Features that caught my attention.

1. Clips - highlight text and add it to a clip board so you can search clips and not emails

2. Merge - feel like two emails are really the same thing? Merge them

3. Rename Threads - don't get stuck with other people's poor email hygiene, if someone can't title their emails properly it doesn't mean your own imbox has to suffer.

I feel like clips and rename threads are features competitors could easily add. Not sure if I'll sign up for Hey, but always happy to see more competition.

agreed. it's all the lockin of a non-IMAP service, but with a couple of UX things that seem nice (?) and others can easily add. Maybe google won't rip off quite as blatantly as facebook and snap but... something similar will show up as a gmail labs project or a mixmax / gmail UI add-on

https://developers.google.com/gsuite/add-ons/gmail/extending...

Is there anything here that is unique and server side to justify cutting off email from being an open (messy but free) standard to a proprietary thing?

Bigger thread (111 comments, 176 points) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23527499

Like Gmail but without standard IMAP/POP3 support and $99-a-year.

Who thought this was a good idea?

Take a look at the workflows set up here - it is clearly more than "like Gmail but without xyz"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528451

I got my gmail back when you needed an invitation to sign up. At that time, everyone was excited about the huge amount of free storage space they gave you.

This is so completely unlike gmail. I'd bet that it is intentionally expensive: no digital hoarders, nobody on the fence about it. You have to love the way it works to be willing to pay that much.

...as much as I kinda like a lot about 37 Signals work, this sounds a lot like fishing for sunk cost: "I paid 99 bucks for that, I have to use it or I wasted money." It's not an uncommon practice, but it's shady.

The product sounds nice, especially the thread grouping. I might even go for it once they have personal domain support, though I'm rather wary of the difference between what they try to do, and how it will work in practice, and pricing it at double of, say, Fastmail, makes me feel like someone's trying to exploit me.

> Who thought this was a good idea?

Not to mention that I can do pretty much everything described on that page using filters in Thunderbird.

But Hey, you'll get less email!

I just can't commit to changing my whole email address and be locked into a service that can increase charges at anytime with no export ability.

I'd much rather this be an app that sits on top of a standard mail server.

Look at what they did for the last 20 years for Basecamp and other product. It doesn't seem very likely that they randomly raise prices for existing customers.

They support MBOX exports and have expressed that they will support custom domains. Between the two, it’s hardly lock-in; you can export as often as you like and keep your address.

Point with the whole Hey thing, is that they've gone a step beyond the client of an email server. And that's the beauty of it. I am all in for Basecamp, and will definitely try Hey, as email has gone from worse to terrible for me over the past 5 years or so.

I think it looks great.