Big Mail: Your inbox, upgraded | Hacker News Reader

Big Mail: Your inbox, upgraded

getbigmail.com

Why do the terms and conditions appear to have been lifted from Apple? https://getbigmail.com/terms

Excellent catch, they really mention Apple, Touch ID, and point to Apple URLs for support. Maybe they thought no one reads these past the first paragraph.

I believe they used Apple's standard terms for 3rd party developers on the App Store.

Hi I’m the creator of Big Mail. As the subscription is sold and managed by Apple we’re bound by the App Store terms and conditions (things like refunds, liability, etc)

Along with the design of the website.

Presumably because the app is being sold through the iOS App Store and in that case Apple manages the relationship with the end user rather than the app developer.

If you read it carefully, the Apple language appears to apply to the intersection/interaction of their service with iCloud and Apple services.

For those saying they wish their email was better, I can't recommend Spark [0] highly enough. It's currently macOS, iOS & Android, and Windows is in the works. It's free for regular use and offers premium features for teams etc.

Spark makes multiple accounts a breeze, automatically groups your emails a-la what Gmail does but it actually works well, syncs accounts between devices, quick actions, and a lot more. Shortly, it's brilliant and I love it. I have no affiliation, I'm just a very happy user, I recommend you give them a try if you're looking.

[0] https://sparkmailapp.com/

Spark however enables full access to all your email to their servers to enable stuff like notifications. They do not note that when setting it up. Essentially, they store your login credentials on a remote server, somewhere, under their control. Check the terms of service. I’ve had a chat with their DPO about that.

I've actually read their terms of service and rechecked out of curiosity right now — I fail to find anything along the lines of what you mention. In addition, that doesn't make technical sense, how would they store credentials for 2FA?

It does make technical sense: I haven't looked at Spark for a long time, but there are many mail services which route your email access through their own services so they can add features (e.g. snoozing emails). They don't need 2FA credentials (otherwise, for example, every time you fetched email from the server using a standard IMAP connection you would have to input a TOTP, which you don't). They can either use Oauth for some of these services or generate a token which provides specific access.

Correct. Gmail is an example for token-based access. And usually there’s not much to object to if such services are upfront about what they’re doing and why.

If they don’t state that explicitly in their terms of service it’s even more problematic.

From their landing page:

> Spark is fully GDPR compliant, and to make everything as safe as possible, we encrypt all your data and rely on the secure cloud infrastructure provided by Google Cloud.

Why would they even need a “cloud infrastructure” if they weren’t providing additional services?

This could lead to issues with an employer if you chose to use Spark and, without recognizing it, exported your company login information to a third party, probably even to a different legal jurisdiction.

I also thoroughly enjoy Spark. I got an email from them a few weeks back with a survey about potential pricing. I'd pay a subscription to use the client, as long as it's reasonable.

But I don't want them to add more features than what they already have. It's fine as is.

MacOS/iOS only without even a "coming soon on..." message.

I wouldn't bind myself to a mail client that tied me to a specific hardware vendor. Even if I was Apple only (which I'm not) I don't want to be in that position again.

If it’s just a client and not a service, why would you care?

Because switching a mail client that has a very specific workflow and set of features is a huge shift and you have to change a ton of habits and relearn muscle memory. It's worse than switching browsers because browsers don't embody as much workflow (and tend to be fairly similar to each other)

Been there with Google Inbox. I want one client that is going to stick around and works on all my devices.

I feel that with Inbox... still miss it. That said, if something comes along that is as good, I'll still switch back. (And maybe Big Mail will do that?)

In general you might because of sinking the purchase cost, but in this case it's a subscription, so all I (not GP) can think of is the inertia and inconvenience of switching mail client if you only really wanted to switch (or add an) OS.

Same here. You're welcome to make a Mac-exclusive mail client, but you're gonna have a damn hard time making anyone care about it when only 7% of the active computer-using market is capable of installing your app...

There's tons of brilliant native non-free Mac apps, so what?

Why would you need to make anyone outside of Mac/iOS world care about it in order for your app to succeed?

Love it or lump it, that's where the users are. Limiting your userbase inherently gimps the value proposition of your application, which is especially an issue when your program is something as simple as an email client.

it's also an iOS client

We need a Firefox moment for Email!

There's a lack of innovation in the email client space.

Even if this doesn't win, I'm excited to see you guys are working on this problem!

>We need a Firefox moment for Email!

https://www.thunderbird.net

Spot on.

In an ideal world, Tutanota/Protonmail would be compatible with a Thunderbird client.

I'm not familiar with those services, do they not provide POP3, SMTP, IMAP addresses? I've been using my own email setup for ~15 years, but have recently considered looking into some of these online services. I'd require the ability to use a local client to connect, however. Now you have me a little concerned.

I use ProtonMail + Thunderbird, it does require a client to handle the decryption/encryption to the servers. It was open sourced a while ago which is nice, although admittedly it'd be nice to have it just work.

That's cool, I wasn't aware Protonmail had this feature. I use Tutanota and their client is required to access their service, which does work great as is.

They are specialised in providing encrypted storage of email, as well as end to end encrypted emails between their users. These features requires some measures which deviate from the plaintext standard protocols.

My email needs to do only a handful of things:

- let me archive things

- let me search my email

- let me do email-y things (reply, forward, reply all, etc.)

- display HTML and plain text email in a way that doesn't hurt my eyes

- get out of my way

I don't need or want advanced categorization, animated flourishes, or even folders. I use Spark as my email client because it works just fine.

Spark is toying with charging, which I think is fine. If it's not too much, I'll pay.

This Big Mail seems too feature-laden for my tastes.

Enumerating features misses much of the nuance.

I want a UI that allows me to effortlessly triage my emails. I want search and filtering to be fast and well thought through. Just ticking off items in a feature matrix leaves a lot out of the picture.

Search is essential, no question.

But I need sort even more. And it's frustrating the inability for "modern" email clients to do away with it. Gmail is the culprit.

Does Spark allow you to sort your folders?

I don't know, honestly. I don't use folders. Either my email is in my inbox, it's archived, or it's deleted/junked. Most of my email doesn't stay in my inbox for very long.

I have exactly the same workflow, and this is why I just use neomutt on my desktop and the standard mail.app on my phone. Searching via notmuch normally finds anything I'm looking for.

It really looks like Hey for IMAP. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Fastmail already has a Hey vs Fastmail comparison page on their site. Most of Hey’s great features can be made as features of other email service providers and/or clients.

But this is an email client that’s more expensive than Fastmail & at $78 annually is less than Hey. If you bring your Gmail account that’s all it is: $78 per year forever.

A comment in this thread brought up Apple as a buyer of the Big Mail parent company. I think it’s just as likely that Google would.

For me the cost is too much. I’m paying $130 for years of Fastmail (for email service & their free clients on a custom domain with a ton of extra features).

I’ve set up rudimentary filters & email groups to come close to Hey’s features. (Yes, I also paid for a year of Hey.) I’m constantly trying new email clients & will likely give Big Mail a shot when it goes live.

But sticking with something that costly is unlikely, it’s also hard to say when I’d do this given the short trial period. I need a week of trial time where I can focus a little time setting up and comparing to clients I’ve already tried & the one I use now.

Even the website is very Apple-esque. How long before they get acquired by Apple and the Mail app acquires this feature set?

That’s just to say it looks lovely!!! Cheers! I’ll give it a try.

> How long before they get acquired by Apple

I mean, they're already taking 30% of their paycheck. That's about as "employed" as they want them to be, since they make $2.10/month for every active user on their service.

> and the Mail app acquires this feature set?

Wishful thinking. The Mail developers have dropped the ball for the past 5 years, I wouldn't expect them to start releasing a good client now.

"very Apple-esque" is one way to put it. It's a nearly direct clone of this page: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14/

:-) I am okay if they they spend the time they saved building out a novel website instead on building those features they have listed. But, I still think this is a direct play to get noticed by Apple for a acquihire.

I think I'm not quite so charitable. To me there's a big difference between using some templates or UI libraries (e.g. Bootstrap or Tailwind UI) as they're intended to build a home page that isn't particularly novel, and shamelessly cloning the design of an existing home page. I'm a big fan of focusing on the product itself and treating the home page as "get the message across with as little design and engineering work as possible," but do the former rather than the latter.

A native looking webpage for a native looking app :-)

It’s good to see a proper client, and not yet another system where your emails sit inside yet another cloud. It’s also good to see Fastmail as a client from the get-go. And it’s good to see the iOS and Mac focus. The combination means this has a chance of combining a new feature set with privacy and security. But the downside is subscription payments for a client

I want someone to just make Google Inbox UI again. The best thing was grouping by dates where I could select and archive or delete an entire month once I had reviewed what was in it.

No other email experience has let me get through my backlog as fast as Inbox did.

Agreed. When it was canceled I was furious but a part of me was convinced that it meant that they would add the nice features to the other client. I was wrong.

This looks like it's optimized for senders, which are on average advertisers or companies trying to drive engagement or sales.

This ignores the average user problem, which is getting real communication lost in the mentioned sauces. I say that because big bucket filtering is almost always circumvented by email campaigns. I was an early user of Gmail when they introduced this feature, and almost as soon as it was useful it was not, because advertisers figured out how to play the game.

I really like the concept of "the sauces of advertising".

New innovation in email clients is great to see! This product doesn't look like it's for me, but I welcome the fresh ideas.

I'm all in favor of a new mail client. I'm still using Thunderbird, and it isn't great for searching deep historical archives of mail or handling a few gig of old mail archives.

However, I'm not in favor of a new mail client enough to pay $7/month in perpetuity, unless it's pure magic.

I'm a fan of mailmate for search. Thunderbird eventually got me to switch to it after getting sick and tired of accidentally clicking on sort by subject and hanging for a min or so... that and the search being useless. Search in mailmate is quite fast. Anyway not sponsored or affiliated in any way but I really dig the product.

Good to know. I'll look into it.

MacOS only, no thanks.

Does it support different notification sounds for email from different senders? How about different sounds for different accounts?

I'm on iOS now, and I miss this feature of Android gmail so much. iOS gmail just has one notification sound, even for different accounts, which is really frustrating.

> From advance A.I categorisation...

No thanks.

True, I'd rather pay for a client that lets me organize and categorize mail quickly rather than letting some unreliable AI do that for me.

Not moving from Superhuman

Big Mail already looks pretty dumb to me, but I must be missing something: what do you get for $10 a month with Superhuman?

Why doesn't anyone add an option to categorize e-mails by the sender and receiver like a messenger?

It would make it much easier/logical to handle conversations.. and make it easier to identify fishing and to delete/prune messages.

This is something coming in a later release (Groups)

Looks heavily inspired by Hey (https://www.hey.com/index.html)

And the home page design is very heavily inspired by https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14/

I thought this said Bing mail at first sight.

Why is there no Bing mail? I guess Microsoft doesn't want to cannibalize their Outlook offering... but Bing mail would probably appeal to an entirely different crowd.

I like the idea of the bouncer, seems like it could be a useful feature.

Love the unique web design.

apple only? and $7 a month? lmfao this is worthless

Id rather pay for the security of Proton or Tutanota then the flash and dash of a service like this.

This is not a mail service, it's a mail client.

I always wonder how typos make it to production on the front page, in bold. "Big Mail is packed with advance features to make your inbox smarter"... (for those missing the typo, it should be _advanced features_)

It is nitpicking, but it suggests there could be other QC issues that are more significant elsewhere in the business.

Eh referer made it into an RFC.

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