After a time away from Hey email, I impulse subscribed again. And once again, after a short time, I already don’t want to use it. I have reasons.
When Hey (hey.com) email was first launched, I signed up immediately. It was a fresh take on email and it felt nice. Hey either resonates with you or it doesn’t. With me, it did. I paid for a year or two, and used it (on and off) for a long time. I never fully adopted my jbaty@hey.com email address because, well, I know me. Also, I already have an email address.
I still think Hey is a good service. Its opinionated way of dealing with email is clever and useful. However, I can’t get over the fact that it doesn’t use normal IMAP. This means there’s no way into my email other than using the Hey web interface or iOS app. It’s fine, but makes me feel trapped. Email is one of the few remaining things we have that doesn’t lock us in.
Linking to emails is something I do all the time. Links to Hey emails are easy to make, since they’re just web URLs, but I don’t trust using them in my notes because once again, I know me, and those links will be dead once I, inevitably, go back to using “normal” email.
There’s something about the web UI of Hey that introduces more friction than I like. It’s fast enough, but it just feels a teeny bit janky. I can’t explain it, but it wears on me.
A smaller, but irritating aspect of using Hey is that one of the guys who runs the place can’t seem to stop saying stupid shit in public. I try to allow people plenty of leeway when it comes to differing opinions, but his keeps getting worse and the smug, know-it-all-ness of it bugs me.
And honestly, I don’t get that much email these days, so a fancy workflow for processing it is overkill.
So, I’ve stopped forwarding my email to Hey and am back in my usual Fastmail->Apple Mail combination. If I get bored, I can always install the wonderful Mailmate or something like it to play with.