I work in B2B IT support, and email is designed to be very async, and for the most part it still is. What I can say with certainty is that business folks expect email to be instant like synchronous platforms are... It's not, it never will be... It's gotten about as close as it can be, but it is not, and will never be, instant delivery, no matter how much they want it to be.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
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I still have a weird email friend who refuses to chat over any apps and I totally can respect that. :)
cool of you to keep in contact with them :) i have always wanted to do this but i know it would isolate me and inconvenience others just to communicate with me
I need an alternative to gmail for creating new email accounts. Any ideas?
Get a cheap hosting plan. You'll get a domain, several mailboxes and you can mess around with services like Nextcloud
OutLook? I'm still rocking my Hotmail address LOL
I guess that's why someone decided to build a chat app on the email protocol and infrastructure.
Several people have tried to do this.
Delta was first one I have heard of, but when you think about it, it would be surprising if it was the first one when email over network has existed over 50 years. What other ones are there?
I usually dismiss them as quickly as I discover them because I know how the underlying technology behind email works and I don't agree that it should be presented in the form of chats.
So each time I see it, it only resides in my mind for a few minutes at most.
I love that this exists but never have used it.
asynchronous
Any form of text based communication is asynchronous
For the people, yes.
With email, message delivery can be async as well.
as in the server chats with another
Centralized servers in which 2 users talk can be considered "synchronous" because they get the message nearly instantly, but yea, we often use NoSQL async calls for instant messaging apps
Oh on a technical level yes. But on the surface it's still asynchronous, as long as you can't tell whether the other person has read your message (which, to be fair, a lot of messaging applications have as a feature)
Sidenote: Remember when having an email address was enough, you didn't have to have a fucking phone number as well? Stop trying to de-anonymize the internet, you're making more problems than you're solving
They're not trying to solve any problem beyond their own, potential resistance to false authority.
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Mail has the big advantage of being totally cross platform. And it works, basically everywhere.
All the application protocols were supposed to be cross-platform! It’s something the corporatisation of the net undermined to an extent
You can do it from a terminal. Us Linux kids will never let it die.
It's why SMS still exists too. It's from an era where everyone just used open standards instead of trying to create their own thing for money. Big tech conglomerates like we have now didn't exist. The state of the tech industry and it's proprietary standards is absolutely fucked.
SMS was never intended to be available to end users. It was built as a side channel to help field techs with diagnostics. When consumer handsets started to add features, it was co-opted to provide what we know it as today.
That explains why way back when I tried to read the GSM (1.x) specification out of curiosity, it turned out SMS were going via a "control channel".
Always wondered why the data for those was going via a control channel rather than some kind of data channel.
Google is trying to kill SMS. My new android by default has sms disabled, defaulting to RCS with "try sending sms instead if rcs fails to send" option being off by default, which makes no sense from user perspective
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It’s from an era where everyone just used open standards instead of trying to create their own thing for money.
SMS is literally from a time when every mobile phone manufacturer had their on charger plug. And some tried pushing proprietary headphone jacks.
Vendors LOVE vendor lock-in.
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It’s reliable, it’s simple, it’s free, and virtually everyone who uses the internet has one. Email won’t be replaced for a LONG time.
I think WhatsApp has done it already in places like India
To be fair, if it is "free" you are probably paying your mail provider with your data.
My mail server is in the cabinet above my desk.
I guess you're right - my mail provider does have all my data - but my mail provider is Me!
I assume he meant free like speech, not free like beer.
There are no gatekeepers to email, anyone can get a domain and their own server.
There are definitely gatekeepers. Even if your hosting provider isn’t blocking port 25 by default, SPF, DKIM and DMARC will see your emails going straight into the recipient’s junk folder/spam filter if not correctly configured. Hosting your own mail server at home is also a fantastic way to piss off your ISP, lose emails to downtime, have your IP blacklisted from many services and open up your environment to exploitation. It can be done but let’s not pretend that it’s easy or that there aren’t barriers to entry.
Mail servers are like filo pastry. Sure, you could go to the inconvenience and effort of making it yourself and I’m sure it’ll be very satisfying to do so. But 99% of professionals use the store bought version, and for good reason, because it’s a lot of effort for an end result that is no better and in all likelihood probably worse.
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Reality is everyone has an email, and everyone will keep having an email. My 10 year old has an email so they could sign up to epic and steam. You basically need it to use the internet at all. So of course it will survive.
Outside of business though, when was the last time you sent an email to someone you know?
My mother uses email for nearly everything. I'm 31 now, but in high school she'd email me from the basement that dinner is ready.
Just last month I received this... we chat on WhatsApp and phone calls regularly as well.
That's cute. She treats it like writing letters or maybe postcards given the length of the message.
I feel like that's what email should be. More than texting, less frequent than chats, record keeping, quick little updates on life, etc.
Texts are for either unimportant things or emergencies, an email is like a news report after things are stable or a state of the family update. You send it out when the details are worked out so it's easy to reference. I hate when family plans happen in emails, I don't want emails between 10 family members and their responses to how we're going to eat at Grandma's. Text me, then when we decide how we're gonna do it send an email with the final decisions to everyone.
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IRC and forums as well to a lesser extent.
Much much lesser. IRC has basically died to successors. Everybody still uses email sometimes.
Forums are still banging around however. Lots of places still use them, and thank god for that.
Not so much though.
There was a moment when forums were the only kind of community but now forum use is dwarved by discord and reddit.
IRC is still a pretty strong backbone for Twitch chat. At least it was a couple of years ago.
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Thousands of years after humanity has destroyed itself with nuclear weapons...
As the sun peeks through the gray clouds and lights up a solar panel...
A long-forgotten server hums to life...
And sends an email...
"Attention Required: Your Order is Delayed"
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It’s because it isn’t a silo?
Discord, Slack and a bajillion similar apps do not meld with other apps. Email just happened to hit critical mass before “let’s try to get a monopoly” became the slogan of all tech, and collectively Big Tech is too stupid/hostile to replace it with some cooperative protocol.
iMessage is another pure example of this.
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I'm using cpanel email and it's terrible. Can someone recommend something cheap but better than cpanel?
What's wrong with cpanel?
Some places block email coming from my cpanel email.
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