We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
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Secure business email, that makes it easier to stay on top of the work that matters (for teams of all sizes).
Gmail is the best email provider out there, and is infinitely better than Outlook (Microsoft 365). We've used it for many years, and in fact solely recommend teams use Google Workspace as the foundation for their business tech stack 🥞
For personal use, Gmail is free so of course, there's the clear benefit there.
For professional use, Gmail integrates seamlessly into the entire Google Workspace ecosystem, making it unbeatable. You have access to many of the apps you use daily alongside Gmail like Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google Meet, etc.
But the reason we love Gmail most is because it has some of the most extensive integration capabilities and natively integrated apps of any email software on the market.
Overall, Gmail is a great email client and will work wonderfully as a part of the Google Workspace suite. But if you want supercharge email and have a faster email experience that is build more for professionals who enjoy beautiful UI/UX, then check out Superhuman.
Also, be sure to check out the integrations area for some of the tools that work with Gmail we love most like Superhuman and Mailman.
Gmail being as large as it is, has to take into account billions of users.
Just imagine, changing the color of a button can impact so many people (think of when an app you use daily changes their logo and you can no longer "find it" among your apps on your phone even though it's in the exact same place). Because of this, Gmail is not able to innovate much.
Gmail is also focused on building features for the masses that you might not need. For instance, the masses want a chat that easily allows you to talk to others, while you might already use Slack for this purpose and not need the feature at all. This leaves you with a widget that is not particularly helpful in anyway.
This leads to the final problem with Gmail. Because of the bloated features, Gmail has become so slow. It takes a few seconds to load, and with a simple distraction you can forget why you were going into your inbox in the first place 😅
The Gmail mobile app has a significantly better experience than even the web app in many ways. It's easy to navigate, loads relatively quickly, and is an overall good experience.
It also works great cross-platform and is quite stable overall. They let you also set swipe actions (Archive/Snooze/Delete) and get quite granular on the notification settings as well.
Although it has limitations around creating hyperlinks and other functionality when composing emails, which is where the mobile app features missing are another area where we feel like there could be some improvement, especially when comparing Gmail vs Superhuman.
Email sucked for years. Gmail, Outlook, and Apple took their eye off the ball. Then along came HEY.
Finally someone trying to innovate within the email space, something that is completely dominated by Google and Microsoft (and I suppose Apple mail). For better or worse, you'll get your very own hey.com email address, which means it's likely to have very little spam. That said, you'll have to let all of your family and friends know of your new email address.
The biggest problem is that unlike that of Superhuman (a smart layer atop of Gmail/Outlook), with Hey, you're giving complete control of your email (and calendar) over to Hey. All of this in exchange for a snazzy new @hey.com email address.
After you've gone and given everyone your new hey.com email address, you'll quickly realize that you're now locked in to Hey... Forever. Using it for personal usage and don't want to pay for it anymore? You now need to somehow let everyone know that you're switching email addresses again.
As you keep going deeper, you'll realize that you're actually giving up a lot by having Hey essentially manage your personal data and email. So all I'd say is you'd better love their email service early on if you're going to go through all the work switching over.
If you're on the site right now, you're probably more B2B and productivity-focused, and if so, you've probably also heard of Zapier (maybe? If not, it's cool, go check it out).
Anyway, yeah, Hey has no API, you can't use Zapier with it, but not just that, all of the awesome email tools that upgrade functionality to your email like Mailman, or heck, even your CRM (with automatic email ingesting like with Copper and Gmail + Google Calendar). Gone gone gone. So if you're even slightly considering using Hey for your business email (which you can for $12/user/mo, bring your own domain, and lose all integration with that). Yeah, it just doesn't make sense.
Gosh was I excited for Hey when it was first coming out... Had I actually thought about all of the above though, I would have surely been a bit less excited by what I'd ultimately be giving up by using Hey 😅
It's so clear who Hey was building for when finally seeing the big hyped up reveal, was it the software lover? The tech founder? The designer? Nope! But rather my mother, and maybe children? And yet here I am, someone that was happy and willing to pay the $99/yr (well for a 4+ character email address, but more on that in the pricing section)
The product uses huge icons, childish text, and bright color gradients everywhere. They even tried renaming the features that we all know and understand like Inbox and Snooze to "Imbox" and "Bubbleup" for no reason other than to try and be "cute". It just doesn't connect with me, the UI was not built for me, and it's an awful use of screen real estate everywhere you visit in the app. I continually got frustrated when using it, asking why, why, oh why? 😢
If you love big buttons and big text, you'll love the UX of Hey email. We'll get more into the UX in bits and pieces more in the features section below.
Credit where credit is due, the thing that Hey did focus on was "how do we simplify the email app experience and re-think how we can make ideas like inbox zero core to the experience?
They have some cool features around blocking new emails before they come through (requiring you first approving access). Essentially baked in functionality that you'd have to use a tool like Mailman + Gmail or Superhuman to get working out of the box.
I have a friend that uses and loves Hey for his personal account, and uses Gmail (Google Workspace) for his work account. Believe it or not, he has all of his Hey emails forward to Gmail, and he checks/triages his emails in Gmail on mobile. He doesn't like the Hey mobile app, but the truth of the matter is that just sounds like a lot of extra work 😅
Ultra-short 2-character addresses like [email protected] are $999/year, and 3-character addresses like [email protected] are $349/year. All other @hey.com email addresses, 4-characters or more, are $99/year.
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