Spike Email

Since the demise of Astro (after Slack bought and killed it) I’ve been looking and failing to find a really good email client.

I got an invite to Superhuman… But $30 a month for email just doesn’t work for me right now, although the app looks very good.

So now I’m trying Spike - it’s cross platform, and has a great UX where it puts personal emails into a threaded conversational format.

Another think I’ve done recently is used an app called Cleanfox to unsubscribe from tons of mailing lists.

This was the outcome.

If you’re like me, and Inbox Zero seems like an unachievable goal, this app is a good place to start!

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Not heard of Spike… I use Spark though.

I don’t delete emails. I do have a habit of marking all of the unreads ones as read, though.

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What did you like about Spike? And what no good about the Gmail webapp? I’ve still used nothing better. Inbox was an utter abomination.

I’ll second spark. I’m loving the synchronisation across devices. No more having to setup multiple accounts when you have a new device!

Native support for send later is also amazing - compared to outlook’s version which requires outlook to be running (or did… Unsure if changed since I stopped using it). I’m a bit addicted to send later - especially where I worry a colleague or someone will react to emails sent out of hours, rather than just leaving them until the next working day.

I have Spark as well and it’s very functional… I just need a more delightful UX so that I actually feel compelled to do what I need to do.

Kind of like Monzo :grin:

Spike has very friendly and modern UX… And the simplification/separation between “actual” personal emails and newsletter type stuff is very good!

When Inbox died I tried Spark and then just ended up moving back to Gmail :upside_down_face:

For all the Exchange accounts I have I use Thunderbird.

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Try Mail Pilot 3… it’s super awesome even in its beta state. Alex the dev is really good and has a Slack channel for members

https://mailpilothq.com/

Going to give cleanfox a go. Looks good!

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I was a big fan of Google Inbox because of inbox zero and because of how simple it was in delivering on that. Although it was unfortunate that Inbox was killed, the features that mattered for inbox zero are now part of the Gmail app so that is my current preferred email application – both on my phone and on the web.

I think the key to a good email experience is independent of any app, and it’s based around managing what you receive. If you receive email that is not beneficial to you then that email should not make it to your inbox, whether that’s unsubscribing from newsletters, or adjusting workflows around certain tools, we should be ruthless about worthless email stealing our attention.

I think about every email as a unit of work that I will action and if I’m receiving email that I am not doing anything with then I ensure that I no longer receive them. Although sometimes I’ll have subscribed to a newsletter that maybe someday I’ll be interested in enough to justify receiving the emails, my policy is very strict: if it isn’t providing value now, it’s gone. As a consequence of this I receive very few emails (maybe 20 or so per day) and typically every single one provides value to me.

I think a lot of it ties into the hoarding mentality that a lot of people have, there’s this idea – especially in the context of technology – that we may as well keep everything since GBs are practically free and “maybe someday I’ll need that email that brand sent me in 2014 with their latest offers from that week” but there’s a hidden cost to that mentality that people implicitly take on because it’s the default.

Anyway that’s my recommendation: treat every email as if it’s someone coming over to your desk in the middle of the day asking for your attention, you’ll soon have no problem getting to inbox zero. If I were to design an email client, it would have a limit on the amount of email you’re allowed to receive and it would have limits on how you’re allowed to interact with it: no constant stream of context-stealing emails that have no place stealing attention in the middle of the day.

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