
Superhuman’s email app is overhyped and overpriced - italophil
https://www.theverge.com/21299681/superhuman-email-app-review-price-gmail-iphone-mac
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KennyFromIT
Am I the only one that feels like this article (along with this resulting HN
thread) is straight out of the Hey PR machine? I guess I just don't understand
the value this type of post adds to the HN community.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I signed up for a hey.com trial, to test it with emailprivacytester.com (of
which I'm the author). I was a bit disappointed to be honest. When you use
hey.com's webmail, it loads remote images when you read an email, and there
doesn't even appear to be an option to turn that off. Granted, they hide your
IP by proxying the content, just like Gmail does, but they don't hide the fact
that you read an email, or when you read it.

These systems should really just fetch all remote content in advance, rather
than waiting until it's read. That would make it impossible for a sender to
know if a message was read or not.

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freediver
I am an ex-user. A search through my email archive would regularly take ten
seconds while gmail would do it instantly. The most frustrating thing about it
was constant insisting on how super-fast it was in all their marketing while
my experience was completely opposite.

~~~
cercatrova
Really? Mine is the exact opposite experience. Gmail, the website, takes at
least 2 minutes to load and be usable, so much that I need to use a separate
extension to use it normally (Checker Plus for Gmail).

~~~
alexpetralia
That's bizarre. Two minutes? Mine takes about 3-6 seconds generally. Yours is
20x as much.

~~~
cercatrova
It takes around that much time until interactivity, yeah. It's incredibly
slow, and I have gigabit internet.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
I'll mention this yet again so everyone can ignore it, but if you use the
HTML-only option, it's clunkier but very fast. But I can say this 100 times
and nobody does it.

~~~
kohtatsu
I can confirm the HTML-only option is great, and there is one for holdouts of
Facebook too: [https://mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com)

(also via Tor
[https://mbasic.facebookcorewwi.onion](https://mbasic.facebookcorewwi.onion))

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pl0x
Never understood the hype around superhuman. From the outside it looks as if
it was hyped by a bunch of silicon valley VC's to drive up the valuation of
the product.

~~~
omniscient_oce
Also the invite-only beta thing that was being talked about on Twitter in a
way to make it #mysterious

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Androider
Superhuman is a slightly faster GMail, while Hey
([https://hey.com/features/](https://hey.com/features/)) on the other hand
seems like a rethinking of the fundamentals of email starting from "Anyone can
email you".

I've tried inbox zero etc. but they all fail in the long run for me (I'm one
of those folks with the red badge of shame with literally 40,000 unread emails
on my phone), so I'm eager to give Hey a try which gives you a workflow of how
to do email: screen, reply-later, focus mode bulk reply.

~~~
jonshariat
I got into the "beta" last night only to find out it was a 1 week trial and
the cost was $100/year. (Also when claiming emails short addresses costs even
more money per year).

Right off the bat it put a really bad taste in my mouth. I'm helping you test
your product. Changing your email is a really big commitment, I can't imagine
this is the way to convince people to try it.

~~~
balladeer
Wait, don't they allow custom domains? I think this lock-in, even if it is for
_reinvented_ email, ought to be a big "no".

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hguant
No no, you see, you must be _brave_, be _bold_ and irrevocably tie yourself to
our product.

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northerdome
I use Superhuman. It's really good and they get the details right. Good
keyboard shortcuts, good offline. It isn't revolutionary but has an attention
to detail other services I've tried in the past miss. I also like paying a
premium for software rather than see a company flounder to make the financials
work. I've had so many of my favorite tools die. I like that I can pay
Superhuman to help them continue to make a great product.

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sealthedeal
My take on SH... They essentially just teach you how to do things that gmail
already lets you do, but put a cuter UI around it, and they force teach you
concepts like inbox zero. Other than that I see 0 value in the product.

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raiyu
When Hey.com announced their features I scrolled through each one and would
probably get value from 75% of them. Superhuman seems more of a signaling
play.

Hey.com features on top of Gmail though, that would be amazing.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I would absolutely pay to get many of they Hey.com features on top of my
Fastmail accounts.

~~~
ekovarski
If you don't mind me asking, what features would those be?

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toomuchtodo
* Inbox whitelist

* Files view

* Native large file transfers (even if I had to provide my own Backblaze API creds for storing those files, instead of having to use Firefox Send)

* Clips

* Notes to self in an email thread

* "Paper trail" for receipts (although I can probably accomplish this with filters)

* Thread unfollowing

[https://hey.com/features/](https://hey.com/features/)

~~~
terrycody
mate, I got some really good hey names, interested?

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m3kw9
One of the best secrets to manage your email is to disable the Badge. It’s
useless, really for the most part unless you can consistently get it down to
single digits.

Instead you aggressively set rules to filter and check your email manually
when you are good and ready.

If you really need to, only allow VIPs email to show up in badge count. iOS
supports this.

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theagilecoder
Moved from Superhuman to hey.com. I really like both but hey.com is way
cheaper.

~~~
kamilszybalski
How are you currently managing calendar invites and scheduling while using
hey?

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kstrauser
On the one hand, that’s ridiculous.

On the other, if you find a way to get people to pay you $30 a month for an
otherwise free or cheap service, then bravo. Even if I think it’s silly, it’s
a progressive tax on something way less evil than, say, bottling public water
and then selling it back to the public.

~~~
j45
As much as I’m not a fan of paying that much for email, the fact that anyone
has the ability to interrupt you has an enormous potential cost.

Being more effective with email and communicating is a life changing
discipline and skill.

The 30/mo should be seen as the hundreds or thousands it can make or safe some
people who have to be effective with their time and communication. Again,
maybe not for everyone.

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graeme
> Well, first off, despite the astronomical price, it is a good email
> application. In another world, one where Superhuman was more reasonably
> priced and a little more customizable, I could see it being very popular.

Assume your time is worth $50/hour and you can deduct superhuman as a business
expense. Let’s say you do email every day in a month, so 30 days.

If I did my math right, Superhuman just has to save 36 min per month to break
even. That is 1.2 min per day.

If Superhuman is even marginally better than the best competition, then it
meets that bar, and is profitable for someone who earns money with their work
time. That’s the target market.

I use it. I find the desktop app great, mobile apps so so. They have major ram
issues on ios. But I love the desktop app.

~~~
cercatrova
It is strange that people don't consider the money value of time when
addressing the prices of products. 30 dollars is extremely cheap, since 36
minutes per month as you say is such a small value as to be negligible.

~~~
taytus
>30 dollars is extremely cheap

There is a wide world out there where $30 is not cheap at all.

I wish Americans consider stuff like that before commenting but I gave up
years ago.

~~~
cercatrova
Sure, it has to be scaled to the market. However, even the equivalent of 30
dollars given a higher per hour rate (such as 50) is cheap. That Superhuman
does not institute a region-based pricing is a different story, but you cannot
deny that to Americans, 30 dollars is cheap when considering the time saved.

~~~
hellotomyrars
I actually don’t agree. $30/mo for an email service (which most people get for
free) is a huge ask for many Americans. Especially when everything is sold as
a subscription. Sure it’s “only x per month” but when everything someone buys
is a small amount per month it adds up quickly. 30/mo might be chump change
for a software engineer, especially one in a tech bubble area.

30/mo for email is however, not cheap or practical for many other people
though.

~~~
cercatrova
Superhuman and apps like it aren't designed for every American. It's for
people whose job is to basically email all day, like investors, managers,
recruiters, etc. For them it is absolutely worth it. It's like asking why a
specialized tool is so expensive for those who need it. It's precisely because
they need and would use it so much that the tool is worth it.

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foobaw
It's good to see more competition in the email space as a consumer. Superhuman
should get a good push from hey.com, as their only previous large competitor
was Gmail.

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j45
Or it's not for everyone.. which is OK too.

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dhagz
I don't see why anyone would pay more than $10/mo for a non-Gmail email
service. But I'm also a grumpy weirdo who prefers to use plain-text email
wherever possible, so all these "Gmail-killers" don't really offer what I
want.

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upofadown
Superhuman is supposed to be for business but it doesn't do encryption?

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koolhead17
Rahul is a visionary, thought leader. Silicon Valley needs more founder turned
VC like him.

~~~
dpflan
Can you explain more about what is "visionary"?

~~~
koolhead17
He is everywhere/podcasts talking about the PMF and how they built the
product.

New way for monetizing a product many failed trying.

