The deal-breaker for me here is that they don't use any open protocols for mail -- which seems really disingenuous for a company claiming they're trying to wrest control of email away from google....
The deal-breaker for me here is that they don't use any open protocols for mail -- which seems really disingenuous for a company claiming they're trying to wrest control of email away from google. Makes me think they just want it for themselves.
Like, if IMAP isn't good enough, why not try to improve it or work on JMAP, which is already there?
Yeahh I get what they're aiming for but I'm not a fan of their approach. I'd much prefer to pay Protonmail (which I do) or Tutanota or something and get a product built on open standards.
Yeahh I get what they're aiming for but I'm not a fan of their approach. I'd much prefer to pay Protonmail (which I do) or Tutanota or something and get a product built on open standards.
While I'm not 100% behind Protonmail or Tutanota (from what I've read "encrypted email" doesn't really make sense, and Proton at least still has this funky "bridge" compatibility layer that you...
While I'm not 100% behind Protonmail or Tutanota (from what I've read "encrypted email" doesn't really make sense, and Proton at least still has this funky "bridge" compatibility layer that you have to install), I think extending an open standard is much better than just making something up out of whole cloth.
For me the main pull of encrypted email providers is that they're not mining it to sell me stuff, I'm not under any illusions that anybody actually wants to read my mail specifically, but the less...
For me the main pull of encrypted email providers is that they're not mining it to sell me stuff, I'm not under any illusions that anybody actually wants to read my mail specifically, but the less I put into Facebook and Google, the better in my opinion.
I have no doubt that, eventually, someone out there is going to be able to construct a neural net that crawls every single person's email and gives them a propensity score towards things like...
I'm not under any illusions that anybody actually wants to read my mail specifically
I have no doubt that, eventually, someone out there is going to be able to construct a neural net that crawls every single person's email and gives them a propensity score towards things like being a dissident based on various conditions. Right now all this stuff is being dedicated towards making people click ads, but eventually it could be much more invasive as a way to create a "social credit" score.
True fact! I personally use Fastmail b/c I don't want the Google effect but I don't care enough about encryption / don't want to bother with the bridges, etc. to do Proton/Tutanota.
True fact! I personally use Fastmail b/c I don't want the Google effect but I don't care enough about encryption / don't want to bother with the bridges, etc. to do Proton/Tutanota.
Honestly since buying a two year Protonmail sub I've been leaning more and more towards self-hosting it so once my subscription is up I might migrate to my own server. I'm already using a custom...
Honestly since buying a two year Protonmail sub I've been leaning more and more towards self-hosting it so once my subscription is up I might migrate to my own server. I'm already using a custom domain on Proton so it should be pretty painless to move.
What's the point of improving the underlying protocol if the interesting features are unique to your mail client? Further, without a userbase Basecamp has no ability to influence a protocol's...
What's the point of improving the underlying protocol if the interesting features are unique to your mail client? Further, without a userbase Basecamp has no ability to influence a protocol's direction.
None of the features are unique. You can – and certain clients already allow you to – implement them with tags, reminders, and categories. The service is a wrapper for basic tech that's already in...
None of the features are unique. You can – and certain clients already allow you to – implement them with tags, reminders, and categories. The service is a wrapper for basic tech that's already in place. They even illuminate as much in their front-page pitch:
So good news, the magic’s still there. It’s just obscured — buried under a mess of bad habits and neglect. Some from people, some from machines, a lot from email software.
Email deserves a dust off. A renovation. Modernized for the way we email today.
With HEY, we’ve done just that. It’s a redo, a rethink, a simplified, potent reintroduction of email. A fresh start, the way it should be.
You can provide an IMAP interface that does not expose all the functionality or exposes an approximation, like Google does with tags and IMAP folders. There is also the more rudimentary POP. Not...
You can provide an IMAP interface that does not expose all the functionality or exposes an approximation, like Google does with tags and IMAP folders. There is also the more rudimentary POP.
Not having an open protocol for clients is not just about not being able to use thunderbird, it also enables keeping email data hostage in case you want to leave their service.
Honestly I'm not sure Google would have implemented IMAP at all if Gmail was released today. Email as we recognize it is probably going to fade away; it is too technical and nowadays it makes more sense for a company to own the whole experience rather than trying to work with their competitors. I fear it will become a dinosaur-business thing, like faxes. In Spain most b2c companies are doing direct communications via whatsapp or facebook. Email is just for receipts, notifications and general spam.
I don’t think you can do that for company mail. There is some ISO requirement that’s just easiest to comply with by disabling IMAP.
You can provide an IMAP interface that does not expose all the functionality or exposes an approximation, like Google does with tags and IMAP folders. There is also the more rudimentary POP.
I don’t think you can do that for company mail. There is some ISO requirement that’s just easiest to comply with by disabling IMAP.
Like I said elsewhere, it's better to extend existing standards, I think, than to make something totally new. With Basecamp making a whole new protocol, they've basically said "Screw you, I'm...
Like I said elsewhere, it's better to extend existing standards, I think, than to make something totally new. With Basecamp making a whole new protocol, they've basically said "Screw you, I'm going home" to all other email providers -- they've given up any influence they might've had.
I had a look yesterday and it's OK but here are the issues I have with HEY: $99/year is crazy money just for Email alone. I have Fastmail which costs me $52/year (I bought for 3 years) and that...
Exemplary
I had a look yesterday and it's OK but here are the issues I have with HEY:
$99/year is crazy money just for Email alone. I have Fastmail which costs me $52/year (I bought for 3 years) and that has email, calendar, contacts, todo, storage etc. I don't even use the storage, but it's there and ready for me to use. If you need email, I'm pretty sure you can find cheaper, nonfree alternatives.
Not being able to set up your own domain and be stuck with hey's domain is essentially them forcing their users to market their email application. They go on about how they don't use signatures, but when your email address is *@hey.com, there isn't need for a signature to advertise.
They claim email as of now is all hacky and obsolete etc. Here's the thing - it just works and it has worked for decades. Anyone gets an email, they get an inbox, they get emails coming into it. People who want more sophistication can use filters to move their emails to other folders in the workflow. That isn't a hack, that's by design - simple for those who want simplicity, complexity who wants complexity. If anything, this software feels like the biggest hack applied on top of emails, and at it's core, it's just filters and a glorified UI.
The features that they advertise that is such a game changer is utterly overkill for someone who like me doesn't share their email around, doesn't use email to communicate that often (especially in a world of IM & social media), saves attachments to cloud storage so I can access it across all systems, Notifications can easily be sorted by again applying filters on emails so they are read in the inbox, but I get so little as I don't really hand it out that often.
As other people have said, it's entirely proprietary software. It doesn't look like I can integrate it into any of my mailing systems. The software has to be incredibly groundbreaking to be worth switching to essentially another ecosystem. I don't believe HEY is there.
I've been following DHH on Twitter so I've heard all about his crusade for privacy for a number of months (even years now) so naturally HEY really tries to hammer the point. They even include a "Blocking email spies" feature which
I've done some work with email marketing and email services, and it's often used to see if the email that you are sending is even opened, and hence you can think of actually sending emails that are useful to your customers instead of pointlessly spamming them. I don't really see them as nefarious as this page claims.
HEY has a tracking pixel on their pages. They do make it clear on their privacy policy page that they do collect this info for analytical purposes and if I'm being truly honest I wouldn't have cared at all about this existing, but it does seem a bit hypocritical given how they make an effort to nuke it from emails but they keep it on their website.
But if it was just about the pixel thing, I doubt I would care - I found that comical in an ironic way. The bullet points combined together really do good job of not selling HEY to me at all. But then again, I'm pretty sure I'm not their customer and this may be for a certain group of people. And if it works for them, more power to them.
I totally agree. I'm excited to try it out, but it seems like a lot of marketing language and not a whole lot real new, inventive features.
if I'm being truly honest I wouldn't have cared at all about this existing, but it does seem a bit hypocritical given how they make an effort to nuke it from emails but they keep it on their website.
I totally agree. I'm excited to try it out, but it seems like a lot of marketing language and not a whole lot real new, inventive features.
That's honestly what's bugging me about this. This whole article is full of features that every half-decent mail client already does by itself. And like @feigneddork, I've also dealt with email...
That's honestly what's bugging me about this. This whole article is full of features that every half-decent mail client already does by itself. And like @feigneddork, I've also dealt with email marketing and can confirm that all you get from "spy pixels" is when you've opened the email. Sure, we can get things like your IP address and the agent string from your browser/client, but that information is fairly useless. GeoIP lookups are shaky at best.
The thing that bugs me about email is not the service or the spam, but the evangelists - the people who turn email into a cult. I'm talking about the people who are crazy about Inbox Zero and the like. Why does it seem that so many people in tech are insane when it comes to organization?
With the "protocol" name, I thought that this was about improving Email as a protocol, but it looks like this is just marketing to these "extreme emailists". And if they're willing to pay double the money for an email service with a client that has less features than the competition, that's fine by me.
When I read about the actual features Hey provides, I must say it feels very exciting! The workflows they have created make sense to me, and I definitely would pay for them. However, for me it's...
When I read about the actual features Hey provides, I must say it feels very exciting! The workflows they have created make sense to me, and I definitely would pay for them.
However, for me it's entirely too closed system. There's no way I could accept only being able to user their app and not using my own address. And of course optimally their client software would be free software.
So what I really mean, is that I wish there was a free software email client that supported these workflows. Maybe something will come up someday.
Jason Fried already covered this. It's not a solution for users wanting features—in fact, I'd go so far as to describe the Hey ethos as a rebuke of "email features", and they're pretty up front...
Jason Fried already covered this. It's not a solution for users wanting features—in fact, I'd go so far as to describe the Hey ethos as a rebuke of "email features", and they're pretty up front about that to the point of essentially saying, "hey, if you don't like it, good, we don't want you either". They're happy to be opinionated about your opinions.
It's a solution for users who want email to be privacy focused, honest with them, and present a certain gestalt about what email really should be, as long as you don't mind paying some money for that—in fact, one could argue given how successful it's looking like Hey is already, given the reported number of signups, pricing it at $99/year is an anti-selling technique to dampen demand.
It's unsurprising that there's a lot of criticism here on Tildes about the lack of open-source, but I think that's ignoring what Hey is trying to sell itself as here, and people getting hung up on that make it very difficult for themselves to look at the bigger picture about the value of this product and its target demographic.
It would appear that Hey is actually making waves. Zoho Mail has just upgraded their client to notify users when tracking pixels are found in an email; that notification gives you the choice to...
It would appear that Hey is actually making waves. Zoho Mail has just upgraded their client to notify users when tracking pixels are found in an email; that notification gives you the choice to report it as spam or block the sender. No option to dismiss the notification.
The deal-breaker for me here is that they don't use any open protocols for mail -- which seems really disingenuous for a company claiming they're trying to wrest control of email away from google. Makes me think they just want it for themselves.
Like, if IMAP isn't good enough, why not try to improve it or work on JMAP, which is already there?
Yeahh I get what they're aiming for but I'm not a fan of their approach. I'd much prefer to pay Protonmail (which I do) or Tutanota or something and get a product built on open standards.
While I'm not 100% behind Protonmail or Tutanota (from what I've read "encrypted email" doesn't really make sense, and Proton at least still has this funky "bridge" compatibility layer that you have to install), I think extending an open standard is much better than just making something up out of whole cloth.
For me the main pull of encrypted email providers is that they're not mining it to sell me stuff, I'm not under any illusions that anybody actually wants to read my mail specifically, but the less I put into Facebook and Google, the better in my opinion.
I have no doubt that, eventually, someone out there is going to be able to construct a neural net that crawls every single person's email and gives them a propensity score towards things like being a dissident based on various conditions. Right now all this stuff is being dedicated towards making people click ads, but eventually it could be much more invasive as a way to create a "social credit" score.
True fact! I personally use Fastmail b/c I don't want the Google effect but I don't care enough about encryption / don't want to bother with the bridges, etc. to do Proton/Tutanota.
Honestly since buying a two year Protonmail sub I've been leaning more and more towards self-hosting it so once my subscription is up I might migrate to my own server. I'm already using a custom domain on Proton so it should be pretty painless to move.
Nice! I didn't realize you could self-host protonmail!
Oh no I just mean self-host my own email server
Ah, yes. Well best of luck in that!
What's the point of improving the underlying protocol if the interesting features are unique to your mail client? Further, without a userbase Basecamp has no ability to influence a protocol's direction.
None of the features are unique. You can – and certain clients already allow you to – implement them with tags, reminders, and categories. The service is a wrapper for basic tech that's already in place. They even illuminate as much in their front-page pitch:
You can provide an IMAP interface that does not expose all the functionality or exposes an approximation, like Google does with tags and IMAP folders. There is also the more rudimentary POP.
Not having an open protocol for clients is not just about not being able to use thunderbird, it also enables keeping email data hostage in case you want to leave their service.
Honestly I'm not sure Google would have implemented IMAP at all if Gmail was released today. Email as we recognize it is probably going to fade away; it is too technical and nowadays it makes more sense for a company to own the whole experience rather than trying to work with their competitors. I fear it will become a dinosaur-business thing, like faxes. In Spain most b2c companies are doing direct communications via whatsapp or facebook. Email is just for receipts, notifications and general spam.
I don’t think you can do that for company mail. There is some ISO requirement that’s just easiest to comply with by disabling IMAP.
Like I said elsewhere, it's better to extend existing standards, I think, than to make something totally new. With Basecamp making a whole new protocol, they've basically said "Screw you, I'm going home" to all other email providers -- they've given up any influence they might've had.
I had a look yesterday and it's OK but here are the issues I have with HEY:
I've been following DHH on Twitter so I've heard all about his crusade for privacy for a number of months (even years now) so naturally HEY really tries to hammer the point. They even include a "Blocking email spies" feature which
But if it was just about the pixel thing, I doubt I would care - I found that comical in an ironic way. The bullet points combined together really do good job of not selling HEY to me at all. But then again, I'm pretty sure I'm not their customer and this may be for a certain group of people. And if it works for them, more power to them.
I totally agree. I'm excited to try it out, but it seems like a lot of marketing language and not a whole lot real new, inventive features.
That's honestly what's bugging me about this. This whole article is full of features that every half-decent mail client already does by itself. And like @feigneddork, I've also dealt with email marketing and can confirm that all you get from "spy pixels" is when you've opened the email. Sure, we can get things like your IP address and the agent string from your browser/client, but that information is fairly useless. GeoIP lookups are shaky at best.
The thing that bugs me about email is not the service or the spam, but the evangelists - the people who turn email into a cult. I'm talking about the people who are crazy about Inbox Zero and the like. Why does it seem that so many people in tech are insane when it comes to organization?
With the "protocol" name, I thought that this was about improving Email as a protocol, but it looks like this is just marketing to these "extreme emailists". And if they're willing to pay double the money for an email service with a client that has less features than the competition, that's fine by me.
When I read about the actual features Hey provides, I must say it feels very exciting! The workflows they have created make sense to me, and I definitely would pay for them.
However, for me it's entirely too closed system. There's no way I could accept only being able to user their app and not using my own address. And of course optimally their client software would be free software.
So what I really mean, is that I wish there was a free software email client that supported these workflows. Maybe something will come up someday.
Price needs to be half of what it currently is in order to be attractive. Not enough features to justify it.
Jason Fried already covered this. It's not a solution for users wanting features—in fact, I'd go so far as to describe the Hey ethos as a rebuke of "email features", and they're pretty up front about that to the point of essentially saying, "hey, if you don't like it, good, we don't want you either". They're happy to be opinionated about your opinions.
It's a solution for users who want email to be privacy focused, honest with them, and present a certain gestalt about what email really should be, as long as you don't mind paying some money for that—in fact, one could argue given how successful it's looking like Hey is already, given the reported number of signups, pricing it at $99/year is an anti-selling technique to dampen demand.
It's unsurprising that there's a lot of criticism here on Tildes about the lack of open-source, but I think that's ignoring what Hey is trying to sell itself as here, and people getting hung up on that make it very difficult for themselves to look at the bigger picture about the value of this product and its target demographic.
It would appear that Hey is actually making waves. Zoho Mail has just upgraded their client to notify users when tracking pixels are found in an email; that notification gives you the choice to report it as spam or block the sender. No option to dismiss the notification.