Am I making a mistake building an email client for devs?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46500151

by eibrahim • 7 months ago

4 8 7 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have been cranking out apps for the past few years and loving it. Then one morning a week or 2 ago I got a little ambitious and decided to build a desktop email client because outlook was so-so and superhuman was ridiculously expensive.

Is this a big mistake? Am I wasting my time ?

So far I have Microsoft and Google working and I can do the normal email interaction read, reply, archive etc. I also got local AI working and training on your emails (all local).

Let me know your thoughts.

PS: my target audience is developers not the general public

dack• 7 months ago

what are your goals? it's usually tough to sell things to developers because they are very particular about how they want their software to work, and also would rather build their own tools much of the time (which is increasingly true with AI now).

if you really want to sell it, you should probably make sure that you have customers willing to pay, which means talking to potential customers and getting them on a waitlist. i think it's usually more likely that other people don't care about your software like you do (because you built it to be exactly what you want and know how it works) and even then, aren't willing to pay to use it (or pay very much)

if you're not very concerned about making money and mostly just want something nice for yourself that other people _might_ care about, then sure, go for it! i build software like that all the time

eibrahim4• 7 months ago

that's pretty much my attitude... build it for me and if others like it and pay for it, great. if not, then i got myself a killer email client.

I already have it almost working with outlook and gmail accounts and have local AI working and analyzing emails and so on. it's really cool (at least for me) and can't wait to share it publicly.

I did setup a waitlist and a landing page https://www.nitroinbox.com/

PaulHoule• 7 months ago

I run eM Client which I think is like Outlook except it actually works right. I'd be fair game for another desktop email client, particularly if it took advantage of JMAP

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8621.html

kayo_20211030• 7 months ago

Yeah. Probably. Depending on what you want to achieve.

I don't love my email client, but I don't really hate it either. It's in the kinda-just-is category. Also, it's a hard problem, more a lot of hard problems with "corners"; but, a super learning experience if you do it. Dealing with goofy protocols, networks, etc. will probably stand you in good stead whatever the outcome.

Go ahead. But, don't expect much apart from good personal growth.

eibrahim4• 7 months ago

yup. that's my approach. I am having a lot of fun building it.

JohnFen• 7 months ago

Then you aren't making a mistake, even if no other devs are interested.

eibrahim4• 7 months ago

I am struggling with pricing though. I don't want a subscription model because most devs (most people) hate it and I hate it myself. But I don't know what's a fair price for an email client that gives you a unified inbox for all your accounts with on-device local AI and all sort of efficient ways to crank through hundreds of emails in minutes...

Am I making a mistake building an email client for devs?

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