Hey

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With the world now in a seemingly permanent state of crunch, you lot may not exist in the market for a new electronic mail address. And why would you exist? Even in the best of times, getting a new email address comes with all the hassle of irresolute your phone number, without the minor upgrades that a new telephone brings. Changing your electronic mail address feels like a pointless struggle in a globe where the existing options, all the same unremarkable, work basically fine. Similar irresolute banks, really. Or moving into a new apartment in the aforementioned building.

In any case, I'one thousand sorry to report that information technology's fourth dimension to consider getting a new e-mail address. The reason is Hey, a new email service from Basecamp. It's a genuinely original take on messaging that feels like the first interesting thing to happen to electronic mail since clever apps like Mailbox and Sparrow repurposed your Gmail account, and it's available in an open beta starting today. With a $99-a-year toll tag and some pungent opinions about how electronic mail should work, Hey is not for all or even near people. Simply if yous find yourself chafing at the stagnation of Gmail and Outlook, or are just looking for a mode to screen out virtually people who would e'er send y'all a message, Hey is well worth considering.

Paradigm: Hey

"The last time I think anyone was really excited about email was like 16 years agone, when Gmail launched," says Jason Fried, Basecamp'south founder and CEO. "Not much has changed since and then. ... We're trying to bring some new philosophical points of view."

The core insight of Hey is that, after 16 years of Gmail and Outlook and years more of Hotmail and other services before that, nosotros at present accept a adept idea of what email actually is. And in Hey's view, email is basically three things. Information technology'southward things you need to reply to, things you desire to read, and receipts. Each gets their ain dwelling inside the app, and basically aught else is welcome.

All of this is in keeping with one of the new philosophical points of view Basecamp wanted to bring to Basecamp, which is that not also many people should electronic mail you. When someone starting time sends a message to your Hey.com email address, information technology arrives in a holding pen for kickoff-fourth dimension senders. At your leisure, yous can browse the various homo beings, newsletters, and marketing messages all hoping for a spot in your inbox. From at that place yous can decide where they vest — or that they don't belong in your email at all. With a click of a thumbs-down push, the sender disappears forever. (Unless you take pity on them and restore them to the inbox via a setting elsewhere in the app.)

"Yous really become less email — that's the thing we're trying to get to," Fried says.

But with Hey, you don't only make up one's mind what comes into your inbox — you decide where it should become. If you screen a first-time sender in, past default they'll become to Hey'due south inbox — which, for absolutely no proficient reason, Hey calls the Imbox. (It's short for "important box," and no cheers.)

Email from friends, family, and coworkers you lot'll likely want to keep in the Imbox. All unread email appears on top, and previously read e-mail sits underneath in contrary-chronological order. Gmail asks y'all to archive old emails and search them if you demand to; Hey keeps everything in full view, giving the whole concept of Inbox Zero a fat middle finger.

A lot of necessary electronic mail consists of receipts, shipping notifications, and other ephemera, and Hey lets y'all filter all that into a section called "Newspaper Trail." And for longer reads, similar editorial newsletters or electronic catalogs, there'southward a section called "The Feed" designed to let you lot scan: the electronic mail inbox as RSS reader.

Image: Basecamp / Hey

But what nigh emails that really crave a response? Those messages get their own department, too. Below every email is ane button that says "reply now," and a 2d labeled "reply subsequently." Click the latter one and the message gets added to an attractive pile at the lesser of your Imbox. When yous're ready to reply, click the reply-afterward stack to see your emails that need responses in a clever side-by-side view called "focus and reply," with the original in one pane and your response in another. The setup allows you to plow through a big stack of emails quickly, and it'southward a significant improvement on the hopscotching around that Gmail and Outlook crave.

The final category Hey makes infinite for is emails that, for whatever reason, you want to take close at hand. Maybe information technology's a movie ticket, or a boarding pass, or a receipt. You can marking the message to be "set aside" and it will evidence upward in a dedicated viewer when you demand it.

Hey also has a file viewer to see every zipper in your inbox, which seems similar something Gmail might have thought to build in the by 16 years. (Outlook did.) Click "All Files" and you lot'll meet the attachments people take sent you lot in reverse chronological order, which is inappreciably revolutionary merely could be a revelation for Gmail users. (One quibble: you tin can't preview a file by clicking it; instead a click on the thumbnail prototype will download the file to your estimator.)

If you're a labels person, you tin can add labels to create custom groupings for your emails. Simply in that location are no stars, flags, or other ways of differentiating your emails, considering in Hey's stance those are "workaround hacks that tin mean one of a million things," Fried told me. Reply or reply not: there is no star, and there is no flag.

Another nice touch on in Hey is a feature called Clippings. If you come across something in an electronic mail that you like, you can highlight information technology, and and information technology will be added to a collection of other highlights that y'all can view at whatsoever time. (Think Kindle highlights, but for email.) It'southward nothing you couldn't do in a apparently text file, but I can encounter it becoming a lovely annal for digital packrats — especially for those reading a lot of newsletters in their inboxes. Or yous could just use it for quick access to confirmation numbers and other handy details.

Because it'south a soup-to-nuts electronic mail platform and non just a new user interface for Gmail or Exchange, Hey can practice other strange and powerful things. You can merge disparate electronic mail threads into one for easier browsing, for example. (Information technology won't affect the way the recipient views the email on their cease.) Or you can change the subject line of an email to something more useful to you, without changing it for the person you're respective with.

Hey has other opinions. It blocks all tracking pixels, disabling read receipts and other surveillance. It will insist that y'all apply two-factor hallmark, for instance — and via QR code, too; none of that insecure SMS business. It volition let you endeavour information technology out before charging you, simply only for 14 days. Its apps volition not notify you lot of any new electronic mail at all unless y'all tell them to, and Hey is so wonderfully skeptical near the idea of e-mail generally that you'll have to enable notifications on a per-sender basis.

"Well-nigh apps think they're the center of the world. They're the most important thing in the world. They've got to push everything to yous," Fried says. "We're not that important."

Hey isn't the first independent email platform to make it since Gmail; privacy-focused ProtonMail, for case, has been open to the public since 2016. Silicon Valley has lately been enamored of Superhuman, a $30-a-month service that uses Gmail's servers to provide a speedy alternate interface. (It is also withal in closed beta after vi years, reinforcing the idea that information technology'south a state social club for the almost self-of import emailers in business.)

Hey is less expensive than Superhuman, merely it's much more expensive than a Gmail or Outlook.com business relationship. And stodgy as those giants are, they likewise come up with developer ecosystems full of extensions that tin can replicate various aspects of Hey's offering. You could also opt into ane of many services that re-skins Outlook or Gmail, such as Mailplane, Airmail, or Newton (no relation to the author).

Simply I'k not sure any of them match Hey for its sheer audacity. Basecamp is just 56 people, and in 2 years, they spun up an email platform and built six native clients — iOS, Android, web, Mac, Windows, and Linux. Later frequent promotion past Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson — they have more than 650,000 Twitter followers between them — more than fifty,000 people have joined a waiting list to attempt Hey. Over the adjacent few weeks, they'll let people in off the waiting list to begin using it.

Fried is under no illusions that he is nigh to crush Gmail. "It'southward the well-nigh ambitious matter we've always washed," he says. "And besides, I would say, the stupidest matter we've ever done — in, similar, the most positive sense of the discussion. We're just saying nosotros desire to provide an culling. We want to do some things that we think fundamentally need to be done to solve electronic mail."

Unlike most founders I've spoken with, Fried says he'll be happy if Hey can attract 100,000 customers. A version for businesses will launch later with features for teams, and could help Hey aggrandize beyond an initial audience of Basecamp cultists and productivity nerds.

In the meantime, Hey is giving email users everywhere some fresh new ideas to consider. And it's giving the tech giants something they badly need: competition.

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Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21286466/hey-email-basecamp-price-availability-platforms-launch