Just make sure you aren't limited by the number outgoing messages.

I joined a small DeltaChat group with less than 10 participants, and the chat wasn't overly busy. But with 10 participants and outgoing return-receipts I was soon over the 400 outgoing messages per day that my email provider allowed for. To stay on DeltaChat ) had to switch email provider.

Other than that, DeltaChat works like a charm.

Part of the reason people like messaging apps is because messages are short an instant. Emails, even with optimise settings still aren’t instantaneous in the same way whats app signal or imessage is. Its also built for much longer text, which encourages lengthy messages. These factors make it feel cumbersome compared to messaging services in my opinion.

But that's purely an UX problem. You can easily create an "email" app that works and looks as an instant messenger.

Delta Chat is superb. No affiliation, just a happy user.

Lobsters had some comments about this too, my understanding is that the way email is now is would be hopeless because it's not immediate. It should be possible to have a forum like experience with a tool like that, essentially a better email lists.

https://lobste.rs/s/4ydfpc/email_is_messenger_you_should_mig...

I like the idea of communicating by e-mail.

It works pretty well and no need of another app or service to do so. No lock-in other than the e-mail provider.

Not even with the email provider when you use a custom domain, it's easy to switch.

smtp to smtp traffic still mostly unencripted.

Do you have numbers on this? My assumption is the majority of people use a hosted service for email like Gmail, outlook, fastmail, proto mail, etc and they all have too of the line security when it comes to email.

It may be that the majority of emails sent over SMTP are encrypted due to automated systems/spam. But I'd got to think that's not the case for the majority of real human to human communication over email