Ocean’s new app streamlines Gmail by adding triage tools, a task manager, and built-in meeting invites for efficient inbox control.
Ocean, a new personal productivity app, is set to launch. It is designed to assist you in managing your overburdened inbox, converting your emails into tasks, and sharing your availability for meetings with others, all within a single application.
Gmail occupies a significant portion of the email market, with few competitors. Comprehending this, Ocean resolved to collaborate with Gmail rather than compete with it.
It can be challenging to establish a presence in the market as a third-party client; however, successful email applications have proved to be profitable acquisitions. For example, in the previous decade, Yahoo acquired the email application Xobni for $60 million and Microsoft acquired Accompli for $200 million.
Martin Dufort and Scott Lake, who were early co-founders of Shopify, were drawn to this market opportunity. In early 2019, they established BigWave Labs and began to address Email.
Ocean, an application that prioritizes email administration, was the outcome of this endeavor. (Dufort asserts that Scott is now the app’s financial advisor and supporter.)
The application is compatible with Gmail or Google Workspace accounts, enabling users to convert their communications into tasks and action items to prevent them from being overlooked.
To facilitate this, the application incorporates its own Task Manager, which can access the user’s Email. That is, you are not required to copy or paste information into an external to-do app, and you gain access to features that surpass those provided by Google’s task manager for Gmail users.
Ocean enables you to establish due dates, organize tasks into folders, link emails to your task notes, and construct tasks with rich formatting. It can also automatically extract action items from longer communications for you.
You can create a task to manage the emails you intend to respond to later, rather than leaving them unread or applying a label.
Ocean’s inbox triage tools will be the most compelling feature for inbox zero enthusiasts.
The application enables users to sort emails by categories such as first-timers (individuals who have contacted you for the first time), persistent pingers (individuals who have contacted you on multiple occasions), and emails from their contacts.
It can also identify emails classified as spam but may be appropriate for your inbox, ensuring you do not overlook significant correspondence.
Ocean also provides subscription management tools, a feature that Gmail recently introduced. These tools are in addition to the standard email functions of composing, replying, flagging, archiving, and deleting Email.
Additionally, Ocean provides integrated meeting scheduling tools that enable you to establish your availability based on your pending and booked events. This convenient feature allows you to verify your availability and prevent others from scheduling meetings at the last minute.
In addition, it is possible to send an automated email invitation to meeting recipients, confirm meeting proposals through a web interface, and automatically add confirmed meetings to your calendar..
The Ocean iPhone app has recently been released; however, a new Mac app is currently in development and will support iCloud sync. The team anticipates that the year’s conclusion will implement this.
The company’s objective is to generate revenue through its Ocean Blue non-recurring membership model, which is priced at $67. The membership includes a year’s worth of updates introducing new features and functions. Additionally, it will provide access to the Mac application upon its release.
“I believe that individuals are becoming increasingly fed up with recurring subscriptions,” Dufort explains. “We aimed to depart from this, while simultaneously establishing a model that would be sustainable for us.”
Therefore, we resolved to clarify the Ocean Blue membership. He continues, “The application is essentially a freemium model, which means that the fundamental features are free indefinitely.”
“The membership also places pressure on us to ensure that we continue to provide value to this application as we progress,” he continues.
The Blue membership will also include email insights and AI email summarization capabilities.
Ocean offers a 14-day free trial to prospective users, which does not automatically convert them into a paying subscriber.