[vit05]

I've been following the tweets about hey.com from their founder for some time. The text about how they bought the domain is beautiful. I understand the proposal they offer about the service, and the reason for charging for a service that nobody has paid for a long time. It even seems obvious to me this trend of new opportunities to pay for email services. A trend, that this time, appears to be here to stay.

But it is a product that have a very aggressive marketing strategy. Arrogant.

The only thing I read from this episode is: The product is like this, the billing service is like that. We won't change anything and if you don't like it, you're wrong. Unfortunately, there is no chance that I will ever use this product. The price is stratospheric for me and probably for 98% of those who use gmail. Prontonmail, for example, offers several options, including a free one.

Well, apple also offers a service. What they are asking is for them to make a concession. But they don't seem willing to concede anything to that negotiation.

I imagine that this could be circumvented with other exclusive plans to subscribe using apple pay, or a free and very reduced version. It doesn't seem like a radical position from apple, which was the impression I got from reading the tweets alone.

[LyndsySimon]

> The price is stratospheric for me and probably for 98% of those who use gmail.

Well, Gmail appears to have about 1.5 billion active users: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/26/gmail-dominates-consumer-ema...

2% of 1.5b is 30,000,000. I think Hey will be okay with only $2,970,000,000 per annum. :)

[vit05]

This is the potential market where all other paid email providers will compete. A reduced market. And yet, they chose Elon Musk's strategy. Create a premium product first to serve as a cash cow and financier, then perhaps offer other products with lower or even higher margins.

But my point is, they offer a premium service and have the possibility to get around this problem by negotiating since the mistake was theirs in not interpreting apple rules correctly.

[1]https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j....

[PascLeRasc]

I think it's the same business model as 1Password costing $36/year as opposed to KeePass being free, or paying for Dropbox vs setting up your own FTP server, or even paying for an iPhone/Mac when Android/PC is cheaper, but the UX or specific features work better for you. For some people that's worth paying for.

[vit05]

I agree. But I was not discussing their business model. I believe that they will be successful, as I said, I believe that there is this market for paid emails. What I was talking about is the first attitude of protesting instead of negotiating.

And I wasn't wrong, that's what Phil Schiller suggested:

“One way that HEY could have gone...is to offer a free or paid version of the app with basic email reading features on the App Store, then separately offered an upgraded email service that worked with the Hey app on iOS on its own website.”

And that is exactly what they did to get approved.

"So now we offer this new free option, and the multi-user HEY for Work — all in the same iOS app. "

https://hey.com/apple/path/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/18/interview-apples-schiller-...