Hello! What’s your background, and what are you working on?
I’m a software engineer by education and by trade who’s worked in many different fields, but I’ve always been a maker. I’m currently working on Inboxes App which is a temporary email browser extension which lets you create as many long lasting (but disposable) emails as you like.
What inspired you to create this browser extension for temporary email addresses?
I’ve used disposable emails over many years purely to avoid getting spam in my personal email. The problem is that they always last around 10 minutes, and sometimes you need access to that email address a week later – but you still don’t want their junk cluttering up your normal inbox. That’s why I thought a browser extension for temporary emails could work nicely. It’s always there, and you can delete the address when you’re done with it. It’s a nice compromise.
How did you develop the initial product?
The initial version was super simple; it was just a mail server that I wrote in Go, attached to a database. I could create addresses in one table, and read the emails in the other. Not very good for anyone other than myself.
The first user ready application however just showed your inbox and allowed you to click into each email. Once you had read it, it would disappear. Again, not super user friendly. There’s been many iterations to get to where it is today, and there’ll be many more.
How have you attracted users and grown?
Users and growth has been primarily via SEO and the Chrome Extension Store. Before this, I’d not really had much of an opportunity to learn SEO. So really Inboxes App allowed me to learn both how mail servers work and how to acquire users. I’d say I’m getting as much out of it learning new skills as I am running this project.
As part of the open startup movement I also share some stats publicly here, but as you can see it’s no rocket ship. There is however consistent growth. We always see startups shoot to fame and fortune, but for the majority it’s not the case at all. I think that this is a nice way of showing the hard work that it takes to get your projects somewhere respectable.
Can you walk us through the process of creating and deleting temporary email addresses using your extension?
Users first need to install the Inboxes browser extension. When opening it for the first time you’ll see you already have an email address waiting for you. No account needed whatsoever!
You can then use this email address when signing up to websites and new emails will start to come into the browser extension.
When you’re done, you simply hit the delete button and messages sent to that email address will no longer appear.
Realising that some power users may want additional features, there’s a paid option which offers a disposable mobile phone number per user, and you can use your own domain to get around domain blocks. Naturally, paid users can also create more addresses than free users.
What future developments or updates do you have planned for your extension?
I’ve been focusing on small improvements as well as some experiments to try convert existing power users into paid users.
Through talking to users I’ve discovered that file attachments is a common request – so that’s the next big feature. But for now, it’s conversions, growth and optimising the existing extension.
Could you provide insights into the technology stack or architecture behind your extension?
Absolutely! I’ve used Go for the mail server and api, and emails are stored in MongoDB. Go was a great choice, it’s fast, it’s good at concurrency, and runs super efficiently as it’s a compiled language.
Mongo is also a solid choice. It’s fast, in-memory and I run this on a VPS that I can easily scale up. There’s an automated backup process in place too should anything happen.
I’m not much of a front-end engineer however, so the extension makes use of jquery (though I’m planning/slowly updating parts to use vanilla js).
What changes would you make if you were to begin again?
I definitely think I chose the right tech stack. It’s been a joy to work with. There’s been a lot of learnings along the way, but that’s why I set out to work on this project. When I started, I didn’t know SEO, nor how SMTP servers work. I didn’t have experience with A/B testing, nor did I have a project of my own to optimise and to improve conversions/metrics. It’s been a whole heap of learning, and it’s been an enjoyable ride to date.
Where might we find additional information?
You can find out more at Inboxes App, or download the extension from the Chrome Store.
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