When I was thinking about my birthday present, I decided to renew my subscription to the HEY service.
I was always hesitant because $99/year isn't a small amount of money, but since I didn't know what I wanted to buy for my birthday, I thought I'd give the SAAS subscription I'd been eyeing a try and it turned out to be a pretty good choice.
Why did I want to try HEY?
Clean Inbox
My main Gmail is dated 2009, and I've had it for about 15 years. I'm signed up to most of the sites with this email and it's the email that has been sold with my personal information the most. That's why whenever I receive an email, I unsubscribe or unsubscribe from unnecessary emails, but notifications from Gmail are never exciting.
Ruby on Rails and 37signals
I'm a server engineer with 11 years of experience using Ruby on Rails. It's not a favorite language and framework in Korea, but it's been a lifesaver for me to gain a lot of experience in Karrot, starting with Kakao, and I'm grateful to 37signals and DHH for being the biggest supporters of Ruby on Rails.
HEY is 37signals' second service after Basecamp, and I believe it's built with Ruby on Rails.
If it was made by a company that supported the language that made me who I am today, I couldn't resist using it.
The functional side
There are a lot of new features that seem novel and useful. These include Imbox, The Feed, Paper Trail, and a new feature called Bubble Up.
Imbox is an impressive introduction to the service
The Imbox: It’s not a typo Everyone hates their bloated inbox, so HEY has a focused Imbox instead. Your Imbox is where important, immediate emails go from people or services you care about. No random receipts, no “I rarely read these” newsletters, and no special offers crowding out the stuff you really care about.
The point is, we all hate overflowing inboxes, which is why they created imboxes, and it's a place to keep only the important stuff.
That's what The Feed, Paper Trail, is for.
But I tried HEY out of curiosity a year ago and unsubscribed. I rarely communicate with someone via email unless I'm changing jobs, and initially forwarding all my Gmail emails to HEY with the idea of moving my main email backfired.
My Imbox was rarely filled, The Feed was piling up, and I stopped checking my Paper Trail. In the end, I was paying a lot of money to use the same email as Gmail.
This was a big reason why I was hesitant to subscribe, but a new service called HEY Calendar has somewhat reassured me. I found out about this service through DHH's post about Apple rejecting the app, and like HEY Email, I was impressed with the improvements they've made to the existing calendar service that were inconvenient or problematic.
I'm not sure if I'll cancel again in a year and regret it like I did last time, but this time I have something to look forward to.
Use as a signature email for self-branding
The name Stark is an English name that I have used for 9 of my 11 years in the industry. I think every company I've worked for has been an opportunity to learn and grow, and I've always been more confident and successful with this name. Now that I'm looking forward to a role where I can share my experience rather than trying to accumulate it, I think it's important to brand myself, and I'm going to start using HEY as my signature email.
Get a feel for 37signals' product philosophy
I think I've benefited a lot from Ruby on Rails, but I've never actually used the services created by the people who created this language, and I've only been impressed by the stories I read on blogs from time to time.
I've also come across books related to the way of working written by 37signals indirectly while working at the company, but I would like to use the service created by such an influential place and feel if the philosophy they talk about is reflected in the product.
In my next post, I'll share how I used this email for self-branding, and how I revisited 37signals' signature philosophies to see what's reflected in the product.