Kagi Mail: Suggestions Based on My Personal Email Experience

ctoliver94

EricR I mean, well I guess this kinda begs the question (at least from my POV) of how wide of services are you trying to have? I really could do without another Microsoft/Google/Apple/Meta "WE HAVE EVERYTHING" ecosystem, and it does scare me a bit that down the line that's the brick road our faces our at.

I believe strongly in Kagi...but, Google was once a company worth liking, too.

Not trying to cause issues or anything, just adding my two cents here.

Pleonasm

I also "believe strongly in Kagi." For this reason, I suspect it would be in the company's best interest to focus on enhancing the core search experience to make it truly a premium product, by addressing the pain points documented in this forum and by adding features and functionality that more strongly distinguish it from the competition.

My hope is that quality of the core search experience evolves to a superior level of excellence, such that the question of "Why should I pay for search?" becomes irrelevant in the minds of consumers considering Kagi. I think it can happen - but, it is likely to happen more quickly and more successfully if the company has a singular obsession on the search functionality.

ctoliver94

Pleonasm Whole-heartedly agree!

RobOK

I have been looking to de-Googlfy (its hard) and don't agree with many that say "email has been solved" -- there are a lot of different elements that need to be balanced - privacy, usability, integration, User interface. For one of my accounts I am using MailFence (have not seen it mentioned). It is better privacy than Google but less than Proton.

Email Privacy - this topic needs a deeper dive. There are many points where email is exposed (I am not an expert so correct me), most concentrate on your stored mail but mail in motion is a big risk too even if you use Proton or others

your device to your ISP (mitigated by a VPN)
the sending email server (ProtonMail, FastMail, etc.)
the servers along the way (the contents may be protected but not the envelope)
the receiving email server - if you send emails to people on Gmail, google sees it

I only post that by way of saying the more we get EVERYONE off google the better!

RobOK

In terms of UI, i hope you steal the UI/UX design from SuperHuman. Sleek, fast, keyboard driven. Don't adopt their subscription price!

InternetChunk

I’ve just looked it up LMAO WHAT. For an unheard of company charging at least 25$ a month for mail is so outrageous and ludicrous I can’t even begin to fathom it.

RobOK

InternetChunk are you talking about SuperHuman? Yes expensive. To be clear, it is not even an email service just the UI for Gmail or Outlook. Having said that, it is fantastic and addicting. Super fast and keyboard optimized (like the Sublime editor if you are familiar with that). SuperHuman is hugely popular in silicon valley and was recently acquired by Grammarly. BTW, don't sleep on Grammarly -- it is an AI powered plugin with millions of existing users

jstrider

InternetChunk SuperHuman has been pretty popular for a while.

InternetChunk

RobOK Frontend for gmail for 25$ is absurd.
Regarding AI slop correcting grammar like Grammarly - autocorrect is a thing and if someone wants their sentences to sound more professional.. read more books.
But if Kagi would add something like that make it absolutely opt in optional, I never wish to see AI shoved down my throat by default.

RobOK

OK. my post really was about the UI of Superhuman. I don't use AI features in email. 🤝

ritzy_duck

Kagi Team: Please stick to search & translation. Would love to see translation built out with an API option.

I really have no need or interest in another email option. I currently use & pay a provider that does only one thing and does it exceptionally well: email. I think there's a lesson there. Trying to do too many things is a recipe for mediocrity at best - disaster at worst.

bln

ritzy_duck I find it ironic that you include translation there, arguably it’s no more “core” to Kagi’s initial product than email.

wieli

I believe the topic of privacy needs to be discussed more prominently. There's 0% chance of me using or recommending a mail service to anyone if it's hosted in the U.S. or any of the eyes countries for that matter. In fact, it might even be problematic that Kagi itself is headquartered there.

woodmaster

amazingefren I know, I know, I personally don't rely on AI that much, BUT my partner does. She uses her email a lot more than I do for work, and having an AI system in place for composing has been a massive improvement for her. I'm guessing this was already planned based on Kagi Assistant, but I could be wrong.

There are good sides of this of AI which I believe could be useful if Kagi can implement. A few things that I have seen that could be very beneficial for people with more than one job is:

important email aggregator where top priority emails are put in a separate "focused" inbox. A VIP option similar to apple mail could be implemented here as well.
automatically tagging emails whether its marketing or receipts or updates on my appointments (this could enhance itself more with one click calendar addition).
having one click templates for things like replying like greetings or closing or acknowledgements or requesting more information etc.
natural language searching across the inbox would also be a quality of life improvement

the_real_urusaiyatsu

kirkmc Hey.com 'can' read emails but in exceptional circumstances under protocols. Not sure how that is required to surface email based on sender/domain and show files in summary view by sender/thread etc.

antonis

Kagi mail, Kagi assistant and other "family products" could may as well justify/lower the costs of search

Access to a privacy-respecting and slop-rejecting search engine should be a human right, but human rights shouldn't come with a price.

If building a family suite helps net/reduce costs and that translates to a smaller fee for the search, except if ie you buy in to the rest of the product family, which could translate to search "coming free" - I'm all in

just speaking my thoughts - I'll keep enjoying kagi's services regardless

Kagaholic

I didn't get all the way through the comments but something from the OP's initial post has me concerned particularly given recent events with Google enabling this by default for all gmail users in the USA. (Another reason I use Proton for mail). I think GDPR at least prevented them enabling it by default in Europe.

AI
I know, I know, I personally don't rely on AI that much, BUT my partner does. She uses her email a lot more than I do for work, and having an AI system in place for composing has been a massive improvement for her. I'm guessing this was already planned based on Kagi Assistant, but I could be wrong.

Using AI to analyze incoming messages can obviously be quite helpful, but the cost to your privacy IMHO is horrific. In order for it to work, they have to be able to read all of your emails and that's creepy AF! I know it could just be an "Opt-In" feature, but it doesn't feel like something a privacy focused company should be doing. Using a CLI tool like Claude/Charm that hooks into a local LLM would be the only way I could see myself using it. If the feature is implemented, I would advise extreme caution.

blahblahblahkagi

I think looking into an alias only feature like DuckDuckGo has would be great. I think Mail in general has good privacy alternatives already like Tutamail so a full fledge Kagi email doesn’t seem super necessary. Total left turn but a Kagi voip is something I would 100% support. Phone numbers and email are the two main ways to sign up for basically anything and a phone number integrated into Kagi allows for easy separation for our personal numbers and numbers we use for the internet. This is probably a lot more complicated than I imagine it would be since idk how stuff works with numbers internationally with laws and everything.

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