I pay $30 USD per month for software that makes my email faster… and I’m totally ok with it.
After 8 months of using Superhuman as a paid subscriber, I decided I just had to share my positive experience with the product so far.
I first learnt about the Superhuman thru Jason Calacanis’ This Week In Startups podcast .
In the interview, Superhuman founder Rahul Vohra describes the product as “the fastest email experience ever made”.
And from my experience, that’s pretty spot on.
Superhuman’s product basically allows you to use your Gmail account faster and more effectively.
The company has attracted somewhat of a loyal following and I have to admit, I’m now one of them.
After using it for 8 months now, I’m not only a big fan — I can also see the subscription has been a worthwhile investment.
This article is a review of Superhuman and why I think it’s a worthwhile product to look at, especially for those with busy email inboxes!
Load Speed
In my opinion, Load Speed is enough to make the product worthwhile. In the table below I compare the results from a very quick, not-so-scientifically-robust time test that I did.
It compares the start to finish time it took me to bring up the most recent email in a ‘long email chain’. For those that have long email chains in Gmail, you’ll know that this sometimes can take a while.
With Gmail, I noticed that I regularly encounter slow load times whenever using the search bar, not just for long email chains either.
Furthermore, I often had slow load times when initially starting up Gmail. Like the screenshot you see below.
While in contrast, Superman is up and running instantaneously once you navigate to mail.superhuman.com and the search bar is A LOT faster overall.
Given that I use email quite a lot, the time savings quickly add up.
My rough analysis shows that I save around 1–3 hours per month because of the improved speed I can achieve with Superhuman.
Which for me is enough to keep the subscription going.
But alongside the Load Speed, there are also other features that I feel help me add value.
Keyboard Shortcuts
This also contributes to the amount of time I save from using Superhuman as I can achieve certain tasks a whole lot faster because of these shortcuts.
My favourite keyboard shortcuts include those listed below, all of which save me time when compared to doing the same task in Gmail.
Damn Good UX
My final reason for being a strong Superhuman user includes the damn pretty UX that they have.
My favourite aspect of their design is the beautiful images that display as a background once you achieve the allusive “Inbox Zero”.
These stunning photos change everyday and it is a legitimate source of motivation for me, I aim to get to Inbox Zero everyday just so I can see what awesome image will be displayed this time.
Mobile App = A+
Further to background images, the mobile design is top notch and much easier to use than Gmail’s mobile version.
👍
Overall top job by Superhuman and highly recommend the product for anyone with a busy inbox and anyone needs to save some extra time out of their busy schedule.
