

You Can't Afford To Stop Using Mail - premyslruzicka
https://medium.com/look-what-i-made/560ba39438bc

======
jrabone
I run a mail server for my own company and my immediate friends and family.

I hope you aren't planning on using one of the many ESPs to do your actual
delivery; increasingly I am blacklisting them (and by ASN) since despite any
claims to the contrary they don't give two shits about spam or UCE. There may
or may not be collateral damage but I really don't care anymore; I have a
home-grown analysis script that runs daily over my logs and generates pretty
HTML summary reports of who got blocked and why, and 6 months in it's looking
pretty good.

One size fits no-one for email (which is why Spamassassin always fails me
sooner or later). There are entire ASNs that have no business talking to me
and get the firewall. There are entire countries that (on the basis of GeoIP
lookup) get aggressively greylisted. Nobody has ever sent any of my users a
legitimate email with a utf8-encoded subject. The list of rules just keeps
growing.

And finally, if anyone reading this has anything to do with

bestpure.co.uk besttip.co.uk bighut.co.uk exclusivetips.co.uk liteme.co.uk
officialnow.co.uk opost.co.uk piple.co.uk savertips.co.uk retailrat.co.uk
tipmail.co.uk websaveguide.co.uk wepost.co.uk

please go and get an proper job. Or die. I don't mind which.

~~~
mey
And this is why I stopped running my own email and use gmail. This entirely
alone.

~~~
jrabone
But you're missing out on the all the fun of managing your own DKIM & ADSP DNS
records! And debugging mobile device SSL issues. And Courier-IMAP IDLE support
for various broken IMAP clients. Not to mention Outlook's amusing approach to
TLS. What do you DO all day?

Also, does Gmail do S/MIME? I see a Firefox plugin, and Penango which appears
to be Firefox/IE. What about Chrome / Android?

------
bambax
> _We have a strategy how to wipe out spam for good._

I don't love Gmail and I certainly don't love Google, but using Gmail "wiped
out spam for good" for me.

In my experience, false positives are close to zero and false negatives
extremely rare (and not very annoying), so how is spam not a solved problem?

~~~
bergie
As usual with Google, they're still not handling multilingual situations too
well. It has been a long time since I've seen any spam in English, but tens of
mails in languages like Finnish and Georgian get through every day.

I wonder if the easiest solution would be a language blacklist. I have no
legitimate reason to want to receive email in languages I don't understand.

~~~
baudehlo
This is already available in some SMTP servers.

But it's not a cut and dried situation. It's hard to identify language in very
short emails. It's quite possible to get false positives too, when you get
mail from someone with an accented name. Language detection gives you a
probability that it's in a particular language, not a yes/no.

------
ctdonath
Here's a thought to toss out and see if it sticks (or has been done):

How about an email app which groups messages by frequency/familiarity of
sender? If someone sends me messages often, or has sent stuff on occasion over
a very long time, group it at one end of the inbox; if seldom and not known
for long, somewhere in the middle; if sender (&/| reply-to) has never been
seen before, shove it to the other end. Maybe also track how long I read their
messages: if I spend time on what's sent (relative to content size), it's
important; if it's straight to trash or less than a half-second, put it in the
"junk to screen" pile. VIP/white/black-lists are a pain because I have to
screen every address listed; do some probabilistic sorting for me! don't just
list things in a linear or threaded by-receipt-date line.

~~~
julian37
_do some probabilistic sorting for me!_

Gmail's Priority Inbox does this, and it works reasonably well.
<https://support.google.com/mail/answer/186531?hl=en>

_if sender ( &/| reply-to) has never been seen before, shove it to the other
end_

That would only be helpful in a world where you never make new contacts.

------
wyqueshocec
Your website's banner is huge.

<http://imgur.com/Y8V6V14>

~~~
solarflair
That's how Medium displays a blog post's featured image.

More examples: <https://medium.com/>

------
abgoldberg
It looks like this is not a general purpose mail client, but rather something
specific to your own hosted domain.

If you're looking for a usable IMAP/POP mail client today, try Inky
(<http://inky.com>), which has a lot of these features already and many more
on the roadmap. It's available for Mac and Windows right now, with Linux
support coming soon ([http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/05/inky-pens-linux-
support-o...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/05/inky-pens-linux-support-on-
roadmap))

~~~
premyslruzicka
Yes, we're not trying to be a mail client. Our focus is also on the server
side. You need to own a domain to be able to use our service.

Inky is a cool solution.

------
deanclatworthy
I have to say that whilst your site is making some very bold claims, I think
it's extremely clear what your goals are. Furthermore, I found it really
engaging that your request for an invite form was a little more interesting
than simply entering my email. It's nice you're offering a mini service around
this, and furthermore the idea of running a mail check on a friend's mail
account is a nice way of ensuring some virality.

Best of luck, and I really do hope you can solve the problems you outline. I
can't wait to try it out!

~~~
premyslruzicka
Wow! Thank you for such a comment. Probably the best thing I've ever read
about what we're doing :)

It won't be easy but we can see it really happen. It needs to happen.

Stay in touch! \- Premek

------
Sujan
Interesting:

> Thank you ...@gmail.com

> One more thing. We took a look at your current mail's health:

> Deliverability of your messages (thumbsdown)

> Your server is weakly secured and could be used for sending spam.

Seems like a false positive.

~~~
premyslruzicka
That check looks for blacklisted IPs of your provider. Gmail is blacklisted
very often, thus making deliverability of your messages to some servers lower.
Might be a poor wording on our side. We'll take a look at that.

------
noinput
Looking forward to trying it, however requested an invite and the scanner on
the Thank You screen mentions my @gmail.com account got a thumbs down for
Deliverability and being 'weakly secured'. Kind of a bold statement to make
about gmail, no?

~~~
premyslruzicka
I appreciate your interest. :) That check looks for blacklisted IPs of your
provider. Gmail is blacklisted very often, thus making deliverability of your
messages to some servers lower. Might be a poor wording on our side. We'll
take a look at that.

~~~
noinput
Thanks for the clarity, probably best to explain it on your site just as you
did here. Good luck with the rollout/launch.

~~~
premyslruzicka
Thanks! :)

------
awwstn
1\. See Mailbox launch on HN and TechCrunch and immediately sell for $100mm.

2\. Launch mail app on HN.

3\. $$$?

~~~
premyslruzicka
I assure you we're not for sale. There's a lot to be done to replace e-mail
and I can't see anyone trying.

------
pit
hi@welovemail.com

So we took a look at the mail's health:

Deliverability of the messages thumbsdown

Misuse of the address thumbsup

Redundancy for incoming messages thumbsup

Tracking of sent messages thumbsdown

It seems the owner needs our service really badly. Please, let them now.

------
nollidge
I think you mean "You can't afford to stop _using_ mail"?

~~~
shawabawa3
I think he means "You can't afford to stop using _email_ "

I'm from the UK and I've never heard anybody say mail when they meant email.

~~~
nollidge
It was a typo before, used to say "use" instead of "using".

------
kijin
Things I like:

\- Delivery tracking. This is the single most exciting feature that I found in
your screenshots (welovemail.com). Mass mailing solutions and Transactional
email services have had this feature for ages, and it's about time regular
email got it, too. No more need to parse the incoherent ramblings of MAILER-
DAEMON, hooray!

\- Three-column view. (Or was it four-column?) I'm not particularly fond of
16:9 widescreens, but I might as well use all the space since I can't seem to
buy anything else anyway.

\- Managing multiple accounts.

\- "The only way we can build a product that we can go and use without any
stress today is to make the best out of what’s already available." --
Absolutely agreed. Email is email. It's not a todo list, it's not an instant
messaging protocol. I'm glad you're taking this seriously.

\- "Get a receipt from a local store directly to your inbox formatted the way
for use in an accounting app." -- Wonderful. Don't stop with a pretty app,
please go ahead and write an RFC that defines the standard markup for
electronic invoices, receipts, to-do list items, etc. Then we'll be able to
use SMTP, HTTP, or any other protocol to ship them around.

Things I'm not sure I'm going to like, although it seems early to make a
judgment:

\- "How simple a life could be if every citizen would own a mail account
allowing them to vote in any election from anywhere in our solar system." --
What does email have to do with voting? My email account is not my identity,
no matter how hard Mozilla Persona et al. tries to shoehorn identities into
email addresses. It's just an address that I happen to be occupying at the
moment, and that I can leave behind whenever I want. So please don't try to
sell your product as a candidate for universal adoption from the first day.
You'll be disappointed.

\- Managing multiple accounts. Although I also mentioned this in "things I
like", one of the reasons I keep multiple accounts is to put firewalls between
them. For example, my primary email account is never accessed from a mobile
device, I use a "proxy" account for that. The password recovery address is yet
another account at a different provider. If one of my accounts get
compromised, I don't want the attacker to gain access to any other account.
How is your app going to manage user credentials and flow of information
to/from your servers to minimize vulnerabilities?

Some questions/suggestions about the UI mockup:

\- Social media integration, from Facebook/Twitter in the sidebar to nicely
cropped photos for all your correspondents. Please tell me this can be turned
off. When FastMail.fm rolled out its new interface a few months ago, there was
a significant outcry from privacy-sensitive users who discovered that the
webapp was pulling in everyone's Gravatar.

\- Where's the metadata, like those ugly CC/BCC/Reply-To lines, "display
source" links, and the message size? If you leave them out, you'll be lacking
some of the features that email pros can't live without, and therefore earn
the criticism that you're trying to replace email with something less. On the
other hand, if you put them back in the UI, it won't be as neat as your
screenshots currently are.

\- Can I compose full-screen, or do I have to live with 100px of darkened,
unusable space around your cute pop-up whenever I'm trying to write something?

\- Is this a hosted web service? iOS/Android app? OSX/Windows program? All of
the above?

/edited

~~~
premyslruzicka
Thank you for such a comment!

To your not sure points:

\- Voting: We understand that it's just what a future could be. We are not
working on this right now and won't till we're in a position it might get
useful. It will start out as a mail hosting with a nice client having some
cool features. This is just how we'd like to use mail in the future if we're
lucky enough to have your support to be around that long.

\- Multiple accounts: You have a username/password to your account that has
access to all your mailboxes. Mailboxes themselves don't have any
username/password combo. Owner of a domain can give you an access to a
mailbox. We're using SMS to verify you and is used again in case of a lost
password. To have a better control over access on a different devices it's a
nice idea to disable some mailboxes from mobile devices. We'll look into it.
Messages will be encrypted and communicate with your devices only over HTTPS.
We're taking security very seriously and we're enhancing all of this all the
time even for the beta to be absolutely safe.

\- Social media: Honestly, we don't have any plans to make this optional to be
displayed.

\- Metadata: Don't worry, I myself need those basic information at hand. The
app as it's getting developed changes a bit from design screenshots but not so
much it makes it overwhelming. Still looks simple.

\- Compose: It'll be possible to compose fullscreen and/or in a new tab.

\- Service: It's a mail hosting, you need to own a domain to be able to use
our service. At the moment you need to also use only our client solution, beta
will be browser-based web app and mobile and desktop apps are coming next. In
the future we have plans to create an API to connect our hosting into more
clients.

------
peterwwillis
Some thoughts:

 _"We have a strategy how to wipe out spam for good. [...] Phishing is going
to be just a story too."_

Whitelisting pretty much solves this. (Multiple accounts also help; one you
give to people directly, and one you use for everything online, helps bump
personal communication to the top)

 _"Are your important messages always delivered? We will guarantee a delivery
in less than a second."_

Those are two different things. Immediate delivery has nothing to do with
guaranteed delivery.

 _"Get a receipt from a local store directly to your inbox formatted the way
for use in an accounting app._ "

Are you writing RFCs for receipts? If not, this probably won't be picked up by
anyone but customers of the accounting app.

~~~
dmbaggett
In our experience, whitelisting really doesn't solve the problem. I often get
email from people I don't know about things I want to read about ("hey, I'm a
VC who wants to give you money!").

Automagically parsing receipts is certainly cool, and several mail vendors are
working on it, including us (Inky).

Guaranteed delivery isn't really possible without controlling both sender and
recipient's client; nor is immediate delivery.

~~~
premyslruzicka
You're right about delivery. This is something we are going to work on. Don't
think of us as a competitor. We want to create an infrastructure and we need
client solutions to work with us ;-)

