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Comment by bachmeier | Hacker News Reader

That's a very niche app. Niche in the sense of "how many people are going to pay $180 a year for an email client?"[0] $99 a year for Hey.com is steep for most of the population. I honestly can't imagine someone paying double that for something most people get for free.

[0] It does a lot more than email, and for that reason may be worth $180 a year, but you present it as an alternative for email.

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If you do a lot of email, especially professionally, it's totally worth it, even just for email alone. I feel like a lot of people were using Hey to help them manage their email-heavy workflows (e.g. their focused replying tools to handle a big batch of emails in series) and that's the market here too.

Fully agree it doesn't make sense if you're just sending & receiving a handful of emails a week (but in that case, why look past gmail at all).

For comparison: Superhuman costs $360/year, Spike costs $144/year, Front costs $228/year, etc etc. Some people pay for serious email tools.

We use Front – team situation handling a lot of email, well worth it. No doubt a lot of providers have exactly the same features, but unless we'd gain something drastically better from switching it's not worth the hassle.

One under-appreciated feature: commenting on emails is incredibly powerful.

Now when I use Gmail, I find myself wanting to comment "paid" on bills, or "waiting for Dianne to call back before I book the event".

It's one of those simple things that make your life so much easier: when your inbox acts as a de-facto to-do list, having the status and next steps clearly visible makes everything stress free.

Email market is massive, so carving out a tiny niche could be enough to have a profitable product. There was recently a thread about missive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26713949

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