[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Examples of email-first projects or startups?
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       Ask HN: Examples of email-first projects or startups?
        
       By _email-first_ I mean services that the email is the principal
       (or only) interface between the service and the user. For example:
       Posterous before Spaces. Thanks.
        
       Author : victop
       Score  : 24 points
       Date   : 2021-08-04 12:30 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
       | Alex3917 wrote:
       | It depends what you mean by email. For example, FWD:Everyone
       | (fwdeveryone.com) allows using the Gmail add-on as the only
       | interface between the user and service. So the user can stay
       | entirely within their inbox, but they aren't interacting with the
       | service by sending or forwarding an email.
        
         | victop wrote:
         | Thanks. By email I mean send to an email address, and something
         | happens. FWD:Everyone is more a add-on to a tool (that happens
         | to send/receive emails) than an email-as-interface service.
        
       | refulgentis wrote:
       | Substack
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | dkobia wrote:
       | Surprised no one has mentioned Morning Brew:
       | https://www.morningbrew.com/daily
        
       | mrjivraj wrote:
       | Newsletters like Substack?
        
       | VintageLight wrote:
       | https://scottscheapflights.com/
        
       | cruano wrote:
       | http://ohlife.com was a YC-backed [1] personal journal you
       | maintained by replying to emails, which is super cool IMO.
       | 
       | Although I always thought maybe whatsapp would be a better fit
       | for an interface, so I started building Diarist [2] for a Twilio
       | hackathon. Never finished it though.
       | 
       | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613137
       | 
       | [2] https://github.com/caruano95/diarist
        
       | snarkypixel wrote:
       | I think producthunt started as an email mailing list
        
       | VintageLight wrote:
       | https://deathtothestockphoto.com/
        
       | instb3at wrote:
       | I have built a service for storing email attachments to cloud.
       | https://mailboxfiler.com
        
       | mindhash wrote:
       | Producthunt App sumo
       | 
       | Appcues started with a course
        
       | mgkimsal wrote:
       | I don't have these any more, but... ~20 years ago I had a
       | 'searchbyemail.com' and 'recipesbyemail.com' service.
       | 
       | SBE would take a term, search/scrape google/yahoo/altavista and
       | return the name/link in an email.
       | 
       | RecipesByEmail was... recipes by email - put 'chicken casserole'
       | in the subject, and we'd send back links to chicken recipes (I
       | think later, I had it send back 2-3 recipes scraped from some
       | open recipe sites).
       | 
       | They never got huge traction, but I remember getting more than a
       | few 'thank you' emails from blind folks. One specifically came
       | from someone who worked in a school for the blind, and he wrote
       | that the search thing was very handy for some students.
        
       | arbuge wrote:
       | https://publicemails.com
       | 
       | I believe AngelList also started out an email list originally
       | (hence the name).
        
       | rikkipitt wrote:
       | https://www.paced.email is a service I built to buffer users from
       | email. It aggregates multiple inbound emails into single messages
       | based on a desired cadence. There's a dashboard, but after
       | signing up, there's no real need to sign in as I designed the
       | system to generate aliases on the fly using an easy to remember
       | format.
       | 
       | E.g.
       | 
       | - johndoe@daily.paced.email
       | 
       | - johndoe.hackernews@weekly.paced.email
       | 
       | - johndoe.github@monthly.paced.email
       | 
       | - Or xyz@example.com if you bring your own domain.
       | 
       | The UI came about after being requested so much, but the original
       | interface still stands.
        
         | victop wrote:
         | Awesome. Thanks for sharing.
        
         | seph-reed wrote:
         | Oh rad. I was just chatting with a friend about how tired we
         | were of having no control over which inboxes gmail has, and
         | what goes into them. This looks like a big step in the right
         | direction.
        
           | blairbeckwith wrote:
           | I am sure OP's service is great, and not to distract from it,
           | but you may also enjoy Sanebox, which has been unsexily
           | solving this exact problem for ages
        
         | tsthename wrote:
         | Pretty cool service. If in an existing account, at say github,I
         | was using my personal email, would I have to update my primary
         | email to the one from paced?
        
           | rikkipitt wrote:
           | Not necessarily! Some users have been creating forwarders in
           | their primary email provider into Paced Email. See this
           | article on the subject with respect to Gmail:
           | https://www.paced.email/articles/how-to-auto-forward-
           | specifi...
        
             | tsthename wrote:
             | Awesome, thanks for the link.
             | 
             | So I signed up for the free tier. There's an option to
             | compose mail that's paylocked. Do I need my own domain for
             | that? If not, i.e if I'm using paced for outbound mail, how
             | are you currently managing reputation management?
        
               | rikkipitt wrote:
               | Thanks for jumping in. Composing is currently a paid
               | feature, correct. You don't need a custom domain to
               | activate it though, it also works with the in-house
               | paced.email based email addresses.
               | 
               | Our underlying email provider is Mailgun and they handle
               | the reputation. So far so good though, all seems to be
               | working as intended a year and a half after launch.
               | 
               | Get in touch via the site if you want to chat more, happy
               | to help if you have any questions etc.
        
         | abnercoimbre wrote:
         | The landing page says it's $59/year for premium functionality,
         | but the actual pricing page says it's $90/year (which violated
         | my expectations as a customer, unless I misunderstand what's
         | happening.)
        
       | jareklupinski wrote:
       | http://www.watchdog.email/
        
       | victop wrote:
       | Another example: followupthen.com
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | ddmichael wrote:
       | Jack's Flight Club: jack@jacksflightclub.co.uk
        
       | grejdi wrote:
       | I've been building Emailic for the last few months.
       | https://emailic.com
       | 
       | You can use it to drive automation in external apps, without
       | having to leave your inbox. Zapier and other no-code solutions
       | have such integrations, but they are expensive and require access
       | to all your emails. This was something I was not willing to give
       | up, for privacy reasons.
       | 
       | I've currently completed a Webhook
       | (https://emailic.com/apps/webhook/) and Upload to Dropbox
       | (https://emailic.com/apps/dropbox_upload/) integration. Check it
       | out, and let me know what you all think! (Email address is in my
       | profile.)
        
         | bberenberg wrote:
         | FYI for something like https://emailic.com/apps/analytics/, I
         | would love to see a demo of what it does.
        
           | grejdi wrote:
           | Working on a couple of demos. Here is a sample of the monthly
           | email the system sends out to one of my demo accounts: https:
           | //www.dropbox.com/s/oahcy4264byz9zr/Screen%20Shot%2020...
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-04 23:01 UTC)