
Polymail (YC S16) looks to unify business email tools into a single web app - dalton
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/31/polymail-looks-to-unify-business-email-tools-into-a-single-web-app/
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krmmalik
I enjoy using Polymail. It has a very nice user experience, in fact probably
one of the best experiences of any email app I have used personally. I have
been using it for 3yrs at least.

That said, Polymail does nothing for me business wise. I don't use it for my
team, nor do I intend to any time soon. It serves me well as a simple email
client for personal needs, but that's as far as things go.

They, along with a few other SaaS companies seem to be intent on solving
problems I don't need solving or prioritising the wrong ones.

It's all good and well to say that other apps failed in this space because
they didn't have a strong business model, which is fair enough but if you're
not solving the right problems for your users, you're not going to get very
far.

I really can't believe, that in 2018, we still dont have decent solutions for
email collaboration for teams and for customer relationship management. We
have one app in this space that has done a half decent job , which is Front
but I still can't persuade myself to move to it. It has a confusing user
experience and is not well priced.

So we're left with stitching things together through various tools which
Polymail claims to solve but doesn't.

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rtpg
The biggest reason I believe for there to not be a unified tool at this point
is that requirements are superficially the same, but when you dig deeply
almost every company has a different set of needs, even locally contradictory
ones

So you have stuff like Salesforce, with huge barriers to entry... But you can
basically do everything. Sure, you might still need a Salesforce expert , but
that's easier than 2 or 3 developers for a hand rolled thing that doesn't
really integrate with anything.

Say what you will about paper workflows, but being able to paperclip stuff
together, copy, write anywhere, etc. makes it pretty flexible. Lots of the
cheaper tools with "easy onboarding" on the other hand...

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projectramo
There are so many email apps and clients out now that a user never knows which
ones are worth trying.

For me the killer features would be:

1\. Look through my entire history of emails to figure out who my friends are

2\. Remind me to email them more frequently

Like a CRM, but its just to email to friends.

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benhatten
On that request - I would try contactually. Pretty good on that front.

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BadassFractal
I really liked Contactually as a personal CRM because it could look into all
the different messaging systems and tell me when I talked to someone last, but
then I believe Facebook / LinkedIn etc shut down that functionality.

Is there anything of this sort out there for individuals for networking
purposes? Not trying to sell these folks anything. I want to be told what my
last touchpoint with someone was, when, where, regardless of what platform
that was done on. That would be so useful.

I think Accompany was supposed to do that originally but they pivoted into
something else?

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projectramo
Exactly. I wonder if contactually would just get rid of the team features and
give a personal use price.

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taroth
I’ve found good use of Polymail and pay $20/m for team pro. It’s a love-hate
relationship though due to small but disruptive UX patterns. Some examples:

The MacOS app does not follow normal keybinding conventions. Specifically, ESC
causes the app to exit full screen and cmd+shift+f doesn’t enter full screen.
No option to customize either.

The iOS app will instantly show notifications for new emails, but upon opening
up the app you have to wait 5-10 seconds for the emails to appear (while gmail
is instant).

That said I enjoy the inbox zero image, snoozing of messages, and overall
style.

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jacobkranz
Semi-related, but I love how when I did a password reset to login to their web
ui, it redirected me to "welovepg.polymail.io"

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hkr_mag
Awesome job, guys! We have several team members (mostly sales) using Polymail
as a default email client.

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mike-cardwell
This service fails
[https://www.emailprivacytester.com](https://www.emailprivacytester.com).

Where is the setting to disable loading of remote resources?

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EduardoBautista
Apple mail.app does very well if you disable loading of images.

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at-fates-hands
Does this mean Google Wave was that far ahead of its time?

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mxuribe
I always like google wave for its unified stream/UI. I - for one - think it
was ahead of its time.

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mxuribe
I wish there was a matrix client plugin that integrated with a slightly
improved Thunderbird. Email plus awesome decentralized chat for the win!

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Lazare
Tried it, didn't care for it. May work for some.

(Personally, I'm loving Missive -
[https://missiveapp.com/](https://missiveapp.com/) \- which seems targeted at
a similar niche and has some very slick execution.)

