HEY is the Rolex of Email
There is something majestic about HEY…. It’s mystical, it’s engrossing and grabs your attention.
Same is said about Rolex. It's an eternal time piece which is almost created 100% in-house. It stands alone and on top in the luxury watch industry.
From February 2021 to August 2021, I have only used HEY as my personal email service. Throughout this process, I have appreciated the HEY philosophy and also learnt a few things about my preference for managing emails.
What's so special about HEY?
HEY’s visual design and quirky feature set are unique to HEY. First, the HEY email service is a remote island where it does not play nice with any other service (no integrations, even with its sister app, Basecamp), open email standards (IMAP and SMTP, therefore no third party client support) are non-existent in the HEY world. HEY is at its best when used solo and by design, there is no other way to use HEY other than the HEY way.
I will not rehash all the features of HEY. For that, visit the HEY website or read my launch review.
The following exclusive to HEY features are most interesting to me:
- Just let it flow: traditionally, one either deletes or archives received email; not with HEY. Deleting an email is a multiple-step process and there is no archive feature. It is weirdly refreshing to take no action and yet have an organised clean inbox.
- Merging emails into one thread: I thought this was a gimmicky feature, but it turned out super useful. Example: I recently installed solar at my home and the entire process involved communicating with many parties, all of which are in one thread named “Solar Install”. In addition, the ability to add my own notes was useful, allowing me to add discussion points for my next conversation with the solar installer or my electricity provider.
- Fixing bad subject titles: I prefer short and to the point subject lines, and many times it feels like I am the only one. In most cases, the subject lines are too long or not enough detail provided. Through this feature, I fix the subject title, which makes it easier to locate the emails and reminds me what is the email really about.
- Bundling dominating senders into one line: Many times, a single sender or a single domain takes over your inbox by sending multiple emails. This feature ensures that regardless of the number of emails sent, that sender will only occupy one line in my inbox.
- Cover Art: Again, one of those features which seemed gimmicky at first, but I quickly became very fond of it especially after I added a beautiful picture of my child.
- Send from external email address using SMTP: very few email clients allow the user to add their own SMTP details, ensuring emails are sent through the specified SMTP server. I can only recall GMAIL having this feature. Email apps such as SPARK and NEWTON allow emails to be sent only if the relevant email service supports Alias. Airmail allows sending from your SMTP server. However, the login credentials do not sync between devices and one has to painfully set up each alias on each device. HEY makes this process super easy.