Why email is still valuable

Email is the original killer app and for certain cases, I think it’s still superior to Slack, Microsoft Teams, iMessage, and especially SMS text messaging. Here is why:

Subjects

You can specify subjects to classify your communication. Some SMS implementations had this but it was never widely used.

Standards based

SMTP and IMAP are very mature standards that allow communication between whatever email providers you choose. There is no need to have a Slack account just to talk to someone else that’s on Slack, etc.

Portable/vendor neutral

If you decide you want to take your email address (provided you have your own domain) to another provider, you can at any point and your contacts don’t even need to know about it. If you decide to leave Slack, but all of your clients still use your Slack team to reach you, how is that going to go?

Client choices

You have numerous choices of clients to use on both desktops and to an extent, phones. You’re not just limited to the messages app.

Rules and spam control

Lots of flexibility in creating rules to keep your inbox clean. Try doing that with spam text messages.

Threads

This is not unique to email but modern email clients have this capability.

Pick your address

You have much less control over your phone # than you do your email address.

Medium

Email provides a nice alternative when an instant response is not required. Text messaging (RCS/iMessage/etc.) makes everything instant.

Summary

Instant forms of communication have their place but email is still the best for non-instant communication. Some of email’s bad rap comes from it being the default tool we all use. If suddenly another tool/medium became the default and we dumped all of those general purpose messages into it, the weaknesses of those tools might make us hate that tool even more than email.