Taking Break From HEY

I think it was two years ago around this time. I was reading release notes for the Arc browser. Back then, Arc was this new shiny thing that everyone was excited about, and every release note would bring at least one cool new feature. Today, Arc is basically abandonware as The Browser Company decided to switch its focus to building a new product that we’re yet to see. Anyway, this post is not about Arc; it’s about email services and something adjacent.

I was reading those release notes, and they happened to mention a new integration with HEY. I think they added a feature where you could see the unread email count as a badge in Arc’s sidebar. The quote that stuck with me was: “Maybe you’ll finally create that HEY address” or something like that. I had never heard of HEY and nothing excites me more than trying out a new app or service, especially if it’s an email provider. But it was so much more than I had anticipated.

I opened HEY’s homepage and immediately fell in love with the design—large font, cartoonish graphics, colorful elements—everything screamed “good taste!” I started quickly skimming through the page, and keywords were bouncing in my head: “Imbox,” “Screener,” “Paper Trail.” What are those? And they’re boldly stating, “We finally fixed your email”? I was excited and curious, so I signed up for the trial.

HEY’s design is much like everything 37signals does—it has a distinct language and taste—you either love it or hate it. That might be an exaggeration, but my point is that it’s hard not to have feelings towards their designs. Corporate software taught us not to have emotions for the UI—everything must be clean and sterile—only work must remain! But when you open HEY, you just can’t hold back a smile. Little animations like the screener button bouncing when you get an email from an unknown sender, the logo itself being just a waving hand, and typography being the core element of the UI—all of these add up to something simple yet beautiful. No clutter, no distractions—only pleasant spacing and colors.

I don’t want to review HEY’s features and give it some arbitrary rating. I’m sure there are many videos and articles discussing that side of things. All I can say is that HEY has indeed fixed my email. It made me realize that Inbox Zero forces you into a toxic relationship with email and inadvertently with your work. It showed me that it’s ok to just let your email sit there and only deal with important stuff. It’s incredibly hard to go back to the Outlooks and Gmails of the world after experiencing HEY. Yet, I’m right here, posting on a forgotten Google service, not on HEY World. So what’s up?

I don’t like being one of those people who hate new changes and yap about the good old days, and I’m not like that. When they announced that they’re working on a calendar app, I was so excited! I had no idea what they would bring, but if they made HEY—this perfect thing—the calendar would be at least on the same level, right? But even back then, this sounded a small alarm in my head. What can they possibly be “fixing” about calendars? I have absolutely no quarrel with my Google Calendar. Even the simple Apple Calendar is more than enough for most of the things I do. Maybe they’re going to introduce scheduling and some unique integrations with email? All of these questions remained unanswered as I awaited the drop. And then it came, the HEY Calendar.

I was still smiling and using it daily. It didn’t bring anything from my list—no scheduling, no unique integrations. Instead, it had time tracking and “Sometime This Week”—HEY’s take on to-dos in your calendar. I thought, “Ok, I can have all of my events in HEY, log my work hours, and even manage my tasks!” That sounds great, right? Well, in practice, the experience of using these features is subpar.

Time tracking doesn’t have a proper filtering or export feature; if you’re doing contractor work, this makes it basically useless. Calendar syncing has issues with Google Workspaces and you can’t create complex recurrences, only basic “once a week” or “on the same day every month”; you can’t do something like “every third Thursday of the month.” The “Sometime This Week” is cute, but it’s so muted and buried in the interface that you hardly ever notice the thing. It takes actual mental effort to remember and find it in the UI to have a somewhat productive to-do system. Also, you can’t have reminders for your to-dos. You can drag a to-do onto a day, and it will create an event—that’s the intended way for timed reminders, but this is way too cumbersome, and having a simple “remind me” feature would be more practical.

There are other small things like the actual UI being a major downgrade compared to HEY Email. The thing is that the concept of a calendar has existed for thousands of years and I don’t think it needs an overhaul. It’s always a grid of dates with a spot for notes/events. Bringing in “cuteness” and making things different just for the sake of standing out adds unnecessary details and makes the whole thing cluttered. The desktop UI of HEY Calendar is bearable, but the mobile version is atrocious. Oh, did I mention that you can label days and also add photos to each day? Cute feature, right? Well, imagine a grid of tiles with random texts (your day labels) and incoherent images compressed into a narrow space that is the screen of your phone—halved because the bottom half is taken by the day view. Absolute mess.

HEY is a paid product and not a cheap one. Paying for an email provider is already an eyebrow-raiser, but I think it’s worth it in the case of HEY. However, the calendar part is ruining the package for me. It feels like they tainted this precious, clean, perfect thing that will take years to fix. But they will fix it, I’m certain of that. Meanwhile, I have to take a break from it. I’ve set up a new Gmail address and I’m forwarding my HEY email there. And, surprisingly, it’s actually refreshing to see this old, almost outdated feeling UI.

HEY takes control away from you in exchange for an incredible experience. But sometimes, I yearn for that control. After all, I love tinkering with things—spending hours tweaking my email filters and organizing my labels is what I call “productive procrastination.” And to be completely honest, I just like switching things up from time to time.

Weeks, months, perhaps years from now, I will return to HEY and I hope that I will be as entranced as I was originally. Until then, ahoj, HEY.