In today’s era of AI tools, agents, and personal assistants, new products are being launched every week that promise to “fix” your inbox.
As you navigate this ever changing landscpae of email programs, keep this in mind: many of them will not last.
Switching email clients can be disruptive and waste hours of time. But there is one aspect that is particularly painful, resulting in data loss, dropped followups and fogotten relationships: Migrating your email reminders.
Unlike other aspects of email, "snoozed emails" or "reminder emails" are a proprietary add-on to the underlying email protocol. Switching email programs allows you to migrate your messages. But your reminders are locked in – stuck in a proprietary format in a proprietary system that, one day, no longer be functional.
The Lindy Effect
There’s a little known concept called the Lindy effect: the longer something has been around, the longer it’s likely to survive. A technology that has lasted 50 years is likely to last another 50.
By that measure, email itself is one of the most durable digital technologies ever created.
Since 1982, the To:, Cc:, Bcc: fields and the basic local-part@domain format have remained largely unchanged. And they will likely remain unchanged for decades and even centuries to come.
The Graveyard of Email Clients
Meanwhile, the world of email clients tells a different story. Dozens of companies have come and gone, each offering clever features, bold visions, and devoted user bases — until one day, they closed their doors.
2015 – Accompli
Shut down after being acquired by Microsoft and rebranded as Outlook Mobile.
2016 – Mailbox
Closed after Dropbox acquired it and later shut it down due to a strategic pivot.
2016 – Opera Mail
Officially discontinued as Opera focused on its core browser business.
2017 – Yahoo Mail App for Windows 10
Discontinued when Yahoo ended support due to low adoption.
2017 – Alto Mail
Shut down after AOL (later Verizon/Oath) discontinued the app and reallocated resources.
2017 – Nylas Mail (N1)
Ended when Nylas ceased development and pivoted to its API business; later forked into Mailspring.
2017 – Windows Live Mail
Reached end-of-life when Microsoft retired the program in favor of Windows 10 Mail and Outlook.com.
2018 – Astro
Closed after being acquired by Slack to integrate its AI and email features.
2018 & 2020 – Newton Mail (CloudMagic)
Discontinued in 2018 due to an unsustainable subscription model and again in 2020 after Essential (its acquirer) shut down.
2019 – Inbox by Gmail
Shut down when Google ended the service to consolidate features into Gmail.
2019 – Zimbra Desktop
Support ended due to low demand for offline clients.
2020 – IncrediMail
Discontinued when owner Perion ended the service after nearly 20 years, citing financial and technical challenges.
2024 – Skiff Mail
Shut down after being acquired by Notion and sunset within months.
Each one was built with care. Each one had a following. And each was eventually discontinued, swallowing your carefully scheduled snoozed emails and email reminders in their demise.
The Solution: Experiment with New Email Programs. Separate Reminders.
Despite their short lifespans, many of these email clients introduced genuinely novel ideas! New ways of triaging, filtering, or visualizing messages –things well worth exploring.
If you take a step back, these new products usually store only a limited amount of proprietary information, and often times only the reminder. The underlying protocol — email itself — remains universal, stable, and portable allowing your to migrate your messages freely to new programs.
So, we present a solution to have the best of both worlds: Use email clients for email. But schedule your email reminders in the one channel that is never going away: email.
Betting on Email. And FollowUpThen.
Email clients may come and go, but email itself is durable.
And do you know what else is durable? FollowUpThen. We launched 20 years ago and we are still using the same underlying approach. Tried. True. Stable.
We bet on the email protocol itself, a protocol which has stood the test of time. The standards are universal, battle-tested, and sturdy. Every device, every provider, and every email client that was built (and every one that was shut down!) worked with FollowUpThen.
That’s why FollowUpThen is built on email itself. It doesn’t matter which email client you prefer, or which one appears or disappears tomorrow. If you have email, you have FollowUpThen.
At FollowUpThen, we are not chasing trends or building shiny toys that fade when the funding does. We are focused on simplicity, on utility, and on building something that will still be useful to you decades from now.
So when you schedule your next reminder, remember:
📩 Email is forever. Email apps are not.