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Show HN: I wrote an email app that accepts only one sender per inbox

22 points by edpin2000 3 hours ago | 15 comments

Infinite inboxes, including prefixes where you don't have to create inboxes before you use them -- they self create when you add a suffix.

Three types of inboxes: - One sender. Locks to the first domain to send email (except gmail, outlook, etc where it locks to an email account for obivous reasons. It bounces everyone else. - Temporary. Lasts for a while (24h, 7days, etc) then bounces. Received messages stay or go as per your choice. - Prefix. The most powerful. Declare a prefix like "service" and then invent any suffix, like "service-netflix" or "service$bank" and it creates a new one-sender inbox locked to whoever wrote first.

Bring you own domain. Bring your own AI (MCP server ready). Forwarding.

Please help me test it.

drayfield 9 minutes ago

For context I'm sleep deprived so sorry if I've missed something obvious, but what differentiates this with something like Fastmail's masked email offering? I use unique emails for every service I use and it works beautifully. This seems... more complicated? I under there's a price difference, but little else.

tmarice 3 minutes ago

I recently found out there is a limit to the number of masked emails you can have on Fastmail (1000, iirc -- definitely not infinite for practical purposes). Also, I miss the option of being able to create masked emails on all the domains I connected to Fastmail -- you can only use the "main" one.

amflare 11 minutes ago

You can already do this with any normal email account. Just do myemail+whatever@domain.com. You can put anything you want behind the +, and it still works. i.e. myemail+chase@domain.com, myemail+huffpost@domain.com, myemail+facebook@domain.com.

This used to be used as some sort of automatic labeling system that was supposed to be part of the spec eons ago, but it works just fine for generating unique emails so that you can see if/when an email has been leaked.

xlii 18 minutes ago

I think I'm missing something but I've have an option to use <anything>@<ident>.domain.com for couple years now.

I don't find it that useful though and usually go with standard alias i.e. user+<anything>@domain.com

As for single sender locking - not sure how useful that is. I mean you can get github.com email or notifications.github.com so you miss half of them?

edpin2000 11 minutes ago

On the "+" sign comment: I find that many spammers already know the trick. That's why I built a prefix where any suffix will work. If you have "turtle" as a prefix, you can add "turtle$bank", "turtle-barber", etc on the spot, without having to create each suffix.

As for single sender, we attach to the domain, so *.github.com would be allowed. The main problem, to be honest, is when email comes from apple.com, icloud.com, applehq.com, etc. I'm considering a power-feature where you could pre-select a few domains or allow all and then lock it. I feel it would be best for power users only. What do you think?

jlm66 51 minutes ago

Email, snail mail, text messages etc. all need, IMO, options for ONLY allowing incoming messages from known sources. This seems like it is really aiming to do that for Email and I applaud the effort. Hopefully, it will take off in a big, big way.

edpin2000 16 minutes ago

I hope so too. I hope I have the right set of features so far. Happy to hear thoughts and early feedback.

asdff 39 minutes ago

Email at least you can set this up with a rule that checks the sender against your contacts and throws them into some folder.

edpin2000 15 minutes ago

True. I find setting up rules and adding to contacts adds work to my day-to-day though. I'm hoping to make something simple and seamless. Prefix inboxes are as simple as I could think so far: make one up, add a suffix on the spot when you handout an email address -- boom, locked to the first one who uses it.

mkirsten 34 minutes ago

Nice and looks helpful. It’s crazy when you think about it - email is so prevalent in our lives, yet the scope of innovation last 20 years is that we can react to an emails with emojis.

edpin2000 18 minutes ago

That's so true. Gmail used to be cool, now it's old and clunky and their "unsubscribe" feature does not do that reliably. I want to tackle that next, look at domains that continue to email people after they unsubscribe.

hmokiguess 59 minutes ago

This is amazing, my dream has always been that outlook, gmail, and the likes allowed for setting up bounce rules.

edpin2000 53 minutes ago

Yes! And it can bounce/block any sender and entire domains too (across all your inboxes, if you choose).

cloudmanic 3 hours ago

I have used this service since I found it on product hunt. I am loving it! My inbox is way cleaner now.

edpin2000 53 minutes ago

Glad to know it's working for you!