Category: Services

If you’re like me, you often receive emails at a time when you aren’t able to deal with them immediately. To manage them I have tried: marking messages as unread, copying email text to a calendar item, and flagging them as Outlook tasks with reminders. For various reasons, none of these workflows were optimal for me. Then I discovered FollowUpThen.

FollowUpThen is a service that allows you to set timed reminders for following up on emails and tasks with fewer steps and a cleaner inbox. There is a free tier with limited options, and that was enough for me. If you’d like to get fancy with calendar integration, SMS integration, attachments or managing FollowUpThen for a team, there are two additional paid tiers.

How Does It Work?

FollowUpThen has lots of different functions. At its core, it uses a series of email addresses you can use to forward emails to be reminded to take action at a particular time. Here are some examples:

• Snooze an email for three weeks by forwarding it to 3weeks@followupthen.com. The email will reappear in your inbox in exactly three weeks.
• Send or forward an email to tomorrow4pm@followupthen.com to remind yourself to do something tomorrow at 4pm.
• Send or forward an email to everyweekday@followupthen.com to get a daily reminder. (limited in free plan)
• Task (limited number in free plan): send or forward an email to 5pm-t@followupthen.com you will assign a task to yourself that is due tomorrow at 5. If you have not completed the task by the due date, you will be reminded every day until it has been completed or cancelled.

You can set a time interval (x minutes, hours, weeks, months, years), a specific time of day (ex. 11pm), a specific date, a specific date/time, day of week, unique day of month (ex. 3rdThursday), relative timing (ex. tonight, tomorrow) and more.

Recurring reminders (ex. daily, weekly, or custom intervals) mentioned above available, using a different email name syntax. Visit this page to learn more about how to structure email addresses for these different functions. Keep in mind that recurring reminders are limited on the free plan.

Features

FollowUpThen has many features to help you customize your reminders. Here are some highlights:

• To, CC, BCC
  • TO: Only you receive the followup.
  • BCC: Only you receive the followup. (No recipients can see that you are using an email reminder service. Followup includes the original email for reference).
  • CC: Everyone in the ‘to’ field (up to 15) receives a followup in addition to yourself.
• Autocomplete: send an email to autocomplete@followupthen.com to receive a list of the most popular timing/email formats.
• Short domain: to save keystrokes, instead of time@followupthen.com, use time@fut.io. Same email, less typing.
• v-card: download the FollowUpThen vCard to add the addresses to address book for ease of use.

View, Edit, or Cancel Follow-ups

Your account will include a My Follow-ups page that you can use to view and edit your follow-ups. Alternatively, you can email pending@followupthen.com to receive a list of current follow-ups.

There are two ways to cancel follow-ups. If you are setting a new reminder on an existing thread with a existing reminder, you can use syntax in the new reminder address to cancel previous reminders. Or, forward a message in a thread with an existing reminder to cancel@followupthen.com to cancel all reminders on a thread.

Paid Features

The paid tiers include additional options not included in this post. To find out more, click the link on a feature:

• SMS reminders
• Calendar integration
• Full web interface (free interface is limited)
• Response detection

Unsupported Platforms

Unfortunately, not all email platforms can support “email-based actions.” For example, the “Gmail” app on iOS, Mailbox for iOS and some versions of the native Android mail client do not yet allow these actions. If you rely on one of these platforms it might be best to leave this option disabled.

If you use multiple email clients – where one supports email-based actions and one does not, you can leave them turned on and then simply use the “other” postpone option if you need to act on a followup from your unsupported email client.

Summary

If you are looking for a way to streamline the process of “snoozing” emails and tasks, FollowUpThen provides a functional product on the free tier, while keeping premium tiers affordable for those who are looking for extra features. Have you used FollowUpThen? What did you think? Let us know in the comments!

Are you tired of seeing the same emails in your inbox over and over, but never get around to clicking “unsubscribe?” Or, would you prefer it if all of your subscription emails came in a single daily digest email? Enter unroll.me, a free service that will scan your inbox for subscription emails and provide a list for you to evaluate and manage. This service is available through both a browser and an app.

While the service is free, you will need to create an account. If you use Google for email and use your Google credentials to create the account, you can allow it access to your inbox in a single step. Unroll.me currently supports email accounts from Outlook.com (including Hotmail, MSN, & Windows Live), Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, and iCloud. Be sure to make sure you are comfortable with unroll.me’s privacy policy before giving access.

Edit Subscriptions

To see the list of your current subscriptions, click on “Edit Subscriptions” in the top menu:

For each email subscription listed, you will have three options: add to rollup (single digest email), keep in inbox (leave alone), or unsubscribe.

You may notice a company’s name appears more than once in your list. This is because some companies maintain separate lists based on interests. Be sure you are unsubscribing to the one you no longer want to receive.

Keep in mind that some things may appear as subscriptions that are actually notifications you may need, like appointment reminders.

Click “unsubscribe” and the line with that account disappears, indicating you are unsubscribed. No need to go to secondary pages to explain why you unsubscribed or be pressured into re-subscribing.

Add to Rollup

The rollup is a digest that gives you an overview of all the subscriptions you receive each day. The rollup will keep your inbox clean by organizing the subscriptions you select into a single daily digest email. You can choose whether to receive your rollup in the morning, afternoon, or evening.

If you decide to remove a subscription from your rollup, you can do so from the “Your Rollup” section of the top menu.

You will still be subscribed to the email, but it will appear outside your rollup.

If you decide you no longer want to receive a rollup at all, you can deactivate it in your account settings (three-bar icon next to your email address):

You will still be subscribed to the emails, but they will not appear in digest format.

Have More Questions?

Unroll.me has created a helpful FAQ page, or you can visit their support portal.

Have you used this tool yourself? Let us know in the comments.