Email is the cornerstone of the current work culture.
Then there are some privacy-focused email providers such as Proton Mail and Tutanota with a few million users.
This whole process has introduced the stress of reading and replying to emails in daily workflow.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
6 years ago we went all-in on Basecamp.
One company, entirely focused on one product.
Today were announcing weve changed our mind.
Later, in June, the company launched the service for $99 a year.
Recently, I chatted with Fried on his thoughts after running Hey for the past couple of months.
He said,
What we launched in June is the first version of what we think email should be.
And it gives them control over their emails something they havent had for a while.
The central place in this email service is something called the Imbox (yep, not inbox).
If you approve a sender, their emails will start showing up in the Imbox.
Fried said this is to avoid overwhelming your inbox (or Imbox?
):
We used to give out our email address to people you want to hear from.
But the email marketing industry has sold our email to everyone.
So, theres no such thing as a private email address.
And thats the first thing we needed to fix.
He added that often people mark an email unread to deal with them later.
Thats why Hey puts labels such as Set Aside and Reply Later.
He says these labels indicate what you intend to do with them.
Ive personally been using Hey for a while and its definitely not your average email service.
Theres no archive, once youre done with an email it goes in a permanently going previously seen queue.
Because of this, theres no concept of getting to Inbox Zero.
So, you shouldnt be thinking like you failed with email.
You shouldnt be feeling this constant pull of anxiety that theres something in your inbox.
The company recently introduced email signatures, and its still working on a calendar product.
The emails services parent company, Basecamp, already offers such tools.
On the personal features front, its planning to introduce a unique calendar.
Fried knows that a paid email service wont garner millions of users in a short amount of time.
He said that some of these features might surprise people by the way of implementation.
Hey aims to offer something unique.Not everyone might be comfortable with this idea, and Fried understands that.
It wants to position itself as a philosophically different email.
That’s one heck of a mixed bag.
He likes to say “Bleh.
That’s one heck of a mixed bag.
He likes to say “Bleh.”
