Show HN: Forlater.email – an email-based bookmarking service | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Forlater.email – an email-based bookmarking service

forlater.email

98 pointsicy37 comments

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

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 (or 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!

Have 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.

Another vote for MJML here. I’ve used this for many years now with great results.

https://mjml.io

What tech are you using for your inbound email?

OpenSMTPD and a small Go program I wrote: https://github.com/forlater-email/mdawh. Reads mail from stdin and sends a webhook to the mail processing/sending service.

I 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.

It 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.

I'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.

> forlater is an email-based bookmarking service. You send us an email with a link (or links), and receive a readable, clutter-free version of the article in an email.

This is an awesome concise straight-to-the-point summary (which is harder to achieve than it looks).

> This is a “paid service” — you just pay how much ever you want via Liberapay. I insist that you try it out before you do; you can better gauge how much value you derive from forlater. It’s completely fine if you don’t want to pay too!

Love it. Such a great approach.

Thank you!

Hey! I think it would also be nice if you could add some cryptocurrency donation addresses! Some common ones like BTC and BCH would be awesome!

I like the idea of having a "push" donation system than a "pull" one.

I don't really use cryptocurrency, but since you mentioned "push" donations -- do you perhaps mean something like Ko-fi? If yes, I've set one up at https://ko-fi.com/icyphox.

Alright. I've setup a BTC address at 3DLkSNkWugYUzh5A5WyhB5J9untA9sUrDX.

I kind of do the same with telegram (send to myself). Their clutter free instant preview is great if you trust their unclear business model. However, I love to see more of those convenience services around classical messaging (aka email)

Interesting idea, I like it.

The biggest problem I see is that this is going to (eventually) be used by spammers.

I can send a mail with a FROM anywhere with a link. That link will be advertising for something, and your service will mail it off to some unsuspecting person.

This means your mail server's reputation will end up being black listed everywhere.

Enforcing DKIM/SPF validation would help a lot (but not perfect). I verified that you are not currently doing any validation today. I was able to spoof my gmail address from my residential IP. You do not have very long to fix it before it gets abused.

Good catch. I'll implement this.

I haven't played with the service like the other user, so I'm not sure whether this idea is viable.

You could send some sort of initial opt-in email to the recipient that would let them verify their desire to use your service. This combined with usual email validation should be good to keep spammers out.

Ya I think a initial optin would be the easiest/best way to do this.

I would argue that having that flow would also require a database and heavily reduce the usefulness for new users / experimenters.

Stallman would approve! If I recall correctly this is how he browses all of the Internet.

Extracting the actual body of an article can be really tricky in certain edge cases — What's your approach here?

I'm using https://github.com/go-shiori/go-readability -- a Go re-implementation of Mozilla's readability-js library. It does a pretty good job.

Got it. So like everyone else ;)

Took me a moment to realize that it’s “for later”, because we have a verb in Norwegian “å forlate” which means “to forgive”, and in one of its forms, it is called “forlater” (“forgives”).

Name is perfectly fine though, don’t get me wrong :)

Just wanted to say that this is such a great idea!

Nice! I wanted to build something like this. A feature I'd like is to receive a daily digest of all my links in a readable format.

I was considering adding the ability to specify /when/ you want the email delivered -- something like a weekly/whenever-ly newsletter, curated by yourself.

Congrats on launching!

I like the idea. However, I’m a big Pocket user and can’t help but notice that this way of bookmarking takes significantly more effort than sharing to Pocket or clicking on the Pocket extension.

What’s the benefit over Pocket outside of not having to install an app/extension ?

> Congrats on launching!

Thank you!

> I like the idea. However, I’m a big Pocket user and can’t help but notice that this way of bookmarking takes significantly more effort than sharing to Pocket or clicking on the Pocket extension.

Is it significantly more effort? I don't feel so -- and I used to use Pocket heavily before I built this. On Android, instead of clicking 'Add to Pocket' in the share menu, I just click on the 'save@forlater.email' email contact.

On desktop, I'd say it's about the same effort -- instead of clicking on the 'Add to Pocket' icon on the browser action bar (or whatever it's called), I click on the 'Save to forlater' icon instead.

It's just a matter of clicking send after that, in both cases.

> What’s the benefit over Pocket outside of not having to install an app/extension ?

You own your data. Probably not a big deal for you, but it is for me. Especially with the trajectory Mozilla is going in, I wouldn't be surprised if they punt the Pocket team altogether and call it a day. Also, I didn't really like the other stuff in the Pocket app: discover, activity, profile, friends/following; all that jazz. Just give me plain and simple bookmarking.

Further, I just really love email. Yeah, the protocol is old and its security is shit -- but it's ubiquitous. If it's been around for the past 50 odd years, I'm sure it'll stick around for another 50. Can you say the same about Pocket? ;)

Read about forlater.email and learned about Ko.Fi. I love the web.

Love the idea. Tested with Microsoft 365, Google Apps and iCloud account.

Only the Google account surfaced the saved mail in the inbox. MS365 put it to junk. On iCloud it does not surface at all.

Hey, I like the idea. Unfortunately I could not try it since my email provider only allows sending via TLS which forlater does not seem to support.

Ahhh, sorry about that. Can you email me at x@icyphox.sh? I'll get this sorted and write back to you when it's fixed.

Also https://www.emailthis.me

Neat, didn't know something like this existed. They appear to have a restriction of 20 saves per month on the free plan, though. forlater doesn't, and will never, have a premium plan. :)

Do you allow ‘+’ sign for labelling purposes?

Don't see why it shouldn't work!

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