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Hey HN. I decided to build forlater.email after frustration with existing read-later services. They all want me to create an account, or install an app. Somewh
by icy 5y ago
Hey HN. I decided to build forlater.email after frustration with existing read-later services. They all want me to create an account, or install an app.
Somewhat inspired by rss2email, I decided to build forlater -- a bookmarking/read-later service you can use via email. Send a link to save@forlater.email (subject doesn't matter!), and get a readable version of it in your inbox. Email is especially useful here because you can organize it however you like, and gives the you -- the user -- full control of your data, no account required.
I've been dogfooding it, and it's super handy. Here's what a saved page looks like on FairEmail (Android): https://x.icyphox.sh/B8J4o.jpg https://x.icyphox.sh/B8J4o.jpg
Getting the HTML email template was surprisingly hard. You have to write HTML like it's 1999: <table>s and inline styling. For plaintext, I'm using the oh-so-handy 'lynx'.
Finally, it's all free software: https://github.com/forlater-email https://github.com/forlater-email (or https://git.icyphox.sh/forlater https://git.icyphox.sh/forlater)
Rest assured, you can be sure that forlater isn't going anywhere. It costs me very little (for now) to run, and I'm its biggest user. I plan to make it more self-hosting friendly and write some docs for the same.
Until then, thanks for checking it out!
- scrose 5y agoHave you tried MJML for email templates? It gets rid of some of the cruft around formatting emails so they work for all the different clients.
- tailspin2019 5y agoAnother vote for MJML here. I’ve used this for many years now with great results. https://mjml.io https://mjml.io
- asimpletune 5y agoWhat tech are you using for your inbound email?
- icy 5y agoOpenSMTPD and a small Go program I wrote: https://github.com/forlater-email/mdawh https://github.com/forlater-email/mdawh. Reads mail from stdin and sends a webhook to the mail processing/sending service.
- asimpletune 5y agoI know that with the big transactional mail providers, it's important to use their services to ensure deliverability, however if your service is primarily inbound, is there any downside to forging your own path and running your mail server? Asking because I'm also about to embark on an email-related product in a similar spirit to yours.
- icy 5y agoIt is as inbound as it is outbound. If the users don't get the article they saved delivered, then there's no point is there? ;) But yeah, I'd really like to switch to running my own mail server and not have to use Mailgun. Maybe later this year.
- kehers 5y agoI'd rather recommend using a cheaper service like Amazon SES than running your own mail server. Email deliverability is complex and figuring it out may not be worth it.