HEY is trying to be the x-nth coming of email, and DHH is its messiah (I won’t get into that because it is not my beef).

Why am I mocking HEY? A thread.

HEY is suffering from the same, typical bullshit we see in a lot of tech launches today: an incomplete product whose hype is centered around a niche audience while simultaneously missing key features for its niche audience to even begin to really enjoy using the product.

The audience for HEY is described as everyone, but come the fuck on: the primary founder’s notoriety is sunk heavily in technologists and developers.

You know? Nerdfluencers.

Like Sparrow (and Gmail before it), they’re using artificial scarcity through an invite system to build hype, buy time, and hide the fact that the platform isn’t the panacea it is advertised to be.

What person has the time to migrate _all their accounts_ to a new, [at]hey[dot]com email address?

No one. Not one. Nerds especially know better. Thus, not having custom domains available at launch is an immediate bullet to HEY’d knees.

You can’t really get a sense of what HEY offers unless you have a lot of active traffic to it, meaning you need to establish it as your primary email.

“Just use an auto-forward,” right? Because that’s the solution: email every-fucking-where.

It’s not just inconvenience! It’s a modern security nightmare.

The great thing about a custom domain is that the owner can point its mail exchange records anywhere and keep complete control of their domain and identity.

It’s why @Fastmail and @ProtonMail are easy transitions. Launching without that key feature for a niche audience like nerdfluencers is nuts, they can’t really use the platform despite any cool inteligent marketing for ‘Imbox.’

You can’t have an ‘Imbox’ without stuff in it.

At that point, it’s just a fucking box.

I will give them credit that tracker blocking is cool, etc. But it’s easy to block trackers when you aren’t getting mail there anyway.

I don’t think HEY will fail entirely, but it definitely won’t reach any type of critical mass.

The pricing, too, is on point with G Suite, but literally G Suite is a _suite_ of products reaching much farther outside of Gmail.

The value prospect for non-nerdfluencer users just isn’t fucking there.