We need better email solutions for Solopreneurs

Email solution designers, you are missing the potential of a sizable market.

Let me explain. Most Email solutions seem to target primarily bigger businesses. Some innovate team communications. Some focus on adding AI to improve the sales pipeline and the company's bottom line. This is most of the solutions and where we see the most innovation. Many of these only focus on Google, Microsoft, and sometimes Apple email. While some also do IMAP, those are often in a way that seems like an afterthought.

There are some solutions that target individuals, but they tend to be less innovative. They may hit on some of the core needs, but not much else.  

The market that is most missed, with a few exceptions, is the Solopreneur/Self-employed/gig worker market. And that is a sizeable market that is worth some innovation.

What sets the solopreneur market apart? We tend to deal with many email addresses and calendars. For example, for email, a solopreneur may have a personal email, a business email, a subscription email, a client (or a few clients) email and more. Personally, I use between 9 and 12 email accounts at a time.

Equally important is we have at least as many calendars as email addresses. And sometimes more for things like the family calendar, group calendar, convention calendars, etc.

So, what does this type of user need? In the simplest of terms, things that make our lives easier. Let me translate that into what that means for an email solution.

• Must have a unified mailbox. Preferably with unified spam, trash, sent, etc. And the emails must be clear on what email address they came from. A few solutions I’ve seen get the first right and the second wrong. And responses must come from the same email address the message was sent to.
• Must be able to handle any type of email such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, IMAP, POP3, etc. (Yes, I’m looking at Superhuman, Spike and others.)
• Must have a unified calendar with options on which calendars to show. (this is ripe for innovation)
• Must have the ability to add more calendars than just the ones related to an email address. For example, linked calendars in Google Calendar and CalDav calendars.
• The UI needs to be modern and easy to use.
• Must be stable.
• Must be affordable.
• Must have a fully capable trial, as a solopreneur does not want to sit through a one-hour sales call that targets corporate users. (Yes, I’m looking at you Spark.)

So far, that’s not a long list. And it’s not an overly complex one either. But reviewing lots (around 20) of solutions, the items on that list have not come close to being met. In fact, I rated some of the email solutions on a 0 to 100 scale around these needs and none even scored above 48.

Now let’s talk about where there is some innovation room.

• Something that streamlines reviewing lots of emails quickly in the unified inbox. Perhaps using AI to filter into categories to review. But this functionality must learn and adjust based on the usage by the solopreneur.
• Some way of scheduling emails for later review. This can be a later board, but it needs to be treated as a first-class feature in the email flow. If an email gets placed on the board, it’s not in the inbox. If it’s done, it gets moved into the archive.
• Eliminate unnecessary maintenance. This seems like it should have gotten handed years ago, but many systems still show an icon or count of messages not read that are in the trash bin. The worst offenders are the ones that, when you delete a draft message, it shows as unread in the trash. The Trash, Archive, and Sent folders should never have unread messages. Archives should move to delete folder on a schedule the user can define. And the trash should get permanently deleted based on a schedule the user defines.
• Let the user determine the placement of email fields in the folders and in the individual email. Perhaps having a default and a few stock options but allowing the user to change them.  
• Let the user determine what calendar fields should get shown in the daily, weekly, monthly, and detail views.
• Let the user define which calendars block availability in the scheduling feature
• Ways to make email conversations easier to read. Maybe something like chats, but it needs to take into account that responses can happen anywhere in the chain and the later board (or whatever scheduling tool becomes).
• Built in signature generation tool. One that has layout options and can include optional logo, banner, portrait, social links, website link, etc.
• New email indicators need to be accurate. I know this sounds like a no brainer, but a few still get this wrong to this day. The user should be able to select which types of items get notifications or counts. For example, maybe the user only wants the desktop notifications to be for high-priority items or just to ignore email filtered into a specific folder.
• A way to forward an entire conversation (with all the threads) to someone else in a fashion that is easy to read even if they don't use the same email client.
• A means to easily setup your email and calendar accounts on multiple computers and only charge per user. Many of us have PCs and laptops. We like to move between them as needed and don’t want to pay extra to do so.
• Scheduling tool that can get inserted into websites easily and take into account the calendars you choose. Maybe only include time blocks with certain tags.
• A means to share a calendar or combination of calendars publicly and a way to insert said calendar into websites easily.
• Lead generation tools that take into consideration the market the user is targeting.
• A means to progress leads to help make them successful ventures.
• A UI that is intelligently designed, easy to use, and customizable by the user or by roles.
• The ability to mark some individuals as high-priority and that gets considered when filtering emails and calendar items.
• First class editing tools and perhaps AI assisted writing of emails.
• A cost that will not break a solopreneur.
• Intelligent scheduling of emails.
• Bulk emails and email lists functionality.
• Event scheduling and tools to assist with that.

I’m sure others can add to this list. But what is clear, there is a lot of room for innovation for solopreneurs users. Will one of the email solutions step up to the plate? Or perhaps someone to break out with a new email solution targeted for this group. One can only hope.

Oh, and if you need a Fractional CTO to lead this effort, check out my site: FractionalAdvantage.com