning.
I'm writing this mainly because this is a place where people share their ideas about new products. New products don't have to replace existing ones for everyone. They just need to fill a certain need better and to find their own audience. The fact that me or you may not be in that audience, does not mean it'd not there necessarily.
Ha. I got my Gmail account via invite as well and feel exactly the same way. I think I have a negative switching cost at this point. The idea of moving to a new email account is really appealing. I’d be happy to leave behind the shouldering trash heap that is my current Gmail. Even if I know how things will end in any new email service I adopt...cue theme music from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...
I still don't understand what is the problem with Gmail and how Hey solves that. If you receive 100 new emails from new adresses each day, wouldn't that be a problem in Hey too? As you still have to filter those new messages manually.
I realize I'm making a shameless self-plug here, but the problem you described of your email address spreading around the internet and accumulating more and more spam/junk is exactly why I built https://nullbox.co
Instead of giving out your real email address NullBox lets you easily create disposable email aliases instead. If you notice you're starting to get a bunch of spam through one of your aliases you simply delete it instead of needing to just deal with it or change email addresses.
NullBox lets you protect the privacy of your inbox whether it's Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, whatever.
Could you elaborate on this? I’m on the fence on buying.
Well for example, they let you join email threads. Or update the subject of an email you received. How would you do this consistently on IMAP?
Tags is an other example. IMAP supports folders that hierarchical but nit tags. And this is why you get many inconsistencies if you try to use Gmail both through the web interface and an IMAP client.
Same for the "Notes to self".
Of course some of the above can be implemented as IMAP "hacks", like special folders that are treated in a certain way by the HEY client. But HEY depends a lot on pre-defined workflows, that the random email client will not implement. So, if you design having in mind that the same user may be using the we app and iOS mail to access your service, you somehow limit what you feel free to do.
That’s why they’ve been fighting with Apple for their iOS app. I don’t think people will be able to use HEY from any third party app. Correct me if I’m wrong
No, they won't. But of course the fight with Apple is more complicated than this. Their response is very interesting https://hey.com/apple/iap/ (I would say that it's very interesting for anyone building a paid service.)
I do think the Apple dogfight was pre-planned. They knew the policy, nothing has changed and they still went with it.
Nothing wrong with that, as a consumer I can only benefit from Apple being less restrictive if anything
I believe it was not. They are in this business for more than 20 years, they did what they have been doing for their other products, like basecamp. They did not need this kind of publicity, they already have a huge following and access to events, media. We are talking about the guy who created Ruby on Rails. A few months ago, DHH was one of the people who testified before the House Antitrust Subcommittee.
No-one puts this kind of personal credibility, effort and investment at risk by starting a war with the biggest company in the world, just to get some media coverage they would get anyway.
Please check who these guys are, they have been around a long time, they are not some college students doing their first gig.
Threads sound good, especially if the inbox is being used for sales support. So it sounds like you can’t just use a native email client then? Also would be nice if they support aliases like gmail.
I agree, it's just a dumbed-down email client.
Not a bad thing per se, essentially Google works for you and you are okay to pay with some of your privacy. Tracking, ads, data mining, etc.
I'm not the target audience and I'm happy with Gmail (or at least I don't care enough about email to be annoyed with Gmail). I suspect that much of the buzz is due to Basecamp's reputation and marketing and the product itself is not that revolutionary. Nothing wrong with building a slightly better mousetrap though.
Two things interest me however about this launch: the spat with Apple - and what that means for indie developers on monopolistic App Store platforms - and the architecture of Hey, i.e. what you can achieve with a traditional, non-SPA architecture in 2020.
I've been making my side project as a non-spa and can confirm it's way faster to build stuff. The fact that Turbolinks allows you to quickly change your website into an App is a game changer as well.
It's also funny how many apps we use all the time like GitHub, Gitlab, even Facebook till recently have been hybrid apps for a long time. Many times people don't even notice. I've used Basecamp at work and I had no idea that it was 80% Ruby on rails.
Yes I've used Turbolinks/Stimulus with a Django project - neither are coupled to Rails and it's quite easy to add them to other frameworks. Building an SPA is a lot of work, even if you are familiar with the technologies, and the complexity can kill momentum especially in the early stages of a project.
Yeah with the new Turbo Drive stuff it's even easier now. I've had to resort to some more heavy JS here and there but I think it's only like 2 screens in a sea of like 30 or so.
I'm glad people are trying to improve E-mail. We have had a stagnation of E-mail clients recently, which was preceded by a catastrophe that nearly destroyed E-mail: Microsoft's Outlook (which introduced top-posting and totally broke quoting). E-mail was really good in the 1990s! Incidentally, I cannot comprehend how even today there are E-mail clients that can't properly quote and people have to write "PLEASE SEE MY REPLIES MARKED IN RED".
I also think it's great that there will be a counter-offer to Gmail and perhaps more people will understand that giving up your privacy and trusting an ad-conglomerate with all your E-mail is not a good idea.
The Hey service is definitely not for me, as I am convinced that my E-mail should be private and handled only by my server and my client apps. I also don't think they would ingest my E-mail archives dating back to 1993 or so.
I'm slightly worried that we will see yet another attempt at "embrace and extend": some Hey-specific features which will pollute the world for everybody else.
I have similar thoughts. I am glad to see someone actively trying to make email better and hey is certainly an attempt at that.
While I appreciate their opinions on how email should work, I find their approach to be more reflective of what works for Basecamp, but not necessarily outside of it. Maybe someday they will allow for more categories of mail other than the defaults + labels.
I’m a bit surprised at how many people are saying some variation of “No one except X will use it” or “X company can do the same thing” or “you can easily recreate it by doing Y”. I’d expect that maybe on HN but not on a site where people are focused on how you create a business.
The existence of Gmail is about as relevant to Hey’s business prospects as the existence of McDonald’s is to Five Guys’. They can & will coexist. (Assuming the Apple stuff gets resolved somehow).
All that matters is 1) how much it costs Basecamp to create, market and service Hey and 2) how many people open up their wallets. But the internet is a big place, so (as we should all be constantly reminding ourselves wrt potential customer segments) you’d be surprised.
ps
This isn’t a comment on people discussing their personal like or dislike of the product. I haven’t used it and don’t really anticipate using it. I’m more surprised at how ppl are discussing the business set up.
Completely unrelated, but I’m really curious how much they paid for hey.com
I don't see a big radical feature in hey.
Someone can easily make a browser plugin which can hide most of the gmail features and add up/down features straight into gmail and categorize emails into different folders.
But then you cannot charge users that much 🤓🤑
@hernan I love the idea. Can't wait to get an invite myself. Big fan of Basecamp and their brand of thought.
Some IHers mentioned but Gmail works for me, and to your point, yes, Apple or another FAANG company could do this. But, what I think none of them will do (Even Apple with their pseudo privacy pledge) is block all trackers, promise not to data mine you, use data to target ads, etc. and for that, I love HEY!
Honestly, I think it is only Special in the head of the creators because they want to create something new which changes everything, but it won‘t. I assume the hype around it will pass by and then everyone uses his email provider like before
I see a couple of big issues with Hey. The first is that it's not really email. People may not love email, but it is a standard and I can port my Gmail email to FastMail or any other host and it's still email. And currently, with Hey, you have to use their domain. The latter is significant in my mind.
If you can't use your domain, you're locking yourself completely into their system. If you stop paying, you lose access to that address. And for $99/year you aren't going to just keep it running just in case.
I like the idea, but I don't think I'll be using it.
In an effort to try and contribute something novel to this post, I've been trying it out and don't really get it either—maybe for a different reason. I think the switching cost is too high. Whether or not I like the refreshed UI (I don't), I can't afford to spend the time learning a new mail client AND getting it to fit into my workflow. Not to mention they aren't supporting custom domains yet, so it's kind of a non-starter.
I appreciate the effort. That was exactly my intention before posting on IH.
🙏
When I first heard about it, I didn't really "get it". But then I watched Jason Fried's demo of it on YouTube and now definitely see the value and will probably sign up soon. It seems extremely thoughtful in its design. You can watch the demo here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCeYTysLyGI
They know their audience is limited that's why they are going with the $100 price point. It's mostly going to be the programmer/startup crowd, and not much else. That's why they are doing the whole Apple controversy thing , it's a great marketing tactic to target developers, plus something good might come out of it.
Some of the ideas of hey ideas are nice, but it's really a re-imagination of email as an asynchronous chat system. Technically, it's email + a contact list. It would be nice to have some of this functionality (like approved senders) as standard extensions to SMTP to be implemented by all clients
It's confusing. Is it a email service like Gmail or just an email client like Outlook ?
Most people are not their target audience. I believe HEY is more targeted towards the people who have an "out of control" email inbox. But my big question is, HEY is not an email client for them to sign in with their existing email account and bring it under control. It is a new email service. This means, you are going to have to tell all your peers that you changed your email address. Almost the same as creating a new email address and using that, running away from your out of control email address.
At least, Superhuman does a decent job of helping you manage your 'existing' email account, not an email service. Honestly, today, we all need a better email client that has a refreshed look to it.
My thoughts. Still love what Basecamp people stand for. But re-inventing just email, isn't what I was looking forward to in 2020. Maybe, in the next 10 years, it could be popular among people who are creating their first email address and have enough money to pay for it. But not me right now.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago