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From DHH's long-winded keynote at Rails World 2026. He was bragging that Hey's backend is so efficient because it's written in Rust (which he hates and refuses to read).
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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2026
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I remember when HEY first came out, I got to try it and thought it was kinda useless. Defining an entire email service by the removal of one step from any other email service seems silly. (Coming from a guy who’s actually written a unique email service.)
@hperrin @tatterdemalion email aliases are a ubiquitous feature, GMail and Outlook both support "plus" aliases e.g.
username+alias@gmail.comis treated as equivalent tousername@gmail.com.Though I prefer simplelogin.io or addy.io, both of which are email alias providers that connect with an existing email inbox (instead of having to create a whole new email account). I like how these are open-source. Port87 claims to have a "patented spam filter"—the whole concept of software patents doesn't click with me.
Thats an extension not an alias
That’s correct, subaddressing is a ubiquitous feature. That’s not what I was talking about.
Port87 is built entirely around subaddressing. The “bare” address doesn’t even go through to you. It also labels email automatically based on the subaddress, and you can control setting per label, like mark-as-read and notifications. You can also have screening on any of your labels, so that only humans can email you there. Subaddressing is not an optional afterthought, it is required and how the system works.
Port87 does not have an inbox. (Which I found out while creating it is something that basically all open source email software expects to exist.) It has an “Aggbox”, which is not a real place, but a filter for which labels you want to see when you open the app.
Port87’s search box is, I would say, the most powerful email search feature of any email service. It’s nearly as powerful as a straight up SQL query.
So yeah, I would say it’s unique among email services.
Also, simple login and addy aren’t really email “providers”, they’re more accurately called forwarding services. Email provider, or officially “mail service provider”, is specifically the term for an email service that sends, receives, and stores email.
I do appreciate some of the philosophy of Hey, like cherishing the human-to-human section of your inbox. But it's simply not worth the price tag. Also now that DHH has proudly proclaimed he does not read any of the code, I don't think it's even worth it for free, if I'm gambling with my data. I just self-host Stalwart and Bulwark.
Legend.
Might I ask what options you support for email import/export, migration, and third-party clients?
Right now, only downloading single emails. This is an area I’d really like to improve on though. The single best option, and what I’ll be working on as soon as I’m done with mailing lists, is supporting IMAP. That will let you import/export mail directly, and give support for a bunch of third party clients. Unfortunately, because Port87 is very different than other email services, I’m going to have to write my own IMAP server. I have the spec printed out in a binder in my office, so I’ll be getting started on it pretty soon. That’s a big big project though, so realistically, it’ll probably be over a year, maybe two, before Port87 supports it.