Hey - First Impressions
Hey.com, the new email service from Basecamp, got into some early controversy on the Apple Appstore. This however bought them a great deal of free press. It was akin the unbreakable windows on the Tesla Truck. I still think that was all planned and a smart guerrilla marketing trick from Elon.
The Imbox
The news about Hey’s email application peeked my interested. I applied and got an invitation today. My first impressions are quite favorable: finally some innovation in email.
- The Imbox is a cute idea. I’ve seen experimentations before on processing your inbox smarter. I like the concept of the Set Aside and Reply Later Piles. It is sort of how I work already. Since Hey gives you a new email address, I haven’t received sufficient email to see its true effect of the Imbox.
- Similarly I haven’t received much email to make an opinion about the Feed.
- I love the Paper Trail, as a place to keep all your receipts, confirmations and tickets. That seems very practical.
- Screener is a good idea as well, although I do not receive a lot of unwanted email in my personal inbox. I do get a lot of LinkedIn requests however.
- I loath email signatures. After the first email exchange and introduction, I don’t need to be reminded in every email who you are. You end up with long strings of email signatures. The fact that hey doesn’t support email signatures shows the developers have good taste.
- I am excited about the Note To Self feature. I often want to write something down and don’t like to email myself the note. I wonder how it will work out in practice. A feature I would appreciate more is the ability to mark up an email and highlight sections. Perhaps that’s what Clips are for in Hey, although I never got that feature to work. You suppose to only have to highlight the text to save it to Clips.
Note to Self
There are some items missing from Hey:
- I use the Send Later feature in Gmail extensively. It buys me peace of mind: the email is “sent”, but I won’t get the response yet until much later. It allows me to stay uninterrupted and focussed.
- Auto-labels - I use labels extensively and assign them using filters and rules. I didn’t see that capability in Hey.
- The contacts section appears too limited. I need a full contact option with phone, address, URL, and not just an email contact list. A simple integration with LinkedIn, and social media profiles is quite powerful to get more information on the sender without having to leave email.
Hey.com won’t be free. After the two week trial, the service will cost $99/year. That may be worth it. At least it ain’t the SuperCost from SuperHuman ($30/month). Plus unlike SuperHuman, I got a free trial.
However, a two-week trial is too short. I am suffering from Gmail-separation angst. So much of my life and my workflow is in Gmail. Plus since custom domains are not supported by Hey, and you can not change the send-from address, it feels like a shotgun wedding. You have to make an early commitment to be all in. There are other reasons I don’t want to give up my Gmail, such automatically adding calendar invites to Google Calendar.
I wish Hey would allow me to get more drunk on their interface and capabilities first, before I need to make a larger commitment. I suspect more will be in the same boat.
As lucky as the Apple controversy may have been for them, the lack of a smoother and more gradual switch-over may be their demise.