Show HN: Squaresend - Less annoying mailto links | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Squaresend - Less annoying mailto links

squaresend.com

95 pointswaterapp66 comments

I don't know about you guys, but I am always absolutely relieved to see a mailto link rather than a contact form when attempting to reach someone. One click and it opens in my native mail app (or my Gmail account, if I so desire) and I know immediately if it's a who or a what that my message is going to, I don't need to worry about broken contact forms that may or may not be working, I don't need to beat stupid captchas, and everything makes sense.

It seems squaresend is an anti-solution.

I like mailto links myself, but I'm not sure I'm representative. I've gotten much better response rates from contact forms than mailto links when I've tried them.

I'd like to see some more solid data on it, but my speculation is that: 1) many users have misconfigurations that result in clicking on a mailto: link not going to the email client they usually use; 2) other users are scared off when clicking on a web link doesn't open a web page like they expect, but instead opens up some other app on their computer; and 3) a final set of users balk at sending an email once they realize it's an email, because it feels too personal and complex (you've got to compose an actual letter, with a "Dear so-and-so").

I'll agree with this. I don't know why everyone doesn't use mailto links, since they work better than any other solution. I also don't know why someone would want to cripple them like this.

> I don't know why everyone doesn't use mailto links

Maybe they don't assume that every visitor has an email account or _their_ email account on the computer they are using?

Maybe they shouldn't break functionality for the majority to cater to a small minority.

Hi StavrosK, I'm one of the developers.

I don't know if this was clear from the homepage but we're targeting site owners. Many sites use mailto links because they don't want to go through the hassle of setting up a contact form. We're just trying to make that easier to do.

Edit: Thanks for the feedback. We can absolutely show the actual email address and even include a real mailto link inside the widget incase the users prefer that. We'll be implementing that right away.

I think everyone is clear that you're marketing this towards site owners. What OPs are saying is that, from the customer point of view, they'd prefer mailto links.

The customers of site owners (OP) are saying that they'd prefer if the site owners not implement this form.

I think that you're argument about how the mailto link is bad, is bad. You could argue that a mailto link should be added in addition to your product. The classic example is to have the email address lit up with a mailto link and a form just below it.

Hey waterapp, no, it was pretty clear from the homepage and the grandparent's comment. It's a useful product for people who want a contact form they don't have to manage (it'll make many static sites more useful), I just wish more people would just use mailto links.

Feature request: Don't hide the email address in the link, so I can right-click copy it, and add a small "email us with your email client" link at the bottom with an actual mailto. This way, we get the best of both worlds.

Why not make the contact form look a bit more like an email and put the recipient address at the top as a mailto link. That way people who like forms click and get a form, those of us who like mailto can then click on the email address.

By default, browsers open desktop mail clients when a mailto link is clicked.

That means, by default, mailto links are broken for anyone who uses web-based email (most people?)

The first time I opened Gmail in Chrome, it asked me if Gmail should handle mailto links. I said yes, so now mailto links work great for me. It's still kinda messy, but at least Chrome and Gmail made it easy for me rather than having me dive into obscure settings. Not sure how Chrome handles other webmail clients, though.

It's a standard for protocol handling registration. Anyone can do it. The same way irccloud offers to handle irc: and Google Calendar offers to handle ical:, etc.

I agree that contact forms are annoying, but mailto links assume the user has an email account. I know it's rare, but think about some of the people using the computers at the public library [1]. Or think about the time you may jump on someone else's computer. I know, Gmail, bla, bla, bla, but mailto links are dependent on a mail account; contact forms are not.

([1] Not specifically relevant, but this post comes to mind for some reason: http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-Dreamin#4183210 )

I think this is a good idea. And I know small businesses looking for such (working) solution and they would happily pay $3/month.

Question: why not let the user choose? Show the email address and the form too. Something like: http://healthexpense.com/contact/

Hello CCs, we're definitely going to be this. We didn't think it was a big deal until we saw the feedback here. Thanks for the feedback!

I've sent a few emails to GitHub's support via their form instead of by email.

All was well for a while. Then I got the reply. It didn't have my original message quoted, and that was when I realized I didn't have any way to get my original message back since it wasn't in my sent mail. Oops.

Hi shurcooL, we've thought about this problem and that's why we keep the original messages intact with replies. Users can directly reply to the sender from their email.

Maybe offer an option to have the email sent to me too. That way I know that even if I don't get a reply I still have a record/copy of the email.

Interesting idea. Combined with a faked to/from address, you can potentially make it appear as if it was an outgoing email sent by you.

I believe the HN community is seeing this solution through the eyes of someone that may be a bit more advanced than some possible target audiences.

Of course you have a fast computer. Of course you have a configured mail client (non web based). Of course you get your email client.

But what about the rest of the world?

People that have slow computers? Find programs (in general) intimidating and confusing? Are lucky enough to be able to browse the web?

What is easier for those people?

A modal that pops up immediately upon clicking asking what they would like to say or waiting for Outlook to load?

In contrast to more feature rich services like Wufoo or Jotform, it's simple, modern and it appears to work.

I say this is a viable service.

+1 for me.

A lot of this criticism is also assuming everyone is using their own computers. At a couple of places I've worked, we could store our files on a network drive but we got a fresh instance of Windows each time. Mailto links would bring up the Outlook Express setup wizard, which was pointless to go through considering it would simply be wiped again when you logged out.

On top of that, I know my mom, still fearful of Firefox, let alone Chrome, has a similar problem with mailto links and it is always quite excruciating watching her process for extracting just the email link itself without the mailto: attached to the front. Depending on who this is marketed to, I think some businesses could easily increase conversions by going this route.

Say I'm some clueless business guy. Somebody says "hey, you gotta check out square send". I visit your site. And I can't figure out what is it that you do or in what way do I benefit. Now, I'm not a clueless business guy. I actually program for a living. I couldn't figure out those two things.

It was pretty clear to me that it's a service that automatically turns your mailto: links into pop-up contact forms.

My point is that the landing page is not clear enough for dumb people like me.

I'm a programmer, couldn't figure it out from the landing page.

Fix your landing page.

This is great. Building forms and managing email is indeed painful. Sometimes you just want to have a form pop up and a message sent. I personally dislike mailto links because I am always jumping between computers and browsers that are not properly set up to send email via my gmail account. Don't let the negative posts here discourage you. Good luck!

I actually like this - I don't configure my desktop client and purely use gmail - additionally, I often browse in incognito mode, logged out of any email client. I have been deterred from emailing site issues to the contact email when I had to jump through additional hoops. It's not part of my work flow, and thus I don't want to deal with setting things up for it.

I think the one suggestion of adding an actual mailto: on the form would be beneficial and allows those who want that as well easy access to the email address as well.

$3/mo for something that won't last forever, I can't change design, doesn't show my email address as an alternative in the same window. And please stop using word 'Square', it is already over, like 'Insta'.

I think you should market it differently, something along the lines of "easy contact forms for static websites". This is a real need many small web shops have. I for example would love to be able to host my small clients websites on S3, but Contact Forms is the one requirement that forbids doing this.

Absolutely this. The first thing that came to mind on seeing this was a site for a NGO I want to migrate away from Wordpress.

(although I wonder how well they'd monetize those; 100 emails is an enormous amount for really low traffic sites)

I've been here before I knew anything about web programming. This is a need real site owners have. And, I've watched people stumble on mailto links because an unconfigured mail client opens up and other issues.

However, I think Wufoo, Jotform, Google Forms and CRMs have snapped up a lot of the market. There aren't left many people who know little enough to only have mailto as an option but don't know so little they can't search for solutions.

As for those complaining that they like mailtos: they are appeased by providing a contact email address along with the form. This is the way to maximize retention (and hopefully receive only a little more spam.)

So it's a kind of prettier version of the contact forms I've been seeing for a decade?

From what I understand, It's converts mailto links to a contact form.

https://squaresend.com/mailto:5tzgrwg is a featureless gray window with no content at all. Please use progressive enhancement (put a valid mailto: anchor in the markup and then replace it in the DOM) rather than shipping markup that's unusably broken without trusting js from some third party nobody has heard of.

Seems like people here are more inclined to use mailto links and I agree since sending from our mail app gives us a clearer path onto whats going on and certainty that the email at least went out, but being honest what's the ratio between people that really know how a contact form works and people that don't really care?

A good solution would be to create a new link on the form overlay that presents the users with the option of just using their mail app in case someone still doesn't want to use the form.

I think you have a great product it does take away the pain from administering a contact form, as simple as it might sound this is a cumbersome task for many people that don't have the technical skills to understand all the pieces that go into creating one, well done!

Question, how are you fighting spam?, from what I can tell you are obfuscating the email once your code bootstraps the <anchor tags>, what happens if spammer isn't using an environment that executes JS

Strange. I have not seen one positive review of this post and yet it made it to the top 5 on the HN homepage. Does that seem suspicious to anyone else?

Edit: up to #3 now. Who's upvoting this if everyone commenting is critical of it?

Most people who comment have something critical to say. Most people who up-vote don't have something critical to say and so they don't comment. I up-voted the submission and hate mailto links. You can't really judge the landscape here based on a few comments.

I'd agree with you if most comments were critical and some were positive but were zero positive reviews.

Also, often I see people shoot off one liner comments praising a website. So it's easy for people to praise when they like a post.

Indeed, I could be wrong.

I think this service has a lot of potential and his site looks fantastic. He might go on to save a lot of people from headaches. Particularly, non-coders. He even has the free/paid issue worked out that so many others simply ignore until later.

I was just too lazy to say anything.

"Indeed, I could be wrong."

I might be the one who was wrong. As a programmer, this seems like a small solution that's already been solved with wufoo, contact forms 7 and the like but it's number 1 on HN so, even if the votes were faked (which was my initial suspicion), it looks like many people appreciate the product or want to discuss it.

"Particularly, non-coders."

Maybe as a programmer, my bias of how simple this solution is and how it's been "solved" by others, lead me to be even more suspicious about something like this getting this much attention.

Hi Michael, I can guarantee you there's no hidden thing going on -- at least as far as we're concerned. We've taken all the feedback even though 90% was negative but I'm sure the people voting it up saw that a lot of people have this problem, maybe even themselves. I don't know how most comments could be negative while it got that many upvotes, but I can only tell we have absolutely nothing to do with it other than posting the Show HN.

My last comment tends to agree with you.

It seems there are many people who need this solution even with the products already out there. I hope you find lots of them and solve their problem with your product. One thing that could help with getting more customers is to create a Wordpress plug-in so more people can find you.

Good luck!

I up voted this for the discussion going on.

This. often someone will post something that I don't particularly like or I outright disagree with, but I feel the discussion going on in the comments is worth having and will up vote so that more people will see it and comment.

You're both right. I do that too but I didn't think this product category was something notable which warranted a deep discussion. Looks like I was wrong.

Seems like all the comments here are very negative. On a meta-question, why would that link be ranked #1 ?! I mean, sure, someone can upvote the link and write a negative comment, but that's unlikely.

That being said, I think this could be a useful javascript plugin.. I.e. when you click a mailto link, you get a contact form in an overlay, maybe with a "Send this email from my email client" for people who prefer to use native or gmail clients. As to actually send the email, it could simply use sendgrid or a post call to the backend.

Instead of a bunch of comments just saying "this is cool", it has some upvotes. When people leave specific feedback it's usually criticism.

What, why would you intentionally break my freedom to use any mail client I want? If I really want to send an email from the browser, I would have just used an extension that handles mailto: links.

Rails has a few ways to obfuscate mailto links through the mail_to helper method. JS encoding, hex encoding, and just text obfuscation.

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/UrlHel...

Solves the problem of getting spammed by email scraping bots. I'm assuming you could write your own helpers pretty easily in other languages / frameworks if they don't already exist.

No idea why you think I would rather not use my email client that is configured correctly, doesn't require I state my email address, possibly has sig file and ensure that only people with the latest and greatest browsers can contact the business that implements this.

People have been griping about crappy contact forms with no option to use real email forever, this is so retrograde.

In what situation would someone prefer a contact form over a mailto link that opens in their mail app (or, in my case, Gmail in the browser)?

In the case that their mail-app is something like Yahoo or Hotmail and doesn't open on a mailto: link.

So yeah. If mailto: is configured properly, it's better. Sadly, on many computers it isn't, and a contact form is sort of a "minimal but workable everywhere" solution.

I think the ideal combination is having a contact form pop up with a "Send mail from my own client" mailto: link at the bottom.

Hey guys - congrats on the product launch! I'm really confused though. How is this better than an email form?

This can be useful for people with static websites who want to include a contact form in some of their pages.

I am actively turned off when I click a "Contact Us" link and I'm taken to a form rather than seeing a new email pop up. Most of the time decide not to contact that business and look for one I can contact immediately via email only going back to the original business as a last resort.

Mailto: links are a hair-on-fire problem for most people. I didn't even know that I could set them to open my Gmail, and I'm a web developer. As long as the pop up also told me what the email was so I could do it in my client if I wanted, this is a way better solution.

I don't get this, why would anybody use this if a web contact form can be easily setup by any CMS nowadays?

I actually changed my contact form to a mailto link for some of my sites, unless the form requires complex input using a form builder.

I have to admit I've never seen a static site generator that supported contact forms. Perhaps such a thing exists, but remember that not everyone's using a CMS.

PERSONAL OPINION DISCLAIMER: Because CMSes are terrible for small websites.

Neat idea. I think reliability is an important feature to call out on the landing page. If I'm a business owner that depends on this service as a funnel for new clients, for instance, I would want guarantees regarding uptime and reliability.

You are a contact form with a name 'inspired' by squarespace?!

I see dubious comments here. Data answers questions. Is there data to show that mailtos are annoying or that Squaresend is stickier than mailtos?

The widget might be useful, well done!

Any plans to add other languages?

Also please add a 'cancel' or 'close' button to the form...

"Any plans to add other languages?"

Nevermind, looks like it is configurable...

Well, I like it and am using it!

Just one thing: what's with the roast beef?

It'd be a good idea to have a 'cancel' button on the pop-up.

Hello everyone co-founder here,

This post was in the top 5 until a few minutes ago and it seems that some people have flagged it. I know it seems very suspicious that the submission could get so many upvotes and very little positive feedback but I'm also puzzled at how that happened in the first place. I understand that a lot of people here think we're breaking mailto links but we're trying to solve a real problem that many people (non-HNers) have. I submitted this because we wanted to get feedback and we did (and we take it all to heart) but I'm shocked that some folks here think there was a voting ring. I think the people voting it up are doing so for either the discussion or to congratulate the fact that we launched. Can someone explain why they flagged it? Thanks!

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