My inbox was held hostage for 48 hours. I didn't expect an imaginary birthday to cause such havoc, but here we are.

As part of my early research for greetful, I signed up to a competitor app. Purely research, obviously.

Just to set the scene, my vision for greetful has always been simple: a gentle nudge when a special moment is coming up, so you can pop in and get your message sorted, ready to send.

Calm. Simple. Connection made easy.

So on the competitor app I added one contact with one imaginary birthday, two days away. And then the emails started.

By 7:30 the next morning, I’d had seven email reminders. By lunchtime, another six. By the end of the day? Twenty.

Twenty emails… for one imaginary birthday.

I don’t think competitor app’s strategy is “nudge people to act” but more “boot them up the backside while screaming in their ear,” but either way, I decided to let it play out.

The next day — the day of my imaginary birthday — another seven emails arrived.

Total: 27 emails for one occasion. I’m genuinely relieved I didn’t set it for a week.

The best part? The day before, I’d gone into the app, I thought, “Okay, let’s see what this baby can do.” So, I added some info, generated a message, regenerated it, edited it and created my greeting ready to send.

On the day itself, I clicked the link in the email expecting to send my greeting. But, alas, no. I was directed to the app, but not to where I had left my beautifully crafted message. It took me a good 10 minutes to find the page with my connections on but my message was nowhere to be found, it had been replaced with a generic:

“Dear Sister, Happy Birthday! Wishing you a wonderful day filled with joy and good memories🎉”

that I could have improved upon myself with no help at all.

“So, where was your beautifully crafted message?” I hear you cry. Well, it had been unceremoniously bundled behind a paywall, like a double chocolate chunk cookie at a Weight Watchers weigh-in. Gone. Behind a paywall. At the exact moment it mattered.

I sat there, stunned. Then I laughed. Twenty‑seven emails… only to be told I needed to pay to send the message I’d already created.

While I was there, I tested a few other “occasions” in the interest of research. I didn’t save the evidence at the time, so I popped back in the other day.

Behold, this is their suggestion for a get‑well greeting, I’m not going to say what “other info” I added, I think you will be able to guess.

To be fair, if I received this it would cheer me up.

“Happy get well!” Really??

We can also have

“Happy Thank You!”

“Happy Congratulations!”

Whatever occasion you put in, this is your option, plus the additional information, woven in seamlessly.

So: 27 emails trumpeting my moment of connection… followed by a greeting that reads like a slap in the face with a soggy sock.

In a way, I was thrilled. It confirmed what I already knew: greetful needed to be head and shoulders above this. And it is. I’ve spent hours making sure it is.

Because all greetful needs to do is help you say the thing, when you need to say it, in a memorable way.

And it does that — quietly, simply, without shouting at you twenty‑seven times.

Is it perfect? Maybe not. If you fancy taking a look, please pop over and tell me what you think. I’d be genuinely grateful for any feedback.