HEY: I’m Nearly All Yours
A reflection on saying “HEY: I’m nearly all yours” — and how it reshaped my relationship with email, attention, and what HEY gets right.
There aren’t many services that get as close to becoming my primary email provider as HEY has.
Not because it does everything I want — it doesn’t — but because it gets most of the important things right. Enough, at least, to make me pause and seriously consider moving more of my email life over.
That hesitation is worth unpacking, because it says a lot about what keeps people loyal to tools over time.
HEY understands how email actually feels
From the first moment you use it, HEY makes one thing clear: email is as much about attention as it is about messages.
The screening flow, the deliberate friction, and the emphasis on deciding who gets access to you all feel thoughtful. HEY isn’t trying to make email faster. It’s trying to make it calmer.
That design philosophy resonates with me more than most inbox “productivity” features ever have.
Small decisions make a big difference
What surprised me wasn’t a headline feature — it was the accumulation of small choices.
Things like:
- Treating senders as relationships, not just addresses
- Making it harder to mindlessly clear an inbox
- Encouraging intentional replies rather than reactive ones
None of these are revolutionary on their own, but together they create an experience that feels considered rather than optimised.
It’s easy to see why people become fiercely loyal to HEY.
Where the hesitation creeps in
And yet, I haven’t fully committed.
Not because HEY is bad at email — quite the opposite — but because some of its constraints start to matter more the longer you use it. Email isn’t just about today’s messages; it’s about continuity, habits, and edge cases that only show up over time.
For me, those edges are where the decision still feels unfinished.
Loyalty isn’t about perfection
What this experience has reinforced is that loyalty rarely comes from finding a tool that does everything. It comes from finding one that aligns closely enough with how you think and work that the compromises feel acceptable.
HEY gets closer than most. Close enough that I genuinely want it to win me over completely.
That says a lot.
Almost is still meaningful
Being “nearly all yours” might sound like a half-commitment, but it isn’t. It’s recognition.
HEY has earned consideration in a space where most tools barely get a second look. It’s made me rethink how email should behave, not just how it should perform.
And even if I don’t move everything over, that influence will stick.
Final thoughts
HEY doesn’t feel like a product chasing growth at all costs. It feels like a team with a clear point of view about email — one that’s willing to trade universality for intention.
That won’t work for everyone. But for someone like me, it gets uncomfortably close to being enough.
And that’s why I keep coming back to it.
