A few months ago I was drowning in emails. Nothing catastrophic, just the slow accumulation of newsletters, receipts, university notices, work threads, and random things I'd signed up for at some point. My inbox had become a place I avoided.
I tried the obvious solutions. There are some genuinely good email productivity tools out there. But they all had the same two problems that I couldn't get past.
First, the price. $25-30 a month for the good ones. That's not objectively expensive but it's the kind of subscription that sits in your bank statement making you feel vaguely guilty every month, especially when you're not sure it's actually working.
Second they all wanted me to leave Gmail/Outlook. Use their inbox instead. Learn their interface. Trust them with my email data. I tried a few. I never stuck with any of them. There's something deeply uncomfortable about not knowing what a third party is doing with the contents of your email.
So one evening instead of subscribing to another tool I just started building.
I want to be honest — I assumed it would take me a weekend. It took four weeks of evenings and weekends. There were three separate moments where I nearly gave up and just paid for the subscription.
But somewhere in week three something clicked and it started working. My inbox started sorting itself. Labels appeared automatically. Emails that needed replies had drafts waiting.
The thing that surprised me most wasn't the technical part. It was realising how much I'd been avoiding building things because I assumed the existing solution was good enough, or that building it myself would be too hard, or that my time was better spent elsewhere.
Sometimes the existing solution isn't good enough. Sometimes building it yourself is the only way to get exactly what you want. And sometimes the four weeks you spend building it teaches you more than the thing itself.
I don't know if this applies to everyone. But I suspect there are a lot of people paying monthly for tools that almost do what they need, and not building the thing that would actually do it.
Has anyone else gone down this rabbit hole? Built something just because the existing options didn't sit right with you?"
mafia15•6h ago
I tried the obvious solutions. There are some genuinely good email productivity tools out there. But they all had the same two problems that I couldn't get past.
First, the price. $25-30 a month for the good ones. That's not objectively expensive but it's the kind of subscription that sits in your bank statement making you feel vaguely guilty every month, especially when you're not sure it's actually working.
Second they all wanted me to leave Gmail/Outlook. Use their inbox instead. Learn their interface. Trust them with my email data. I tried a few. I never stuck with any of them. There's something deeply uncomfortable about not knowing what a third party is doing with the contents of your email. So one evening instead of subscribing to another tool I just started building.
I want to be honest — I assumed it would take me a weekend. It took four weeks of evenings and weekends. There were three separate moments where I nearly gave up and just paid for the subscription.
But somewhere in week three something clicked and it started working. My inbox started sorting itself. Labels appeared automatically. Emails that needed replies had drafts waiting.
The thing that surprised me most wasn't the technical part. It was realising how much I'd been avoiding building things because I assumed the existing solution was good enough, or that building it myself would be too hard, or that my time was better spent elsewhere.
Sometimes the existing solution isn't good enough. Sometimes building it yourself is the only way to get exactly what you want. And sometimes the four weeks you spend building it teaches you more than the thing itself. I don't know if this applies to everyone. But I suspect there are a lot of people paying monthly for tools that almost do what they need, and not building the thing that would actually do it. Has anyone else gone down this rabbit hole? Built something just because the existing options didn't sit right with you?"