By <i>email-first</i> I mean services that the email is the principal (or only) interface between the service and the user. For example: Posterous before Spaces. Thanks.
<a href="https://www.paced.email" rel="nofollow">https://www.paced.email</a> 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.<p>E.g.<p>- johndoe@daily.paced.email<p>- johndoe.hackernews@weekly.paced.email<p>- johndoe.github@monthly.paced.email<p>- Or xyz@example.com if you bring your own domain.<p>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.<p>SBE would take a term, search/scrape google/yahoo/altavista and return the name/link in an email.<p>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).<p>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. <a href="https://emailic.com" rel="nofollow">https://emailic.com</a><p>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.<p>I've currently completed a Webhook (<a href="https://emailic.com/apps/webhook/" rel="nofollow">https://emailic.com/apps/webhook/</a>) and Upload to Dropbox (<a href="https://emailic.com/apps/dropbox_upload/" rel="nofollow">https://emailic.com/apps/dropbox_upload/</a>) integration. Check it out, and let me know what you all think! (Email address is in my profile.)
<a href="https://closetab.email" rel="nofollow">https://closetab.email</a> - delivers your bookmarks to email every monday, so that your bookmarks don’t go into an endless abyss.
I built an email-powered social network called Uhuro (<a href="https://uhuro.com/" rel="nofollow">https://uhuro.com/</a>). I guess it could also be used as a social listserve platform.<p>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:<p>- invite@uhuro.com = invites friends and family to join<p>- help@uhuro.com = Replies with the instructions<p>- follow@uhuro.com / unfollow@ = Follows or unfollows CC'ed users<p>- followers@uhuro.com = Replies with all users following you<p>- post@uhuro.com = Sends your email message to all of your followers.<p>Here's more information on how it works - <a href="https://uhuro.com/how.html" rel="nofollow">https://uhuro.com/how.html</a>
<a href="http://ohlife.com" rel="nofollow">http://ohlife.com</a> was a YC-backed [1] personal journal you maintained by replying to emails, which is super cool IMO.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613137" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613137</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/caruano95/diarist" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/caruano95/diarist</a>
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.<p>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.
I made an email-only todo list called Dobby [1]<p>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.<p>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).<p>1. <a href="https://dobbymail.com/" rel="nofollow">https://dobbymail.com/</a>
I have built a service for storing email attachments to cloud. <a href="https://mailboxfiler.com" rel="nofollow">https://mailboxfiler.com</a>
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.<p>I might have to move away from this restriction though depending on use feedback.<p>Sample blog - <a href="https://dirtydatagirl.moogle.cc" rel="nofollow">https://dirtydatagirl.moogle.cc</a> (she was front page on HN a few weeks ago)
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.<p>Naturally, I can't name names ;)
Surprised no one has mentioned Morning Brew: <a href="https://www.morningbrew.com/daily" rel="nofollow">https://www.morningbrew.com/daily</a>
<a href="https://publicemails.com" rel="nofollow">https://publicemails.com</a><p>I believe AngelList also started out an email list originally (hence the name).