Ask HN: Do we need another email service? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do we need another email service?

9 pointsudaycoder30 comments

I got a chance to work with email recently and thinking of starting an email service, but wondering do we need one now? if it is paid, what makes you pay for it?

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The missing email feature I'm interested in is analytics - I couldn't find anything the last time I looked.

Who takes up most of my time, as measured by the number of words I've written to them? Who is worst at responding to me? Can you do anything with sentiment analysis?

Yes, this is one of the features I am thinking.

Yes, we need another paid email service. Competition is good.

Besides the obvious gmail, I think your fundamental competitor in the not-gmail space is fastmail.fm or something like it. If you think you can make a go of it at those prices, plus or minus an order of magnitude, then have at it.

Mail is not for the faint of heart. Besides the technical details (which are harder than most people assume), you have to operate in a way that you earn and keep the trust of your customers. You have to not lose mail, you have to stay up.

You have to accept that you'll be an unwilling partner to the NSA and other law enforcement. You'll also be a target of under the table surveillance by the NSA and other spies and criminals.

You have to get email fundamentally, rock solidly right. Above that there's lots of room for features and services more or less related to email.

You're going to have to work hard to peel me away from fastmail, and you'll have to work even harder to peel everyone else away from gmail, or even to get them to notice you.

I look forward to your Show HN (truly).

Yes, we do. I would pay for it if it is not ridiculously expensive (mykolab) and has decent privacy AND encryption. Servers in america == bad.

That icelandic one from recently (forgot the name) I can not take too seriously, since they want to roll their own browser that will basically be a bad version of Tor browser and also some other stuff they want to build their selves.

I'm guessing you mean Mailpile[0], but those guys are only providing an email client (which you can run both from a thumb drive or on a server).

[0]: https://mailpile.is/

It sounds like you're talking about Mailpile, but if so, I think you've misunderstood it. If it's something else mail-related from Iceland, I'd like to know more.

No not mailpile. It was an actual email service. Maybe inv... something.

I'd be open to a new open service, if and only if it really went above and beyond our current expectations of email providers today. I think gmail(what I currently use) is great and I'm satisfied with it but it doesn't mean that I wouldn't switch if something could out-do it in certain arenas. I think the obvious factors of security,privacy and UI/UX would be the things that would really have to shine for me to open my wallet. I'm not sure but I think that the market has some pretty decent offerings and people might not be on the lookout for a new email service but to make an example; I wasn't looking for a new text editor when I came across Sublime. Sometimes thing are so great that they are just worth trying. It would be a large undertaking on your part but who knows how it could turn out? Good luck.

If it can differentiate itself by being private and secure, sure. That means non-US hosting, zero knowledge storage, PFS on all SSL/TLS, properly defined security policies from a company side to reduce social engineering, secure architecture, etc.

Many people on HN probably either host their own email or considered it, but a good secure service is better to sell to people without that technical knowledge who don't want to be a Google/MS/Apple/Yahoo/etc product. I've pointed less technical people towards MyKolab before; they are a good model for how an email service should be done.

I don't think we need another email service. The backend stuff tends to be very complex and it would be a waste of time to reinvent the wheel. I do think there' s a lot of potential for improving the user experience on the client side, finding new ways to simplify and augment the current offering. Too bad the main player in this space (Gmail) doesn't offer the kind of API access needed for a deep integration, maybe in the future.

It is true that backend stuff is complex. My idea is to improve the existing one and do some cool stuff on the UI. I strongly believe that there is scope for many players in this segment.

> I don't think we need another email service. The backend stuff tends to be very complex

Hmmm, there's an interesting idea for a business, Back End As a Service. You provide rock solid email back end, and your customers are email "providers" who distinguish themselves on features, price, charity, whatever, all of them using your back end services.

I might pay a buck a year for an email service that didn't serve ads, had a gmail-level quality and had solid privacy/security baked in. That said I tend to steer clear of the lavabit-esque providers who go out of their way to advertise their over-my-dead-body stance on handing over emails because it makes them a target and tends to make people associate you with paranoids (even if they are after you :)

I'd like a service that unifies my email with messages on other services I use eg facebook, Whatsapp, Linkedin, SMS etc so if I've been chatting about say going to Vietnam I can search for that in all sources. Maybe even posts on HN. Basically anything I write that people reply to.

Yeah, the walled gardens are hellish. Makes it very hard to manage things... sadly, it is getting worse not better.

Few years ago, there was email service called Zenbe. It was cool and ahead of time and I've seen it as only real competitor to gmail. But for some reason they got out of business (I don't remember why). Search for Zenbe and maybe you will find some clues.

Yes, it's all about branding. Most legible names are taken in all big players, so a new service would see an influx of users trying to secure their vanity names.

And that, my friend, will occur for as long as a million human beings are born each day.

rema.il

If I had the slightest inclination to make a mail service I would buy this name, but I don't, so have fun.

We tested demand late last year and relative numbers didn't look too convincing.

https://www.minervafabric.com/

Feel free to ping me for more insight or specific data.

It would be cool if besides privacy for users you contributed/used already existing open source mail related software. You know, follow the model of those companies that are based on and expand oss.

Paying for Google to host the e-mail for all companies; ran private exchange before; it's just not worth it :)

Imho, it's extremely hard to beat what Google offers.

There's one thing that Google cannot offer: not being Google. That's a feature for me and many others.

Location is an essential issue today for e-mail services: don't expected much enthusiasm if your servers are in USA

yes we need another mailprovider, with all the killerfeatures of gmail:

lots of storage / archive

contacts / sync

kalender / sync

decent privacy/ encryption

servers in EU

i dont care about webmail/mailclient.

Try https://mailbox.org

I'll die for an emailbox where I could rearrange my mails on the fly.

I love this idea.

IF and only IF the spam filters are as good as Gmail.

Then use gmail!!

Any innovation in email is welcome by me.

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