Hey! Did Someone Reinvent Email?

TECHNOLOGY | EMAIL

by Sharon Hurley Hall

Anyone who knows me knows I suffer from shiny new object syndrome, though I’m trying to recover.

I’m also always looking for better ways to do things. So when Basecamp said they were launching a new, improved email client called Hey, I didn’t think twice before signing up.

It’s not the first time I’ve tried new approaches to email. I was an early user of Gmail, and of the now-defunct Inbox, and I’ve tried other desktop email clients, too. Several years on, Gmail is the only one I use regularly.

Still, I was as curious as the next person to see if email really could be reinvented, so I had to try it out for myself. A few months on, my answer to the questions is sorta kinda. There are a couple of features that have improved my email workflow, and a couple that, in my opinion, still need work. Read on to learn more.

To get started, I forwarded email from two of my existing accounts to my new Hey email address. I didn’t fully commit, though. My main business email stayed right where it was, in Gmail. Then I downloaded the Android app, logged into the web interface, and set about exploring the three main sections of Hey.

Inside the Imbox

First of all, there’s the Imbox. Yes, you read that right. It’s where important stuff lands. That sounds pretty cool, but of course, you have to train it by screening email in or out. If you get a lot of email, that’s a painful process. I get a middling amount of email, so was just a little annoying.

There’s a notification at the top of your screen every time there’s an email you need to triage. First of all, you decide whether you want to see that email at all. If the answer is no, it hides away in the Screened Out section. If the answer is yes, you have choices to make. The email can either stay in the Imbox, or you can put it in The Feed or the Paper Trail.

Pros and Cons of The Feed

On the face of it, The Feed is a good idea: a custom section just for email newsletters. Plus you can easily scroll through them. In practice, most newsletters are too long for you to see the whole thing. And if a newsletter goes there automatically, you may forget to look at it.

That’s a mixed blessing. Using Hey has shown me that there are still a few newsletters I get that I never read. But it also highlighted the ones I missed. To solve that problem I ended up setting them up to come to the Imbox, then filing them in the Feed once I was done reading.

A Place for Digital Paperwork

The Paper Trail is where you store transactional emails, like order receipts, renewal reminders and so on.

It’s another great idea, but if stuff goes there automatically, you have to remember to check it. So, as with the Feed, there are a couple of emails I read in the Imbox, before stashing them in the Paper Trail.

A Bit Too Quiet?

One of the reasons why these manual actions are so important is that Hey deliberately doesn’t notify you about incoming emails, though you can turn this on. I like the quieter approach, but it means I need to keep track of stuff myself. I’m not finding that a problem.

However, if I knew how to code email apps, I’d add an action to that sent emails to the Feed or Paper Trail after they’d been read. That means I wouldn’t miss anything and they’d still end up in the right place. Sadly, that doesn’t exist, so I’ll handle it manually for now.

My Favorite Hey Features

So here are the things that really work for me in Hey.

Set Aside

By far the best feature in Hey, in my opinion, is the Set Aside button. This is great for sticking a pin in emails that come in that you’re not quite ready to deal with. When you are, you can go to the Set Aside board and power through them.

I use this a LOT for stuff like PayPal notifications (to remind me to update my invoicing software), messages from clients (when I need to reply later rather than immediately), and newsletters that I don’t want cluttering up the Imbox but I’m not yet ready to read.

Reply Later

Another useful feature that I don’t use as much is the Reply Later button. It’s exactly what it says, and creates another wall of emails you can deal with when you’re ready. I also use it to remind myself to go back to the original email account and reply (sometimes that matters). That’s because I haven’t yet seen a “reply as” function in Hey.

Email Bundling

And I love bundling. For emails that you’re getting in the Imbox, you can elect for them to exist singly or as a bundle. I use both. I’ve bundled things like social media direct messages, and newsletter signups. When there’s a new email, the bundle moves to the top of the Imbox. Once you’ve seen it, it goes to the read messages section.

One thing that needs some work is how Hey handles contacts. Again, it’s mostly fine, but it would be great to be able to bundle the emails coming from various senders from the same company.

Clippings

I’ve also used the Clippings functionality, which lets you highlight and save a portion of an email. That’s useful when you read a newsletter and there’s one thing you want to remember. Hey also has a useful All Files section where you can browse attachments. That’s a big improvement over most email clients I’ve used.

Other Features

Hey also includes a few more neat features, like blocking email trackers, the ability to add a note to self to any email, improved swiping actions, and offline viewing.

My New Email Workflow

These days, when I fire up my email, it’s easy to see what’s new, and what new senders need to be screened in or out. Once a day, I check the Paper Trail and the Feed in case there’s anything I need to pay attention to. I’ll usually add anything that interests me there to Set Aside. Once a week or so, I check out Screened Out and Spam to make sure I haven’t missed anything.

So, Has Email Been Reinvented or Nah?

Now that I’ve been using it for a while, I think Hey may be onto something. However, it isn’t quite there yet. The $99 annual price tag may be a bit hefty with so many free email apps around (though when things are free, the users are usually the product).

However, getting in at the start means I own that email address forever (or however long forever is in internet terms). There are enough things I like about it to stick with it for a while, and the developers are adding improvements every few weeks.

I don’t know whether email has really been reinvented, but for me part of it has definitely been improved. There’s a 14-day free trial, so check it out for yourself and see what you think.

© Sharon Hurley Hall, 2020

Sharon Hurley Hall is an anti-racism writer, a professional B2B writer and blogger, and co-host of The Introvert Sisters podcast.