Examples of email-first projects or startups?

https://www.paced.email is a service I built to buffer users from email. It aggregates multiple inbound emails into single messages based on a desired cadence. There's a dashboard, but after signing up, there's no real need to sign in as I designed the system to generate aliases on the fly using an easy to remember format.

E.g.

- johndoe@daily.paced.email

- johndoe.hackernews@weekly.paced.email

- johndoe.github@monthly.paced.email

- Or xyz@example.com if you bring your own domain.

The UI came about after being requested so much, but the original interface still stands.

I don't have these any more, but... ~20 years ago I had a 'searchbyemail.com' and 'recipesbyemail.com' service.

SBE would take a term, search/scrape google/yahoo/altavista and return the name/link in an email.

RecipesByEmail was... recipes by email - put 'chicken casserole' in the subject, and we'd send back links to chicken recipes (I think later, I had it send back 2-3 recipes scraped from some open recipe sites).

They never got huge traction, but I remember getting more than a few 'thank you' emails from blind folks. One specifically came from someone who worked in a school for the blind, and he wrote that the search thing was very handy for some students.

I've been building Emailic for the last few months. https://emailic.com

You can use it to drive automation in external apps, without having to leave your inbox. Zapier and other no-code solutions have such integrations, but they are expensive and require access to all your emails. This was something I was not willing to give up, for privacy reasons.

I've currently completed a Webhook (https://emailic.com/apps/webhook/) and Upload to Dropbox (https://emailic.com/apps/dropbox_upload/) integration. Check it out, and let me know what you all think! (Email address is in my profile.)

https://closetab.email - delivers your bookmarks to email every monday, so that your bookmarks don’t go into an endless abyss.

https://scottscheapflights.com/

I built an email-powered social network called Uhuro (https://uhuro.com/). I guess it could also be used as a social listserve platform.

Email addresses work like APIs. For instance you can send emails to join@uhuro.com to join the social network or quit@uhuro.com to quit. Other email API addresses include:

- invite@uhuro.com = invites friends and family to join

- help@uhuro.com = Replies with the instructions

- follow@uhuro.com / unfollow@ = Follows or unfollows CC'ed users

- followers@uhuro.com = Replies with all users following you

- post@uhuro.com = Sends your email message to all of your followers.

Here's more information on how it works - https://uhuro.com/how.html

http://ohlife.com was a YC-backed [1] personal journal you maintained by replying to emails, which is super cool IMO.

Although I always thought maybe whatsapp would be a better fit for an interface, so I started building Diarist [2] for a Twilio hackathon. Never finished it though.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613137

[2] https://github.com/caruano95/diarist

I built www.emailnewslettertracker.com so I can route emails to my Remarkable2 tablet. It's based on inbound SES and lambda, with a reverse engineering of the Remarkable browser extension. Because of the reverse engineering, I don't really want to bring attention with thousands of users, but if a couple of people wanted access, please feel free to sign up.

I built it because email newsletters are increasingly valuable, and I wanted to read them on RM2.

It depends what you mean by email. For example, FWD:Everyone (fwdeveryone.com) allows using the Gmail add-on as the only interface between the user and service. So the user can stay entirely within their inbox, but they aren't interacting with the service by sending or forwarding an email.

Almost everything I do with sr.ht is via email.

Source control, issue tracking, CI, mailing lists, documentation, etc.

I made an email-only todo list called Dobby [1]

You send your tasks to dobby@dobbymail.com, and it'll send you a todo list every morning. You can reply to complete, postpone etc.

The point is to not have a separate place for seeing and managing a giant database of todos. You only ever see what's relevant now, and in the place you already look for everything else (email).

1. https://dobbymail.com/

I have built a service for storing email attachments to cloud. https://mailboxfiler.com

Another example: followupthen.com

Moogle.cc is a blogging platform where you can only post using email. If you want to update a post (say, because you found a typo), you have send another email with the correct spelling.

I might have to move away from this restriction though depending on use feedback.

Sample blog - https://dirtydatagirl.moogle.cc (she was front page on HN a few weeks ago)

http://www.watchdog.email/

There are events businesses, flash sales, and pop-ups that rely entirely on an email for marketing and communication. Email is good for anything for which exclusivity is a factor.

Naturally, I can't name names ;)

Surprised no one has mentioned Morning Brew: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily

https://publicemails.com

I believe AngelList also started out an email list originally (hence the name).

https://textpost.me is a sms-only journaling/blogging service I made.

I think producthunt started as an email mailing list

https://deathtothestockphoto.com/

Producthunt App sumo

Appcues started with a course

Newsletters like Substack?

Jack's Flight Club: jack@jacksflightclub.co.uk

Substack