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Digests are Coming

Up to this point FeedMail has only supported real-time notifications. Meaning that every feed update immediately produces a single email. However this is about to change!

When we asked for feedback on the features you would like to see in FeedMail we had a number of users reach out saying that they wanted a way to batch notifications together. We saw two main reasons for this:

  1. To reduce noise in their inbox. For some high-volume feeds users wanted to be able to quickly skim, then delete the entire batch in one go. While deleting one-by-one offers more flexibility, the bulk option is easier for high-volume feeds.
  2. To reduce costs. While we believe that our prices are incredibly reasonable, they can add up if you are getting lots of updates. For example if you follow a feed that updates every 15min that will be about $35 a year (or half price if you buy your credits in bulk). Not super expensive but maybe more than you want to spend for a single feed! Digests provide and option for cost control, so you can limit how much a single feed can cost you.

Developing this feature was tricky, because no one on our team had a use case for this feature. But thanks to your feedback we have a preview available that we think you will like.

So without further ado...

Trying the Digests Beta

Creating a Digest

During the beta period there is no links to create a digest from the FeedMail interface. You need to navigate to https://feedmail.org/digests/new directly.

Selecting the Schedule

Right now we have 2 schedule options available: Periodic and Time-of-Day.

Periodic

Screenshot of periodic schedule configuartion interface.

Periodic is a simple mode where you pick a duration, for example hourly, and a digest is sent on that interval. This is a great way to limit how many updates you can get for a feed. Even if a feed is posting every few minutes, an hourly feed will send you at most 24 updates a day. If there are no updates in a given interval no digest will be sent.

Time-of-Day

Screenshot of time-of-day schedule configuartion interface.

Time-of-Day allow you to pick when you get your news. For example you can select Monday to Friday at 8:00 to get news with your morning coffee or every day at 20:00 to deliver some bedtime reading.

Adding Subscriptions

Once you have your digest created it appears along with your emails when you create and manage subscriptions. Simply select the digest as a target and new updates will be sent on the schedule you can choose. You can add as many feeds as you want to a single digest and you can create multiple digests to stay organized.

Screenshot of selecting digest target.

Pricing

During the beta period, pricing is 1 credit per digest issue. The price will likely change as digests move out of beta and the costs of providing this feature are better understood. Make sure you are subscribed to this blog and the features category for pricing updates. Updated pricing will be announced at least a week before it takes effect.

Known Issues

This is a beta and there are known problems and lack of polish. We are providing a list of issues that we are aware of for reference. But even if the feature or bug you want is listed here feel free to send feedback, this allows us to prioritize them effectively.

  • No link to the digest creation page. This will be fixed once digests leaves beta.
  • Max period of 1 week. We hope to extend this to at least a month but performance and cost needs to be tested. - Resolved
  • Updates more that 3 days old may be missing from digests. This will be fixed before launch. - Resolved

Feedback

Most importantly we look to see your feedback. Does the feature work the way you want it to? Are there bugs or missing features? Let us know by contacting support or leaving a comment below. Even if your grievance is already known it is useful for prioritization and if everything works perfectly we appreciate that feedback too!

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