2021 New Year's Email Predictions

[TenFour]

Since it's New Year's Eve I have a few predictions for the state of email in 2021. How about you?

1. The big players will be pushing everyone to pay for email one way or another. Google will start making people pay for using more than 15GB of storage on June 1. I expect to see gradual degradation of the free features on Gmail and Outlook.com for those not paying.

2. Hey.com will be gone by the end of 2021. Too expensive for something so specialized.

3. We will see the loss of more and more smaller email players, being replaced by more and more small players. Lots of churn among the small ones because it is hard to make money at it while also maintaining quality.

4. There will be lots of big email security scares related to the Russia hacking scandal.

[ioneja]

Originally Posted by TenFour

Since it's New Year's Eve I have a few predictions for the state of email in 2021. How about you?

1. The big players will be pushing everyone to pay for email one way or another. Google will start making people pay for using more than 15GB of storage on June 1. I expect to see gradual degradation of the free features on Gmail and Outlook.com for those not paying.

2. Hey.com will be gone by the end of 2021. Too expensive for something so specialized.

3. We will see the loss of more and more smaller email players, being replaced by more and more small players. Lots of churn among the small ones because it is hard to make money at it while also maintaining quality.

4. There will be lots of big email security scares related to the Russia hacking scandal.

Agreed with all those except the demise of Hey.com, which is already covering its cost + more, from what I understand, according to some blog post I read somewhere. They only needed X number of paying users to meet the financial needs so far, which they already achieved, and not to mention Basecamp itself has been in business for 21 years and is financially sound from all indications. So I think Hey.com is in it for the long haul, although I do predict they won't grow to be very big... it will be a high-priced niche product loved and adored by a subgroup, emulated by other services, and ignored by most.

But otherwise, agreed completely, and I'll add one more specific prediction, I think more services will launch in 2021 that will focus on "workflow" like Hey.com, Superhuman, OnMail, etc., and/or existing email providers will release features that are similar.

Happy New Year!

[Berenburger]

I’m curious what Fastmail will do. It has been quiet around them for a long time.

[Bamb0]

[TenFour]

Happy New Year! General comment. I think that we will see lots of companies trying to create improved email "workflows," but I also believe they are mostly doomed to failure because one person's ideal workflow is another person's disaster. For my own part, I am worried that more and more we will be forced to fight against AI trying to predict what we want to do and instead causing us more work and wasted time. That is one reason I am moving away from Gmail as my main email--I don't want AI sorting my mail incorrectly, or "correcting" correctly spelled words, or suggesting replies. Hopefully, so-called "smart" features will not infest every email provider.

[jarland]

I predict the rise of more providers using my business model but with more focus on frontend interfaces and less on outbound delivery logic.

[emebrs]

On a different subject, I would love to know if you have any updated thoughts on mail forwarding. You have offered illuminating comments about that in the past.

Originally Posted by jarland

I predict the rise of more providers using my business model but with more focus on frontend interfaces and less on outbound delivery logic.

[jarland]

Originally Posted by emebrs

On a different subject, I would love to know if you have any updated thoughts on mail forwarding. You have offered illuminating comments about that in the past.

While my feelings about it and the impact it can have haven't changed much on the face of it, I've seen improvements in how Google handles them (which is easily 9 out of 10 forwarders). The only problem with it at this point is what Google documents openly:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/175365?hl=en

Several highly-phished domains have asked Gmail to enforce strict authentication checks on their mail. These domains include eBay, Paypal, and Google. If your mail server modifies the forwarded messages from these domains, these messages will be marked as phishing.

Modification is kind of inherent in forwarding, especially given that you'll miss even more forwarded mail without using SRS, so there are some things you might not always receive but it's expected as normal behavior.

Now that I'm working with far more resources than I started with, forwarders don't inherently cause any issues for my customers and I fully support them.

Someone not sitting in several hundred IPs and forwarding from a single IP should find themselves dealing with all of the same problems I started out with. Rate limiting, etc.

[Tsunami]

I can't see Google ask people to pay for Gmail if they go over 15 GB of stored messages. It wouldn't make sense neither, as long as multiple accounts are allowed. Then you just start a new Gmail account for free the moment you risk to approach the 15 GB.

[TenFour]

I can't see Google ask people to pay for Gmail if they go over 15 GB of stored messages. It wouldn't make sense neither, as long as multiple accounts are allowed. Then you just start a new Gmail account for free the moment you risk to approach the 15 GB.

Your Gmail, Google Drive files, and Google Photos will all count against your free 15GB of storage starting in June. If you go over 15GB you won't be able to upload more. Sure, you could then open another account, but I suspect a lot of people don't want to juggle multiple accounts with some of your email, files, and photos in one account and some in another. In my case, I have over 200GB of photos already on Google Photos.

[jeffpan]

Originally Posted by TenFour

Your Gmail, Google Drive files, and Google Photos will all count against your free 15GB of storage starting in June. If you go over 15GB you won't be able to upload more. Sure, you could then open another account, but I suspect a lot of people don't want to juggle multiple accounts with some of your email, files, and photos in one account and some in another. In my case, I have over 200GB of photos already on Google Photos.

I use their gsuite biz plan, 12usd/m for unlimited storage.

[janusz]

Originally Posted by TenFour

I have over 200GB of photos already on Google Photos.

The space used until June will not count towards the new limit.

[TenFour]

I use their gsuite biz plan, 12usd/m for unlimited storage.

Only 2TB now on that plan. https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html Similar to consumer Drive storage, old files and photos won't count against your storage until after June 1 when new uploads will start to count against the 2TB limit. https://workspaceupdates.googleblog....e-storage.html

The space used until June will not count towards the new limit.

Sort of. For example, if you modify any Google doc created before June it now becomes paid storage after June. If I was uploading new photos after June I would quickly go through the free 15GB. So far Pixel phones can continue to upload at High Quality for free, but at some point that ends too--don't know the date offhand.

[TenFour]

Here's one article on what is happening with the change from G Suite business plans to Google Workspace (I can never remember if it is Workplace or Workspace!). Bottom line is you have to pay more to get unlimited storage. https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/1...ith-workspace/

[emebrs]

Thanks for responding to my question, jarland. I would also be curious to know what you think about MyPrivacy. Since it depends on forwarding, do you have any objection in principle to this kind of a service?

Originally Posted by jarland

While my feelings about it and the impact it can have haven't changed much on the face of it, I've seen improvements in how Google handles them (which is easily 9 out of 10 forwarders).