I recently renewed my subscription for Hey without really thinking about whether I enjoyed the software over the last year or if I care about policy changes within Basecamp's business. So that's what this piece is for.
Overall I like Hey but I don't love it. I think I would like a more simplified UI that was more Mac like and not so much of a web app. I'm also not really using the sorting feature. I really only read one newsletter these days which is the Hacker Newsletter so that screen is pretty useless. My flow when new emails come in is putting important items in Imbox and everything else in Paper Trail.
What I do like about the app is the screening feature. It has kept all annoying and spam email away. I also like having my nice clean [email protected] email. They're the two biggest reasons to keep paying.
In terms of the issues around how Basecamp treat their employees; I'm honestly not totally against it. I think announcing the policies via a blog post was crazy but I think some of what they're trying to do isn't terrible. It just needed to be handled internally. I still think it would be an incredible opportunity to work under DHH and other awesome Rails developers.
I also like the fact that I'm giving money to the person who's open source software started my career and essentially helped me get to where I am today. It's amazing that you can use something like Rails for free and create apps.
I'll pay for Hey for another year but it 100% isn't a perfect solution for me. I get the feeling other's feel that way too.