#gmail tabs

An unwanted weekend of Web-mail

I’ve written before how I’m not too fond of Web-mail versus desktop clients, but last weekend didn’t give me a choice in the matter.

About an hour after my flight took off, my MacBook Air coughed up an error message from the Mail program that its index had gotten scrambled (not the exact phrasing; I inexplicably forgot to take a screengrab) and needed to be rebuilt. Fine, I said, and clicked the…

Three months after we launched our beta in 2010, Gmail announced Priority Inbox, which does almost exactly what we do – prioritizes emails. That was a scary day for us: half of our beta customers left.  Couple of weeks later most of them came back.  Over the last few years Gmail and Microsoft have built products that compete with SaneBox and offered them for free, specifically Gmail Tabs, Gmail Inbox and Office 365 Clutter. Here's why we're still better than any of the free alternatives:

1. SaneBox works everywhere

On any device or client - not just in the Gmail/Office365 web interface or Google Inbox client.

2. SaneBox is smarter

Our algorithms are personalized based on your past behavior (which emails you open, which you respond to, how quickly, how often etc). That makes us much more accurate for you personally.

3. SaneBox is far more customizable

If you like things easy, you get 1 other place to look (SaneLater folder - that's where all unimportant emails go). But if you're OCD, you can create lots of optional filtering rules and folders (SaneNews, SaneBulk, or any custom filtering folders you wish).

4. SaneBox does way more than just filtering

BlackHole (unsubscribe with 1 click), snooze non-urgent emails, reminders to follow up with people who ignored your emails, moving attachments to Dropbox, monitoring your spam folder for emails caught there by mistake, etc (and LOTS more cool stuff in the works). Watch this video.  

5. SaneBox is not free

There's an old saying "If you're not paying for a product, then you ARE the product". You are our customer, not our product.  We will never sell your data or annoy you with ads. You can try it free for 2 weeks, and our plans start at just $7/month (or $4/month if you buy a 2 year plan.)  That's not too much to ask for a little email sanity, is it? ;)

The number of people in (for lack of a better term) email marketing who are wringing their hands about the Gmail's new tab system--especially the dreaded "Promotions" tab--are far outnumbered by the people who say they aren't worried about it at all. The drop in open rate has been tiny, they'll say.

I am worried about open and click rates from Gmail users in the long term, though, but not because email is being sorted into tabs. That feature itself is actually really useful, and I've been using a version of it for years, filtering email into labels and skipping the inbox. That system has worked well for me, doing exactly what Gmail is now trying to do for everyone: keeping your inbox as a place that's only for the email you want to see now.

My problem with the new Gmail tabs is the read count. It appears just underneath the tab--"3 New", in a shiny, colored highlight--but once you click on the tab, it disappears. So if you don't read the email right then, your notification that you have unread email is gone.