6 ms·

Ask HN: Examples of email-first projects or startups?

58 points by victop 5y ago

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.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Alex3917 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
victop 5y ago
Another example: followupthen.com
snarkypixel 5y ago
I think producthunt started as an email mailing list
rikkipitt 5y ago
https://www.paced.email 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.
- seph-reed 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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
- victop 5y ago
  Awesome. Thanks for sharing.
- tsthename 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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-specific-emails-in-gmail-to-paced-email https://www.paced.email/articles/how-to-auto-forward-specifi...
    - tsthename 5y ago
      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?
      - 5y ago
VintageLight 5y ago
https://scottscheapflights.com/ https://scottscheapflights.com/
VintageLight 5y ago
https://deathtothestockphoto.com/ https://deathtothestockphoto.com/
instb3at 5y ago
I have built a service for storing email attachments to cloud. https://mailboxfiler.com https://mailboxfiler.com
arbuge 5y ago
https://publicemails.com https://publicemails.com I believe AngelList also started out an email list originally (hence the name).
ddmichael 5y ago
Jack's Flight Club: jack@jacksflightclub.co.uk
mgkimsal 5y ago
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.
mrjivraj 5y ago
Newsletters like Substack?
mindhash 5y ago
Producthunt App sumo Appcues started with a course
refulgentis 5y ago
Substack
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jareklupinski 5y ago
http://www.watchdog.email/ http://www.watchdog.email/
cruano 5y ago
http://ohlife.com 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613137 [2] https://github.com/caruano95/diarist https://github.com/caruano95/diarist
grejdi 5y ago
I've been building Emailic for the last few months. https://emailic.com 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/ https://emailic.com/apps/webhook/) and Upload to Dropbox (https://emailic.com/apps/dropbox_upload/ 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 5y ago
  FYI for something like https://emailic.com/apps/analytics/ https://emailic.com/apps/analytics/, I would love to see a demo of what it does.
  - grejdi 5y ago
    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%202021-08-04%20at%206.40.29%20PM.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/oahcy4264byz9zr/Screen%20Shot%2020...
dkobia 5y ago
Surprised no one has mentioned Morning Brew: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily https://www.morningbrew.com/daily
lewisjoe 5y ago
https://closetab.email https://closetab.email - delivers your bookmarks to email every monday, so that your bookmarks don’t go into an endless abyss.
- thioordc 5y ago
  I’ve always wanted to have something like this! Thanks so much!!
octaonalocto 5y ago
I built www.emailnewslettertracker.com so I can route emails to my Remarkable2 tablet. It's based on inbound SES and lambda, with a reverse engineering of the Remarkable browser extension. Because of the reverse engineering, I don't really want to bring attention with thousands of users, but if a couple of people wanted access, please feel free to sign up. I built it because email newsletters are increasingly valuable, and I wanted to read them on RM2.
- bushytop 5y ago
  Hey Travis, I don't own an RM2 but I like newsletters, what are your favorites newsletter ? Thanks
shakna 5y ago
Almost everything I do with sr.ht is via email. Source control, issue tracking, CI, mailing lists, documentation, etc.
saimiam 5y ago
Moogle.cc is a blogging platform where you can only post using email. If you want to update a post (say, because you found a typo), you have send another email with the correct spelling. I might have to move away from this restriction though depending on use feedback. Sample blog - https://dirtydatagirl.moogle.cc https://dirtydatagirl.moogle.cc (she was front page on HN a few weeks ago)
- damir 5y ago
  Can it work without javascript being required? 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?
  - saimiam 5y ago
    It can't work without JS as currently implemented. It's a React app so JS is very tightly coupled with the implementation. 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 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
shanecleveland 5y ago
https://textpost.me https://textpost.me is a sms-only journaling/blogging service I made.
teknopaul 5y ago
There are events businesses, flash sales, and pop-ups that rely entirely on an email for marketing and communication. Email is good for anything for which exclusivity is a factor. Naturally, I can't name names ;)
cmatthieu 5y ago
I built an email-powered social network called Uhuro (https://uhuro.com/ https://uhuro.com/). I guess it could also be used as a social listserve platform. 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 https://uhuro.com/how.html
tonixx 5y ago
https://contact.do https://contact.do - free contact form in a link with ZERO spam
sampl 5y ago
I made an email-only todo list called Dobby [1] 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). 1. https://dobbymail.com/ https://dobbymail.com/

58 points by victop 5y ago

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.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Alex3917 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.

victop 5y ago

Another example: followupthen.com

snarkypixel 5y ago

I think producthunt started as an email mailing list

rikkipitt 5y ago

https://www.paced.email 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.

seph-reed 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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
victop 5y ago
Awesome. Thanks for sharing.
tsthename 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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-specific-emails-in-gmail-to-paced-email https://www.paced.email/articles/how-to-auto-forward-specifi...
  - tsthename 5y ago
    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?
    - 5y ago

VintageLight 5y ago

https://scottscheapflights.com/ https://scottscheapflights.com/

VintageLight 5y ago

https://deathtothestockphoto.com/ https://deathtothestockphoto.com/

instb3at 5y ago

I have built a service for storing email attachments to cloud. https://mailboxfiler.com https://mailboxfiler.com

arbuge 5y ago

https://publicemails.com https://publicemails.com I believe AngelList also started out an email list originally (hence the name).

ddmichael 5y ago

Jack's Flight Club: jack@jacksflightclub.co.uk

mgkimsal 5y ago

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.

mrjivraj 5y ago

Newsletters like Substack?

mindhash 5y ago

Producthunt App sumo Appcues started with a course

refulgentis 5y ago

Substack

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jareklupinski 5y ago

http://www.watchdog.email/ http://www.watchdog.email/

cruano 5y ago

http://ohlife.com 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613137 [2] https://github.com/caruano95/diarist https://github.com/caruano95/diarist

grejdi 5y ago

I've been building Emailic for the last few months. https://emailic.com 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/ https://emailic.com/apps/webhook/) and Upload to Dropbox (https://emailic.com/apps/dropbox_upload/ 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 5y ago
FYI for something like https://emailic.com/apps/analytics/ https://emailic.com/apps/analytics/, I would love to see a demo of what it does.
- grejdi 5y ago
  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%202021-08-04%20at%206.40.29%20PM.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/oahcy4264byz9zr/Screen%20Shot%2020...

dkobia 5y ago

Surprised no one has mentioned Morning Brew: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily https://www.morningbrew.com/daily

lewisjoe 5y ago

https://closetab.email https://closetab.email - delivers your bookmarks to email every monday, so that your bookmarks don’t go into an endless abyss.

thioordc 5y ago
I’ve always wanted to have something like this! Thanks so much!!

octaonalocto 5y ago

I built www.emailnewslettertracker.com so I can route emails to my Remarkable2 tablet. It's based on inbound SES and lambda, with a reverse engineering of the Remarkable browser extension. Because of the reverse engineering, I don't really want to bring attention with thousands of users, but if a couple of people wanted access, please feel free to sign up. I built it because email newsletters are increasingly valuable, and I wanted to read them on RM2.

bushytop 5y ago
Hey Travis, I don't own an RM2 but I like newsletters, what are your favorites newsletter ? Thanks

shakna 5y ago

Almost everything I do with sr.ht is via email. Source control, issue tracking, CI, mailing lists, documentation, etc.

saimiam 5y ago

Moogle.cc is a blogging platform where you can only post using email. If you want to update a post (say, because you found a typo), you have send another email with the correct spelling. I might have to move away from this restriction though depending on use feedback. Sample blog - https://dirtydatagirl.moogle.cc https://dirtydatagirl.moogle.cc (she was front page on HN a few weeks ago)

damir 5y ago
Can it work without javascript being required? 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?
- saimiam 5y ago
  It can't work without JS as currently implemented. It's a React app so JS is very tightly coupled with the implementation. 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 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

shanecleveland 5y ago

https://textpost.me https://textpost.me is a sms-only journaling/blogging service I made.

teknopaul 5y ago

There are events businesses, flash sales, and pop-ups that rely entirely on an email for marketing and communication. Email is good for anything for which exclusivity is a factor. Naturally, I can't name names ;)

cmatthieu 5y ago

I built an email-powered social network called Uhuro (https://uhuro.com/ https://uhuro.com/). I guess it could also be used as a social listserve platform. 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 https://uhuro.com/how.html

tonixx 5y ago

https://contact.do https://contact.do - free contact form in a link with ZERO spam

sampl 5y ago

I made an email-only todo list called Dobby [1] 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). 1. https://dobbymail.com/ https://dobbymail.com/