Gmail’s only feature that made it compelling was an inbox of 1GB when everyone else was doing 20MB. Oh, and using Ajax to make it slightly more responsive.
None of the other stuff they added matters, especially if you’re using a mail client.
As someone who hosts their own email server and uses Gmail, I can tell you the biggest feature they offer that I have trouble replicating is labels.
Those in the know are probably familiar that labels are essentially special IMAP folders. The challenge I’ve had is making these folders work well, finding a mail client (both web based and app based) that works with it, and is easy to manage.
My last attempt to get this to work was setting up a DocumentDB database where the labels were metadata and they were then looked up by Courier IMAP. But it didn’t work well.
I’ve been looking into this problem for over 10 years and it kills me that this simple feature is important enough to keep my personal email in Google.
I do not perfectly manage my email inbox, and I’ve become absolutely dependent on their automatic Priority / Updates / Promotions etc. Classifications, as well as their features that surface important emails, or things you might want to respond to that you forgot…
I found their prioritization too biased against people to find it useful. I’ve turned it off as I’ve missed notifications from bots that I need to take action on.
Gmail’s only feature that made it compelling was an inbox of 1GB when everyone else was doing 20MB. Oh, and using Ajax to make it slightly more responsive.
None of the other stuff they added matters, especially if you’re using a mail client.
I also think labels are the right way to organise emails. It was pretty unique at the time, and I think it still isn’t common.
And frankly, I like gmail’s interface more than Thunderbird’s, for example.
Moving to office, I miss labels. Categories suck and cant be filtered easily.
As someone who hosts their own email server and uses Gmail, I can tell you the biggest feature they offer that I have trouble replicating is labels.
Those in the know are probably familiar that labels are essentially special IMAP folders. The challenge I’ve had is making these folders work well, finding a mail client (both web based and app based) that works with it, and is easy to manage.
My last attempt to get this to work was setting up a DocumentDB database where the labels were metadata and they were then looked up by Courier IMAP. But it didn’t work well.
I’ve been looking into this problem for over 10 years and it kills me that this simple feature is important enough to keep my personal email in Google.
I do not perfectly manage my email inbox, and I’ve become absolutely dependent on their automatic Priority / Updates / Promotions etc. Classifications, as well as their features that surface important emails, or things you might want to respond to that you forgot…
I found their prioritization too biased against people to find it useful. I’ve turned it off as I’ve missed notifications from bots that I need to take action on.
To each their own I suppose.