Just got beta access to Fluent.io which promises to be the future of email
It synced up perfectly to my google apps email account in a couple of seconds I could see how they view email being
This is a quick screenshot of what it looks like
Basically they are making email more twitter like. After using it for real email for a day you find your emails are much shortener they they would be in gmail. Like twitter it makes you leave out the normal intro and outro of normal emails, stuff like ‘Hi so-and-s-,’ and ‘Thanks, Justin.. {disclaimer} etc..’ so disappear from your writing
Also it moves the focus of email from a storage of to-dos, reminders, info to ‘triage’ - ie. quickly sortign your inbox and getting down to zero emails in your inbox
After a days use my inbox has been totaly cleaned up and im at zero emails in my inbox
This is a welcome relief from the usual mess that is gmail
How are they ganna make money?
There is not much info on their site about how they intend to make money from a web based gui for gmail but they below error message provides a good indication that they will charge for premium features of some sort
Issues
Even works really well - The only issue I found so far is that fluent tries to highglight attachmenst for you - but when your get images in inlime html emails - Fluent highlights these where as a system thats tryign to cleanup email should hide them
Also google are pushing more integrated features into gmail like, better chat and g+ features to differenciate itself from the usual webmail clients. How people will react to these features not existing in Fluent will be interesting
Conclusion
If your drowning in email I recommend you signup to to Fluent.io to get beta access. I’m goign to keep using it as my primary mail client, its helped greatly simplify my email.
Also they should think about changing their tag from ‘the future of email’ to ‘making email fun again’