Marketing features

When I recently logged into my Mailchimp account, I quickly got frustrated trying to navigate my way around all the things I didn’t want to do. Even more off-putting than dealing with the usability challenges of feature bloat are the constant little hints that I’m not doing enough.



Mailchimp keeps telling me to “boost sales with shoppable landing pages and social media ads”. With every update, Dropbox reminds me that it needs access to my calendar, so I can make full use of “the world’s first smart workspace”. Seemingly every week, Adobe notifies me about some new cloud feature that will “enhance my creativity”.Dense Discovery Issue 93

As much as I'd like to love Mailchimp, I've been experiencing this a lot lately too. What used to be a great product with an amazing brand is now a product filled with banners trying to get me to share my newsletter on Instagram or sell something off Facebook. I understand why, I'm just saying it's not for me.

GoSquared, another company I really like, is heading down the same path with marketing automations and a light-weight CRM.

Netlify are seemingly heading down this route too - charging more for bits and pieces here and there. Again, I understand why, I just wish... they wouldn't.

I've already ditched Dropbox and Adobe due to primarily these reasons. I sincerely hope the companies and products I love, like Figma, 1Password and Things will continue to do one thing, and do it well.