Hey’s contact view is pretty much the same thing though, isn’t it? It’s a history of your correspondence with that person as well as recent files exchanged.
No import means it’s going to be an incomplete history, of course, so I share your critical views on that front, but I wondered if Mailmate was doing something else here too.
If I’m understanding correctly, the main difference is that Mailmate also displays the time between interactions in a kind of timeline view. Not all the helpful with most rapid fire interactions, but interesting to see personal relationships graphed out in that way.
Actually, Hey’s treatment of this feels different (and mostly more useful) to me, but it’s not in the context of receiving or writing a message. Seems there’s a bit of gestalt in Mailmate’s treatment.
What an excellent summary!
Personally, I like using the Hey interface, the more I use it the more I like it. And, the fact that it does not notify you by default for new emails, you have to choose to be notified for particular senders, that way I’m not getting constantly ‘interrupted’ by notifications for every email that comes in.
Anyway, taken the plunge, paid my $99 and gone all in, by updating ‘everyone’ with my new Hey email address. 
On iOS, If you tap “share” then “copy” it puts the URL of the message on your clipboard.
This is the unique URL you were mentioning for a message.
All the request made in this post have been implemented in Hey.com: Tag or Labels, All Sent email view, custom domains and Signatures. Also some really really cool things like: Workflows, internal notes, team work in an email (similar to what a HelpDesk ticketing systems does), SMTP, everything view, alias, collections and so on. 37signals have announced there are working on adding CRM features. I have Hey for domains, the iOS apps are very good. Customer support is excellent and they are adding new features weekly so development is constant. There is only one feature I really miss from Gmail: Archive emails. Maybe one day they add that feature. Maybe one reason they do not add archiving is they do not want users to archive thousands of emails they will never ever need. But I may be wrong.
@dontforgetmario Yes!!! I’m still using Hey and I am so glad they’ve delivered on all the initial promises and have continued to add really useful features. I agree that the Workflow feature is brilliant – I find I’m using that quite a lot for a variety of things – such as orders and deliveries, or conversations that are decision-oriented and require back-and-forth from multiple parties but no real “work” outside of email.
I also love the Recycling feature which ensures that my back catalog of emails won’t be clogged with sales emails, email newsletters and such.
It’s interesting you point to Archive emails – I think I’ve been using the Read feature as such, and then I will also use the Cover option so I don’t see them most of the time, so I haven’t really missed that feature, but I see your point.
After more than 2 years of using Hey, the only criticism I personally have is that the Search feature is not quite there. It needs a lot of work to match what Google currently has. I can always usually find a particular email that I’m looking for, but sometimes it takes me looking in several places, and I really wish that they had an entire “advanced” page devoted to defining and activated search criteria instead of just a sidebar.
Agreed with all that. It’s been such a pleasure to have a Hey address the last almost three(!) years. Gmail isn’t missed.
To shore up search, I was loading their .mbox export into DT every so often. I haven’t had to use that much since they improved search mid last year, but it’s still fun and good for searching across multiple accounts’ archives.
Now, if we could just get their weird take on a calendar this year…
well, now the HEY Calendar has been out for a few months.