SharedBox

Slack made some changes to their permission model and I had to make some changes to SharedBox. Took some days of back and forth to finally got changes approved. In those few days, new users couldn't signup to the service. Coincidentally, DenseDiscovery featured SharedBox in one of the days. Google analytics showed about 300 visits that I apparently lost.

Good news, things are fine now. By the way, wrote a passport strategy for the OAuth v2 flow https://github.com/kehers/passport-slack

• Redesigned email sync engine to directly connect to email boxes via IMAP. No delays in syncing
• Added a Sync Logs page on the dashboard to show the email connection and sync logs. If there is a connection failure for example, details will be available here. Here is what it looks like: https://imgur.com/a/AHBzthW
• Added a "Mark emails unread" settings to connections for IMAP connected emails so that SharedBox can mark emails pulled as unread
• Removed the free plan. No changes required for old accounts for the next 3 months.

I was forced to send an early update mail for the month due to an issue with the email sync service. I had to explain the situation, apologise and explain actions that have been taken to prevent reoccurrence.

Sent emails from Slack are now synced to the mailbox's sent folder so that makes up for some good "new feature" news.

Due to restrictions on Slack, I have been thinking of a mobile/web app that users can use instead. This will really allow more UI/UX flexibility. I don't want to make any rushed decisions though so I included a Typeform survey in the mail to find out what users think. Fingers crossed.

After 2 weeks, in-built tracking I built in shows no user conversion from ads. Pausing the ads for now till I am ready to give it a short again. Or not.

Also resumed sending out Pro Digest again after a month break. https://sharedbox.app/newsletters/19/16-how-to-be-great.html

Added support for twitter mentions and DM. Some optimisations still needs to be done in some areas with the the integration. But basic sending and receiving works.

Trying to experiment with Google ads. Tried Newsletter and Facebook ads but conversion wasn't as good as expected.

The ad creation process seems too complicated; so many things to toggle, add, pick. (Had similar experience with Facebook). It's easy to miss or get things wrong. This will need a lot of learning and experimenting.

Noticed some people use SharedBox for email notification from other services and are only interested in incoming messages. For most of them, the 100 limit on the free plan can be small and the $19 starter plan can be too much. Created a Go plan ($5) that increases the free plan to 1k inbound messages. Let's see what uptake is going to be like.