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. |
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. |
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.
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.
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.)
Email addresses work like APIs. For instance you can send emails to join@uhuro.com to join the social network or quit@uhuro.com to quit. Other email API addresses include:
- invite@uhuro.com = invites friends and family to join
- help@uhuro.com = Replies with the instructions
- follow@uhuro.com / unfollow@ = Follows or unfollows CC'ed users
- followers@uhuro.com = Replies with all users following you
- post@uhuro.com = Sends your email message to all of your followers.
Here's more information on how it works - https://uhuro.com/how.html
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.
I built it because email newsletters are increasingly valuable, and I wanted to read them on RM2.
Source control, issue tracking, CI, mailing lists, documentation, etc.
You send your tasks to dobby@dobbymail.com, and it'll send you a todo list every morning. You can reply to complete, postpone etc.
The point is to not have a separate place for seeing and managing a giant database of todos. You only ever see what's relevant now, and in the place you already look for everything else (email).
I might have to move away from this restriction though depending on use feedback.
Sample blog - https://dirtydatagirl.moogle.cc (she was front page on HN a few weeks ago)
I'm on flaky 3G and browsing with JS disabled so pages actually load...
I love the concept, how does it differ from say Hey?
It differs from Hey in that 1. you can email from any email provider like Gmail, Outlook, etc and we make everything look good.
2. It's open source so you can modify and host yourself. GH = https://github.com/moogle-cc/moogle-blog.
3. You can run this on your own domain (which I believe Hey doesn't have as an option unless something's changed in the recent past).
4. You can post downloadable content along with your blogs - so if you want to share a pdf or a worksheet or something with your blog readers, you can do so by attaching the doc to the original email.
(Adding a fifth bullet point because it matters to some people)
5. Moogle comes with its own newsletter AND email marketing service - so it can be your Substack AND MailChimp replacement.
Coming soon:
1. Customisable urls
2. Additional themes and UI
Naturally, I can't name names ;)
I believe AngelList also started out an email list originally (hence the name).
Appcues started with a course
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?
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.
