When Hey just launched I decided to give it a go. Some of the aspects immediately made sense, such as having a paper trail for receipts and a feed for news letters. The initial screening was somewhat tedious, but I value the principle behind it. Instead of having to figure out where an email is coming from and unsubscribing or reporting it as spam, I simply disallow it.

That said, I wasn’t convinced enough to pay the full amount. After several months, realizing I really don’t want Google to have all of my emails, and missing some of the Hey workflow I was thinking about trying it again. Then personal domains were announced as an option, so I pulled the trigger.

Just last week the domains were announced, but in quite a cumbersome way. I now had to create a new separate account which is basically the same as Hey for Work, then email to get a discount applied.

See the announcement here on Twitter. Some of the responses rightfully criticized Hey for this. I think the process is overcomplicated and the antithesis of how Hey is supposed to perform. How personal domains were announced was that they could be applied to my existing account. Somewhat disgruntled, I explored other options.

I looked into Fastmail. The premise is good. The options and price are fair. I had to really search on how to set up my personal domain. And the bad thing here is the same issue I had with Protonmail: the interface feels like Microsoft Outlook 10 years ago. I loved Google Inbox and I miss it. I enjoy how Hey handles things. I wish we had more swipe options.

I also looked into Onmail and I still consider it a candidate when it matures and gets an app. The problem is that I tied myself to Hey for at least a year with my personal account. So in a year I will see where things stand. I’m happy with Hey, but it’s pricey.

​What I really like is how Hey handles personal domains and how it allows me to use that for my emails. More on that next time.