Monolist: working hard to preserve the spirit of Inbox's organizational features | Hacker News Reader

Monolist: working hard to preserve the spirit of Inbox's organizational features

monolist.co

98 pointsjakemmarsh54 comments

I think "Google Inbox Replacement" is misleading if your workflow assumes users will use Gmail in addition to Monolist:

> We’re working on a Gmail integration as you read this! To start, the emails you star in Gmail and any threads that you haven’t responded to will become action items in Monolist, but we have plans for much more.

Personally I don't think I would use Monolist because I want to replace Google Inbox with a single service, not Gmail plus another service.

It's possible I'm misunderstanding, but it also seems like they're more oriented on being a task list instead of a true email client. Inbox to me was just a much nicer gmail, though I understand a lot of people used it like a email based todo list and monolist might appeal to them

Yeah, that’s me - I basically use email as a task queue that other people can append to as well as myself, for low time urgency types of tasks, and have separate ways of dealing with the stuff I need to do more urgently.

That's fair (cofounder here).

Our eventual goal is to replace Gmail for any work/transactional emails. We're taking the approach of doing that one integration at a time, and providing a richer experience.

We do think that there's a world in which both of them are useful though. The problem as we see it right now with Gmail is you may receive a notification about a pull request or whatever, but you can't do anything with it and the data gets stale. Monolist will keep it in sync, and let you approve/merge/comment on it inline so you don't have to switch between 10 apps.

akshaynathan, if I am understanding this right the eventual goal of monolist is to be the bucket for all incoming notifications and communications, and the be-all-end-all for quickly replying to or addressing action items. If that is right I am hoping you the best of luck because I've long wanted something like that. Someplace where my todo list, my inbox, my chatbox, my git repo notifications, my slack notifications all live would be awesome!

yeah, thats exactly the goal! In fact we already have git/slack notifications right now. It would be awesome if you could try it out and let us know what you think.

I can see why this title seems misleading, but I think it really depends on how you use Inbox and what features you care most about. What I'm really going to miss with Inbox is how my e-mails were framed as tasks that I needed to get through each day. I could easily check them off, or snooze them with an implied priority (later today, this weekend, someday, etc.).

I found a lot of value in that, so I hope that I'll find a lot of value in Monolist. I haven't found a task management app that successfully incorporates many integrations (that I actually use) in a way that is useful, and intuitive. I think there are a lot of opportunities to add delightful features, looking forward to giving feedback!

Just a heads up, their planned free version limits you to 500 items per month: https://monolist.co/pricing

I absolutely despise this kind of 'free' offering since it's more of a demo than an actual offer. Split it by user count, split it by features but the whole purpose of this thing is rendered moot by that limit.

Well then pay for it?

Oops, that pricing page was actually left up erroneously (thus why it's not linked anywhere). That was a previous pricing model that is no longer active. Monolist is currently entirely free while we're in this open beta and development phase.

We actually abandoned that model because we agree with you. Limiting the number of items per month would be going against the use case of the product.

How will you be monetizing it?

We think a lot of the same problems that Monolist is solving for the individual also exist for cross-functional teams. The plan is to eventually offer paid enterprise and team-based features.

Thanks for that. I'll be giving it a try

What.. I've totally missed this. Inbox will be shut down? What the....

I am a happy user of inbox since its first days and now.. Again.. Google shuts down the next service.. Another point not to invest (time, in this case) into Google products, sadly. :(

Yep, the major features of Inbox will be rolled into gmail at some point.

My main use for inbox is snooze - it's allowed me to manage and prioritise emails brilliantly over the last couple of years. I also far prefer the clean interface to Gmail.

As a result of the demise of inbox, I'm looking for a replacement, but it will need a native android app for me, alas, so I guess I'll be stuck with Gmail after March 2019...

We're aiming to achieve that same clean interface, so let us know if you have any feedback =) We do already support snoozing.

A native Android app is definitely on our roadmap, but in the short-term we always ensure our app is fully mobile responsive.

One Inbox feature I'd love to be pulled into Gmail is attachment previews. It looks like Gmail has quick links to attachments from your inbox, but that doesn't give nearly as much information as a preview - image/video thumbnail, calendar appointment details, shipped order info, etc.

In terms of Gmail achieving the same clean interface as Inbox, for me there are two key reasons I think Inbox's interface is much "cleaner" than Gmail:

Inbox: - Most of the screen is whitespace - Most features are / can be hidden unless I want them

Gmail: - There's text/icons covering nearly every inch of the screen - Most features are always shown on the screen whether or not I want them

Here are some changes that I think would give Gmail Inbox's "clean" look: - Add a big margin to the left/right of emails on the desktop (whitespace) - Give me the option to hide: 1. The left bar (unread count / red dots, chat - I don't use those things 99% of the time I use email) 2. The three icons at the left of messages (I never use those)

Other (probably less important) things I think make Inbox cleaner than Gmail: - Infinite scroll vs. page turner - Showing sender icons to quickly identify who an email's from - This one might just be me being used to Inbox, but the white background behind emails in the inbox vs. the gray background

Thanks for this feedback! We'll definitely take it into consideration as the interface evolves.

The new Gmail interface has snooze, so if that's the only thing you're missing it'll stick around. I mostly miss the "Trips" feature, having recently switched from Inbox to new Gmail...

The automatic bundling in Inbox - trips, purchases, finance, etc - is a killer feature for me. I tried going back to gmail and immediately missed it. I'll keep using Inbox until they take it out back, just like Reader.

I use (and pay for, ~$50/mo.) an awesome plugin called Gmelius. It really upgrades the gmail experience to a professional-grade system. Also lets you strip out a ton of the unnecessary gmail web chrome.

Can this misleading title be corrected? This isn’t (and can’t be) an Inbox replacement. It seems to have been written this way to self-promote.

Ok, we replaced the title with a more modest phrase from the article body.

This seems like a potentially good service, but as 'kcon said, not an Inbox replacement. It doesn't do bundling, snoozing, or pinning for emails, which are the key features of Inbox.

We already have snoozing for items that come into Monolist, and bundling is on our radar as well.

We're working on a Gmail integration right now so we'll pull in any emails you actually read automatically, and let you label/organize/snooze/bundle/reply all without leaving the feed.

I want to reiterate that bundling is absolutely essential to me. Specifically I make newsletters come once a week and burn through them batch so that I don’t get distracted; I bundle activism emails together so that I can be engaged but don’t feel spammed all the time; etc. without that I also would feel no strong reason to use Monolist - hope you make something powerful!

Thanks, we'll reach out as we spec out bundling, looking forward to hearing your feedback.

It's a real encouragement for those of who are looking for a replacement. While your current feature-set isn't everything we're after, I'm keen to see how you flesh it out!

I'll be keeping an eye on this tool, thanks for being responsive to all of our comments!

Now when I see any new product I look for a pledge to not get acquired like PostHaven[0]. Otherwise I simply refuse to use it. Sparrow, Mailbox, Inbox...Have been burnt too many times.

[0]: https://posthaven.com

Would love to see an Outlook/Outlook Calendar integration. Any plans for that?

Not in the immediate future, but we've discussed it and it's definitely on our longer-term roadmap. Requests like yours also help us better prioritize that, so thanks!

For me, the place where inbox mattered was as an email client, not a task manager. I like the task manager metaphor for an email client, and they way that it made me think about my email, but I never wanted to apply that to my other workflows. I just liked the inbox email client.

In addition to what others said below, an iOS app is a hard requirement for me. Gonna have to pass for now but cheering you on.

Thanks! We have an iOS app coming up. If you sign up or message me your email, we can notify you when it's done.

I signed up so can’t wait to hear back.

Thanks! Also completely understand the need for an iOS app, but just so you know the mobile experience and full responsiveness are top considerations when we ship new features.

Gmail itself will be the Google Inbox replacement. They will integrate some missing Inbox features. Instead of panicking I would use inbox till the end and give Google some time... hopefully they will integrate the bundles in Gmail before shutting Inbox down.

Snoozing and bundling are they key features that I love with Inbox.

Looks like the logged-in application is experiencing the "HN hug of death". The blog should still be fully accessible, but we'll have everything else back up soon!

Requiring full google drive access without explaining why or giving an option to opt out is a no go for me.

Idea seems interesting but I can't see why they would require access to my files.

We require full Google Drive access for a few reasons:

- Creating action items when you're tagged on any file - Creating action items when any comments are left on your files - Allowing you to search your entire Drive from Monolist

We never store the contents of your actual files. Those are just the permissions necessary to keep you up to date on any Drive action items.

I would suggest making this an additional permission you ask for when the user has actually seen the product and wants to use this feature.

Any way you can make that permission optional? I suspect there are a lot of people who may not know or care about Drive integration and as a result may not want to grant full Drive access.

That's definitely possible, and an option we've considered but haven't yet been able to implement. We'll be sure to add it to our list. Thanks for the feedback!

Any Inbox replacement will need to work completely offline. By that I mean it would have to speak to Gmail directly instead of routing my mail through some 3rd party servers.

Show me the finished product. Stop promising to self-promote.

I don't think we'll ever be "finished". All the features that are listed in the blog post other than email (coming later this week), are already implemented, and you can check them out!

I know that email is the biggest one considering we're trying to replace Inbox, but I think creating a richer experience around transactional emails you receive from all your apps is already leaps and bounds better than Gmail for that use case.

Bit of an aside here so sorry, but did any successful clones of Google Reader live longer than a week?

If so could someone point me towards it?

I use Feedbin with a number of apps that use it for synchronization, and it's run as a paid-for service by a reliable dev. https://feedbin.com

I've had really good results with Inoreader: https://inoreader.com

Ended up appreciating it so much that I became a paid user.

I just switched to hosting my own server and using mu4e in emcas.

Needs Jira to be useful for me, very cool idea though!

We actually do have full Jira Cloud (and Confluence) support! Those just went live in the last week.

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