RGE is now part of Beefree

Big news is brewing and it’s got us wondering: Why haven’t the powers that control zodiac signs considered “the almighty email” as an option? We think 2024 is a premier candidate for that sign. Why you ask? Well, we're jazzed (and a bit emotional) to share that Really Good Emails is joining the folks at Beefree. It’s a Batman and Robin story, or maybe Thelma & Louise, or maybe Scully & Molder?! It was always meant to be of course! Each better with the other.

Since we scooped up the first email from our inboxes back in 2014 and plopped it into our uniquely and creatively named domain, we’ve built the largest curated collection of emails on the planet. Possibly the universe. (Can you contest that?) Fueled by nothing but love for the craft and an insatiable curiosity about what makes an email truly click, we’re now partnering with Beefree's level of wizardry in no-code email creation tools. Finally, it’s time to kick things up a notch (or ten).

Imagine this: our epic library of over 15,000 emails - not just for ogling, but as a springboard for your own creations, with Beefree's tools turning inspiration into reality at the speed you can say "abracadabra". It's about making the beautiful, functional; the dream, tangible. We have so many ideas that we can’t wait to pounce on, especially now that we can use someone else’s bank account and employee base to do it for us. (For example, gone are the days that we made up our own terms of service because we couldn’t afford a lawyer.)

From the RGE team, Mike Nelson is stepping up as "Key Owner" of RGE and Head of Growth at Beefree, ready to steer this acquisition like one of the getaway drivers in The Italian Job. Matt Helbig will be weaving his magic as a new member of the Beefree marketing team that looks after the combined platform. As for Matthew Smith and Matt Cook, they’ll continue on their personal work journeys but will continue to bring the thunder as “Strategic Advisors.”

We wouldn’t be here for all the people who cheered us on along the way. From getting a sponsor before we even launched RGE, to our family members who lovingly questioned why we worked on this thing for over a decade, to the millions of email makers around the world who have come to ReallyGoodEmails.com, you’ve made our “what if” ideas come to life.

A big shout out to Sean, Chin, Krista, David, Tina, and Will who have been with us along this journey and helped us make RGE better through their contributions. And to Massimo, Beefree’s CEO, who believed in this idea the moment we talked about it.

So, here's to new beginnings, to the power of creation, and to a future where every email is not just good, but really good.

Cheers to what's next,

Team RGE

P.S. There are probably some questions you may have about this whole thing. Here are some answers to what we anticipate people asking:

Q: What’s going to happen to the RGE’s Unspam events?

Luckily, Beefree likes to party as much as we do. They are committed to making the event even more accessible to people by keeping ticket prices low, having them in other parts of the world, and keeping them in our unconventional style that focuses on the email community members.

Q: Is Beefree going to be mean overlords that start charging for RGE?

Beefree is actually removing our paywall for Pro features. That means that you no longer need to pay for Pro and are now uncapped in the number of collections you want to create, comment on emails with others, and upload stuff from your inbox. Everything else is already free. Go have fun with your newly unlocked powers!

Q: Is Beefree going to swallow up RGE’s site? What changes are happening?

RGE will operate as its own quirky brand and continue to be a standalone site and newsletter. We are working on integrations so that you can go from inspiration to creation seamlessly between the two platforms. The hope is that you can use RGE stuff on Beefree and Beefree stuff on RGE when it makes sense. We’re really excited about having a dev team at our disposal to build out a better recommendation engine and bring you better-suited ideas for your next campaign. And for Beefree users and SDK clients, we look forward to more submissions to RGE to fill out categories that we’re light on.

Q: Does this mean RGE will now be SOC 2 and ISO compliant?

Well, look at you knowing your acronyms! Beefree works with a bunch of enterprise companies already and is compliant with the highest standards of cyber and privacy protection. Not that RGE didn’t have any protection, but we definitely didn’t have the level that some stringent organizations required. Beefree will take over the controllership of all data collected and processed so far by RGE, which means that your personal data will be kept in a highly secretive vault guarded by cyborg squirrels or something like that. They are also GDPR compliant if you care about that too. So… back to your original question: as a Beefree initiative, RGE will now be SOC 2 and ISO-27001 compliant.

Q: You’ve been running RGE for 10 years. Why now?

Honestly, we would’ve loved to do this earlier. RGE has been a volunteer side project for us this whole time, eating into family vacations, precious sleep schedules, and our personal bank accounts. We never imagined that RGE would bring in millions of email creators to find inspiration, that we’d host events on different continents, or that we’d have our own custom-built software that pulled emails directly from an inbox into the site. As you can imagine, it’s become too big for just 4 guys to manage on our off-hours.

Beefree can offer RGE users the stuff we couldn’t: faster development, more resources, and international perspectives. Why didn't they or others buy us earlier? Not sure about that one. But we’re glad that Massimo and the Beefree team saw the opportunity and jumped on it.