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There are only a few things I want from a Gmail competitor, whether it be a webapp or desktop app:

- Search. Good, fast search over 7 GB of email.

- Speed.

- Undo send.

- Multiple aliases on the same email account.

It's definitely possible to beat Gmail in the first two, these days, but importing all that email into another service takes a while, so there had better be a good case that I'll get equal or superior functionality. A demo would be nice.

Until then, I'll stick with the old compose, and probably find or write a user script to make the new one work like the old one once it goes away.

(Incidentally, Mail.app comes quite close to meeting the first two, but its search is a bit wonky, and there's no undo send.)



This, plus a spam filter that is Gmail quality or better. This was the biggest problem I had with Y!Mail back in the day.


If one wants #2, I don't see #3 being viable in conjunction. How would an undo send work (other than placing it in some sort of delayed queue/spool)?


Indeed, that's how Gmail's undo send works - it delays outgoing messages for ten seconds. Of course this is necessarily an exception to speed :)


It delays sending for a minute or 15 seconds, long enough to go, "WAIT, I forgot something, undo". Kinda useful.


undo send is dumb and the worst name/implementation.

i'd either add a dialog (with default selected button being Cancel) or replace the Send button with a Preview button, which would show the message the same way you read a message, and there you would have the Send button.


Undo send is great. It lets you undo the one time in a hundred that you make a mistake. Your solution would require that everybody click through an additional dialog on every single email sent.

Letting people recover from uncommon mistakes is better than ham-fisted and annoying mechanisms that attempt to prevent the mistake.


"undo" email does nothing else than create a false sense of security.

It probably works for the impatient that is hitting ctrl+enter (or whatever shortcut) too soon by muscle memory. but then it should be called delayed send to not give a false mental model to the user.

the current model is preventing the real mistakes for probably 1/10 of the cases it's needed. and enticing less care and probably bumping the rate in the end.


Neither the dialog nor the preview solves the problem that an undo button solves.

If a dialog or preview comes up for every message you send, you just develop a new habit for sending mail (press the send button, then press the send button again on the dialog / preview). If anything, it just creates more of a hassle for the user.

The undo button is for that 'Oh crap!' moment, when your auto-pilot lead you astray.


You can get undo send in Gmail labs




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