Boomerang for Gmail

I am an email power user. I would probably lose an hour every day if I couldn't use Gmail (and use it from my phone and use keyboard shortcuts and otherwise use it to its fullest extent). I am a paying customer of Gmail -- I use 18GB of storage right now. This is because I archive my emails (I don't delete them) and because I want to be able to search any of my emails from all time, so I can't just make a new account and exploit Google's free storage.

One problem with email is tracking people's responses. If I send 30 emails in a given day (which is a realistic estimate) and expect responses to half of them, then I would have to either create 15 draft emails or 15 calendar events to be sure that everyone responds. That would be atrocious. Another alternative would be to have a "Waiting" label and a priority inbox that has everything in that label, but that solution is clunky. Even worse is the status quo: expecting responses to, perhaps, 450 emails in a month and getting responses to 420 of them, the other 30 falling through the cracks. I have a good memory, and when I am expecting a response, it's generally because there is something important that I'm emailing about, so I would probably spontaneously remember 20 or 25 of those emails and just follow up with the people. But that's still a horrible situation to be in. Imagine if you forgot to pay one bill every month or forgot to make your child's lunch one day every month. My email is my work, so when someone flakes out on responding and I don't follow up, work doesn't get done. In addition to the actual problem of tracking responses, since I didn't have a clear solution to it, I would constantly worry about if there were any emails that i needed to follow up on.

Boomerang for Gmail is a company that solves that problem. They also solve three or four other email problems, but those were nowhere near as significant for me as the problem of tracking responses. Their interface: when you're writing an email, you check a box and select a date. The email will go back into your inbox if no one responds to your email by that date. That is exactly the interface that it should have. It works flawlessly (with one exception: Google makes the Gmail app and doesn't allow any plugins, so it is impossible for Boomerang to work on Gmail right now. I'm just waiting for Google to acquire them). It fixes the biggest problem in the most important online service (and my biggest single time sink in any given day). I have only been using it for a month, but it has already saved me from an inordinate amount of worrying, and it has let me follow up with a few people who flaked on important emails.

Boomerang costs money ($5 per month), which is why I didn't start using it a year or two ago when I first heard about it. I was still hesitant to start paying for it, but they have a free tier also. You get one month free, and you don't even have to enter your credit card. After that, you can still use it, but you can only boomerang 10 emails per month. For a power user like me, that would be nowhere near enough. I boomeranged 55 conversations last month, and many of those conversations had three or four boomerangs in them. It other words, now that I have started paying for Boomerang, it is extremely clear that I am getting my money's worth.

If you are an email power user or if you aren't but you still send important emails, I highly recommend Boomerang for Gmail. If you do decide to try it out, use my referral URL: http://www.boomeranggmail.com/referral_download.html?ref=njhzm. If you use that URL and try out Boomerang (you don't have to become a paid user; you just have to try it), then we both get a chance at some prizes.