Thoughts on "HEY . c o m"? 💌
Just subscribed to hey.com. The fact that it comes from Basecamp makes it even more exciting. The copy seems compelling and to the point.
What are your thoughts on premium email and would you pay to save time inside your mailbox?
Let's discuss...
I love the idea behind HEY and am a big fan of Basecamp's philosophy and view of the world (I recommend their books to any entrepreneur).
I already switched from Gmail to ProtonMail couple of years ago and am paying for that so even though few years ago it would have felt weird to pay for email when it was "free" elsewhere, I am now more informed and completely fine to support companies with better ethics and better business models. If we want a better and healthier internet ecosystem it does make sense to support independent companies and products we care about. Otherwise it will all go to Google/Facebook and their business model of mining behavioral data in order to "sell us" to those who want to pay the most.
On top of that, I also love the stance HEY is taking on tracking and spying in emails by blocking it all by default and by informing their users about that and about companies that use these practices.
I totally agree with you and I'm looking forward to watching what will happen with it.
Perhaps we should get @dru_riley to do his "trends" analysis on the topic of premium alternatives to free platforms. :)
👋 @ved Would you say this falls under 'Luxury Software'?
In a way... There is a more appropriate name for the category at least diff than lux or premium but just can't seem to find it. I will keep the thread going...
It's an interesting trend. It all started with people raving about superhuman.
For better or worse, thinking of luxury as — status is involved (Superhuman/Clubhouse) vs Premium (Charging in a largely free category)
True i don't disagree - there's status and premium for sure. Is it worth it? I am still looking for a raving fan to justify all the fuzz
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https://clubhouse.io/
Seems to be the latest 'flavour of the month' and example of a startup that does design & promotion. Basically the '37signals of 2020'... I do like their offering though, and my startup is considering switching, seeing as they offer up to 10 users free.
I thought the OP was referring to a different clubhouse
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Thanks for sharing Mick - it's an interesting perspective. Generally, you don't get to hear much when it's a relatively closed community and no product videos available online. I tried joining a few times. But it wasn't available for android. So I gave up. Hey.com brought back the excitement.
While most people would be priced out by the offering, I find it appealing enough to spend money. That says something. Great and realistic approach to security/privacy with at-rest encryption. Finally, the fact that it’s made by the team behind Basecamp seals the deal for me. Also, I like that their website subverts the hero->primary->secondary content standards and just goes straight to prose. @ved do you happen to have a spare invite? Thanks!
I think they’ll make something that works well and is marketed well lol
A good case study on pricing, exclusivity and all that ..a useful example
Moving off gmail is something I'm strongly considering as being totally bought into the google ecosystem has me feeling weird should they decide to ever terminate my account. Additionally I'm declaring email bankruptcy since no amount of unsubscribing will ever stop tens of non human emails from finding their way into my inbox every day. Who knows how many things I've signed up for in the 10 years I've had my gmail.
I am using my own domain name and forwarding it to gmail. No-one sees gmail, but I still use it.
try leavemealone.app
To your point --- one of my personal videos got removed from youtube. I reached out to the company who's patrolling it and they admitted that it might have been a mistake but they needed the original file to confirm. So I go to my Google photos and the video won't load (the video is 5 months old and it did load in March). Wait, what!? It's been a month and I've gone through 3 levels of support at Google and now I am at the product mng level they still can't find the error. That's understandable in a way but also damn scary.
Their product is so beautifully designed, and it does solve a lot of the pain points of organizing your email. But the price point is so high, especially when you consider how that's roughly the amount you'd pay for a product like Amazon that does so much more for you in terms of productivity. I wonder if they're looking to eventually get into B2B rather than stick to a mainly B2C revenue stream. FWIW, the discussion on Soufflé on this topic is pretty interesting https://www.souffle.club/
Wow this looks super cool? Anyone have an extra invite? 😀
I joined the waiting list and I am excited to give it a try.
I am a current user of Superhuman for my pro email and I love it. It's so good I almost want to switch my personal emails to Gmail and buy an iPhone so I can use it with my personal emails too.
Email is so poorly done I hope HEY will make it as good as Superhuman does, while supporting multiple platforms and being privacy friendly.
What do you like about superhuman?
Thanks for sharing
I like that I can do stuff quicker, using the keyboard only, and I love the reminder feature in case I don't get a reply to an important email. It's truly life-changing.
I use Gmail/Gsuite mostly with keyboard-only, and there is a reminder feature. Speed I don't know. Superhuman probably does have a better architecture for speed.
I'm always a big fan of independent companies that take money to provide a service and do that well. No big investors, no hidden agenda or selling of data. Just one thing, done well.
That's why I like Fastmail for my email too, I'm a paid customer so I can expect support (Which is not the case with GMail even if you are paid customer through GSuite) in case something goes wrong. Mail is probably the most important service everyone is using as it's also the one key to all your accounts (Password reset emails,...). Putting that in the hands of someone that can just shut down your account with no way of getting support seems incredibly risky to me.
For that reason I was very excited when I heard about hey.com as I'm a big fan of dhh, Jason Fried, Basecamp and Rails.
Now that there's more information out there I'm not excited any more as it seems it's a "closed" platform that can't be used through any mail client like it's the case with other mail providers. You'll have to use their app on all platforms or use the web instead of using the included Mail.app on macOS or the respective bundled one on your platform.
One of the nice things about Email is that it's an open standard (IMAP,...) that can be used through different apps. Even Gmail can be used through any IMAP client.
I have no interest in having one Mail client for some emails and then another one for my Hey.com emails without a nice way of backing up one location or search through all my emails in one place.
Very thoughtful comment, Philipp. One thing to have in mind though, it took google 10-15 years to get the email to where it is today. I'll give these tools a shot but won't put all my eggs into one basket.
Thanks. One thing to note is that Gmail is actually one of the least standard compliant mail providers with their whole “Labels” feature. Setting up an standard compliant mail hoster isn’t hard, but most of these that don’t offer access to the protocol directly do something on top of it (encryption like Protonmail, or filtering like Hey it seems) which makes it non compliant and so you can’t use it in the client of your choice. That’s why it’s not for me.
Thanks for sharing your insights, Phillipp.