

Show HN: Squaresend - Less annoying mailto links - waterapp
https://squaresend.com/

======
ComputerGuru
I don't know about you guys, but I am always absolutely relieved to see a
mailto link rather than a contact form when attempting to reach someone. One
click and it opens in my native mail app (or my Gmail account, if I so desire)
and I know immediately if it's a who or a what that my message is going to, I
don't need to worry about broken contact forms that may or may not be working,
I don't need to beat stupid captchas, and everything makes sense.

It seems squaresend is an anti-solution.

~~~
StavrosK
I'll agree with this. I don't know why everyone doesn't use mailto links,
since they work better than any other solution. I also don't know why someone
would want to cripple them like this.

~~~
waterapp
Hi StavrosK, I'm one of the developers.

I don't know if this was clear from the homepage but we're targeting site
owners. Many sites use mailto links because they don't want to go through the
hassle of setting up a contact form. We're just trying to make that easier to
do.

Edit: Thanks for the feedback. We can absolutely show the actual email address
and even include a real mailto link inside the widget incase the users prefer
that. We'll be implementing that right away.

~~~
StavrosK
Hey waterapp, no, it was pretty clear from the homepage and the grandparent's
comment. It's a useful product for people who want a contact form they don't
have to manage (it'll make many static sites more useful), I just wish more
people would just use mailto links.

Feature request: Don't hide the email address in the link, so I can right-
click copy it, and add a small "email us with your email client" link at the
bottom with an actual mailto. This way, we get the best of both worlds.

~~~
lessnonymous
Why not make the contact form look a bit more like an email and put the
recipient address at the top as a mailto link. That way people who like forms
click and get a form, those of us who like mailto can then click on the email
address.

------
ecrotty
I believe the HN community is seeing this solution through the eyes of someone
that may be a bit more advanced than some possible target audiences.

Of course you have a fast computer. Of course you have a configured mail
client (non web based). Of course you get your email client.

But what about the rest of the world?

People that have slow computers? Find programs (in general) intimidating and
confusing? Are lucky enough to be able to browse the web?

What is easier for those people?

A modal that pops up immediately upon clicking asking what they would like to
say or waiting for Outlook to load?

In contrast to more feature rich services like Wufoo or Jotform, it's simple,
modern and it appears to work.

I say this is a viable service.

+1 for me.

~~~
zampano
A lot of this criticism is also assuming everyone is using their own
computers. At a couple of places I've worked, we could store our files on a
network drive but we got a fresh instance of Windows each time. Mailto links
would bring up the Outlook Express setup wizard, which was pointless to go
through considering it would simply be wiped again when you logged out.

On top of that, I know my mom, still fearful of Firefox, let alone Chrome, has
a similar problem with mailto links and it is always quite excruciating
watching her process for extracting just the email link itself without the
mailto: attached to the front. Depending on who this is marketed to, I think
some businesses could easily increase conversions by going this route.

------
orangethirty
Say I'm some clueless business guy. Somebody says "hey, you gotta check out
square send". I visit your site. And I can't figure out what is it that you do
or in what way do I benefit. Now, I'm not a clueless business guy. I actually
program for a living. I couldn't figure out those two things.

~~~
qu4z-2
It was pretty clear to me that it's a service that automatically turns your
mailto: links into pop-up contact forms.

~~~
orangethirty
My point is that the landing page is not clear enough for dumb people like me.

------
jggonz
This is great. Building forms and managing email is indeed painful. Sometimes
you just want to have a form pop up and a message sent. I personally dislike
mailto links because I am always jumping between computers and browsers that
are not properly set up to send email via my gmail account. Don't let the
negative posts here discourage you. Good luck!

------
elliottcarlson
I actually like this - I don't configure my desktop client and purely use
gmail - additionally, I often browse in incognito mode, logged out of any
email client. I have been deterred from emailing site issues to the contact
email when I had to jump through additional hoops. It's not part of my work
flow, and thus I don't want to deal with setting things up for it.

I think the one suggestion of adding an actual mailto: on the form would be
beneficial and allows those who want that as well easy access to the email
address as well.

------
alpb
$3/mo for something that won't last forever, I can't change design, doesn't
show my email address as an alternative in the same window. And please stop
using word 'Square', it is already over, like 'Insta'.

------
elyase
I think you should market it differently, something along the lines of "easy
contact forms for static websites". This is a real need many small web shops
have. I for example would love to be able to host my small clients websites on
S3, but Contact Forms is the one requirement that forbids doing this.

~~~
rubinelli
Absolutely this. The first thing that came to mind on seeing this was a site
for a NGO I want to migrate away from Wordpress.

(although I wonder how well they'd monetize those; 100 emails is an enormous
amount for really low traffic sites)

------
1123581321
I've been here before I knew anything about web programming. This is a need
real site owners have. And, I've watched people stumble on mailto links
because an unconfigured mail client opens up and other issues.

However, I think Wufoo, Jotform, Google Forms and CRMs have snapped up a lot
of the market. There aren't left many people who know little enough to only
have mailto as an option but don't know so little they can't search for
solutions.

As for those complaining that they like mailtos: they are appeased by
providing a contact email address along with the form. This is the way to
maximize retention (and hopefully receive only a little more spam.)

------
artursapek
So it's a kind of prettier version of the contact forms I've been seeing for a
decade?

~~~
justhw
From what I understand, It's converts mailto links to a contact form.

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prodigal_erik
<https://squaresend.com/mailto:5tzgrwg> is a featureless gray window with no
content at all. Please use progressive enhancement (put a valid mailto: anchor
in the markup and then replace it in the DOM) rather than shipping markup
that's unusably broken without trusting js from some third party nobody has
heard of.

------
mrpollo
Seems like people here are more inclined to use mailto links and I agree since
sending from our mail app gives us a clearer path onto whats going on and
certainty that the email at least went out, but being honest what's the ratio
between people that really know how a contact form works and people that don't
really care?

A good solution would be to create a new link on the form overlay that
presents the users with the option of just using their mail app in case
someone still doesn't want to use the form.

I think you have a great product it does take away the pain from administering
a contact form, as simple as it might sound this is a cumbersome task for many
people that don't have the technical skills to understand all the pieces that
go into creating one, well done!

Question, how are you fighting spam?, from what I can tell you are obfuscating
the email once your code bootstraps the <anchor tags>, what happens if spammer
isn't using an environment that executes JS

------
MichaelApproved
Strange. I have not seen one positive review of this post and yet it made it
to the top 5 on the HN homepage. Does that seem suspicious to anyone else?

Edit: up to #3 now. Who's upvoting this if everyone commenting is critical of
it?

~~~
coderdude
Most people who comment have something critical to say. Most people who up-
vote don't have something critical to say and so they don't comment. I up-
voted the submission and hate mailto links. You can't really judge the
landscape here based on a few comments.

~~~
MichaelApproved
I'd agree with you if _most_ comments were critical and some were positive but
were zero positive reviews.

Also, often I see people shoot off one liner comments praising a website. So
it's easy for people to praise when they like a post.

~~~
coderdude
Indeed, I could be wrong.

I think this service has a lot of potential and his site looks fantastic. He
might go on to save a lot of people from headaches. Particularly, non-coders.
He even has the free/paid issue worked out that so many others simply ignore
until later.

I was just too lazy to say anything.

~~~
MichaelApproved
_"Indeed, I could be wrong."_

I might be the one who was wrong. As a programmer, this seems like a small
solution that's already been solved with wufoo, contact forms 7 and the like
but it's number 1 on HN so, even if the votes were faked (which was my initial
suspicion), it looks like many people appreciate the product or want to
discuss it.

 _"Particularly, non-coders."_

Maybe as a programmer, my bias of how simple this solution is and how it's
been "solved" by others, lead me to be even more suspicious about something
like this getting this much attention.

~~~
waterapp
Hi Michael, I can guarantee you there's no hidden thing going on -- at least
as far as we're concerned. We've taken all the feedback even though 90% was
negative but I'm sure the people voting it up saw that a lot of people have
this problem, maybe even themselves. I don't know how most comments could be
negative while it got that many upvotes, but I can only tell we have
absolutely nothing to do with it other than posting the Show HN.

~~~
MichaelApproved
My last comment tends to agree with you.

It seems there are many people who need this solution even with the products
already out there. I hope you find lots of them and solve their problem with
your product. One thing that could help with getting more customers is to
create a Wordpress plug-in so more people can find you.

Good luck!

------
d0m
Seems like all the comments here are very negative. On a meta-question, why
would that link be ranked #1 ?! I mean, sure, someone can upvote the link and
write a negative comment, but that's unlikely.

That being said, I think this could be a useful javascript plugin.. I.e. when
you click a mailto link, you get a contact form in an overlay, maybe with a
"Send this email from my email client" for people who prefer to use native or
gmail clients. As to actually _send_ the email, it could simply use sendgrid
or a post call to the backend.

~~~
nkorth
Instead of a bunch of comments just saying "this is cool", it has some
upvotes. When people leave specific feedback it's usually criticism.

------
solox3
What, why would you intentionally break my freedom to use any mail client I
want? If I really want to send an email from the browser, I would have just
used an extension that handles mailto: links.

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ajhit406
Rails has a few ways to obfuscate mailto links through the mail_to helper
method. JS encoding, hex encoding, and just text obfuscation.

[http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/UrlHel...](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/UrlHelper.html#method-
i-mail_to)

Solves the problem of getting spammed by email scraping bots. I'm assuming you
could write your own helpers pretty easily in other languages / frameworks if
they don't already exist.

------
wiggly
No idea why you think I would rather not use my email client that is
configured correctly, doesn't require I state my email address, possibly has
sig file and ensure that only people with the latest and greatest browsers can
contact the business that implements this.

People have been griping about crappy contact forms with no option to use real
email forever, this is so retrograde.

------
weisser
In what situation would someone prefer a contact form over a mailto link that
opens in their mail app (or, in my case, Gmail in the browser)?

~~~
qu4z-2
In the case that their mail-app is something like Yahoo or Hotmail and doesn't
open on a mailto: link.

So yeah. If mailto: is configured properly, it's better. Sadly, on many
computers it isn't, and a contact form is sort of a "minimal but workable
everywhere" solution.

I think the ideal combination is having a contact form pop up with a "Send
mail from my own client" mailto: link at the bottom.

------
volandovengo
Hey guys - congrats on the product launch! I'm really confused though. How is
this better than an email form?

------
tathagata
This can be useful for people with static websites who want to include a
contact form in some of their pages.

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themckman
I am actively turned off when I click a "Contact Us" link and I'm taken to a
form rather than seeing a new email pop up. Most of the time decide not to
contact that business and look for one I can contact immediately via email
only going back to the original business as a last resort.

------
tomasien
Mailto: links are a hair-on-fire problem for most people. I didn't even know
that I could set them to open my Gmail, and I'm a web developer. As long as
the pop up also told me what the email was so I could do it in my client if I
wanted, this is a way better solution.

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hackernewsfan
I don't get this, why would anybody use this if a web contact form can be
easily setup by any CMS nowadays?

I actually changed my contact form to a mailto link for some of my sites,
unless the form requires complex input using a form builder.

~~~
qu4z-2
I have to admit I've never seen a static site generator that supported contact
forms. Perhaps such a thing exists, but remember that not everyone's using a
CMS.

PERSONAL OPINION DISCLAIMER: Because CMSes are terrible for small websites.

------
jkonowitch
Neat idea. I think reliability is an important feature to call out on the
landing page. If I'm a business owner that depends on this service as a funnel
for new clients, for instance, I would want guarantees regarding uptime and
reliability.

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nezza-_-
You are a contact form with a name 'inspired' by squarespace?!

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drewcoo
I see dubious comments here. Data answers questions. Is there data to show
that mailtos are annoying or that Squaresend is stickier than mailtos?

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democracy
The widget might be useful, well done!

Any plans to add other languages?

Also please add a 'cancel' or 'close' button to the form...

~~~
democracy
"Any plans to add other languages?"

Nevermind, looks like it is configurable...

------
joe5150
Well, I like it and am using it!

Just one thing: what's with the roast beef?

------
coherentpony
It'd be a good idea to have a 'cancel' button on the pop-up.

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waterapp
Hello everyone co-founder here,

This post was in the top 5 until a few minutes ago and it seems that some
people have flagged it. I know it seems very suspicious that the submission
could get so many upvotes and very little positive feedback but I'm also
puzzled at how that happened in the first place. I understand that a lot of
people here think we're breaking mailto links but we're trying to solve a real
problem that many people (non-HNers) have. I submitted this because we wanted
to get feedback and we did (and we take it all to heart) but I'm shocked that
some folks here think there was a voting ring. I think the people voting it up
are doing so for either the discussion or to congratulate the fact that we
launched. Can someone explain why they flagged it? Thanks!

