Hey vs Skiff

Why We Love 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.

Problems with Hey

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 😅 okay, let's now get into the meat of the Hey.com review ⤵

User Interface (UI)

Rating: _C-

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? 😢

User Experience (UX)

Rating: _C+

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.

Features

Rating: _B

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.

Integration (API)

Interested in using awesome 3rd party email tools like Mailman or Inbox Zero? Okay so you're out of luck if you decide to go the Hey path. Let me explain...

The problem will always be that the best tools will integrate with Gmail/Google Workspace, they will sadly never integrate with Hey, Hey doesn't have an API and it's unlikely that they will add it.

Even if they do there's such a small user-base that uses Hey, so it wouldn't make sense for these tools to actually build and integrate with Hey (from a time investment/customer acquisition perspective).

So you're actually giving up quite a bit of future integration potential by using something like Hey. Same goes with the best project management software and AI daily planner tools like tools like Motion. This is because these tools need to connect into your Google Workspace/Gmail/Outlook/iCloud calendar so use it for tasks and time blocking at a core, so you're giving up being able to even really use those tools effectively when you choose something like Hey.

The story here is, well, you're giving up a lot. The biggest point here is to think about who the who is the ICP (ideal customer profile) is of Hey, not business owners, founders, or even employees of companies. They are clearly building more for an individual that just wants to "email differently", not actually someone who wants to be more productive and efficient with Email.

Mobile App

Rating: _C

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 😅

Pricing

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.