For the past week, I have been testing Hey.com email. Whilst it is still the same email that we are familiar with, but the way your email is triaged and presented to you is different. Whilst there are several different mail clients that allow for different methods of triaging email, i.e., separating email as its comes in into important, save for later, etc., Hey.com is different in that it provides the entire service, not just the client.
Hey.com is a paid email service, USD99/year, that comes with 100GB of space, along with its filtering/triaging workflow system and a new personal blog system. This isn’t your free Gmail service, as Hey.com pledges that it “won’t use personal data to sell ads or any other purpose”. Another feature that Hey.com provides that I have not seen from any email service that I use today (not even Protonmail, AFAIK) is that it blocks those email spy pixels.
I am currently half-way through the 14-day trial period, and I must say that I am liking it. I have triaged a lot of newsletters to The Feed, receipts from online purchases to Paper Trail, have an important reference on Set Aside, and have blocked a lot of spam already. I created different labels, too, so I can sort out where the email came from (I have one for Work, and another for a foundation that I work with).
One of the features of Hey.com that I have found to be useful is that it allows you to send email on behalf of another email account, as if it is coming from that email account. Whilst this is not always supported by most email services, but luckily, my main work email (provided by Microsoft Office 365) worked. Unfortunately, Google Workspace did not work because of some Google rule that prevents Hey.com from doing so. Yeah, sucks if you use Gmail or Google Workspace (maybe it is time to ditch it).
Hey.com has applications on all popular platforms — including Linux, yes! In my case, I have it on my iPhone and iPad, but still use the web version when accessing it from the Mac. Although I wish that their Mac application is distributed on the Mac App Store.
So with most of my email being forwarded to Hey.com right now, including some of my aliases from Simplelogin.io, my email workflow has changed. I have yet to forward my iCloud and Protonmail email to Hey.com, though, as I prefer it to be separate from the rest. That being said, who knows — maybe I will forward it in future.
For a price of three (3) Starbucks frappe a month, maybe it is time for you to ditch those free email services that collect your personal data. Remember, there is no such thing as free lunch.