sniper-link (under development)

What is a sniper link? Let growth.design explain:

A Sniper Link is a special link that makes it easier for new users to confirm their email after a signup. It typically simulates an inbox search, which minimizes distractions while leading users to the inbox of their email service provider detected on signup.

With Sniper Links, your new users will only see YOUR confirmation email in their inbox, nothing else. It works even if you landed in their spam.

This onboarding technique was coined by Dan Benoni in 2019.

Feature Support Table

	Gmail	Outlook	Yahoo	Proton	iCloud
Account scope	✅	✅
From filter	✅		✅	✅
Spam piercer	✅		✅	✅
Time frame (days)	✅		✅	✅
Time frame (hours)	✅			✅

Legend:

• ✅ = Supported by this provider and the script
• *️⃣ = Supported by the provider, but not by the script as yet

Inbox-only providers

These providers are detected, but they have no known search deep link, so the link opens the webmail inbox and from, daysAgo and hoursAgo are ignored. Help confirm them in issue #12.

Provider	forceProvider	Domains
AOL	aol	aol.com, aim.com, aol.co.uk
Fastmail	fastmail	fastmail.com, fastmail.fm
GMX	gmx	gmx.net, gmx.de, gmx.at, gmx.ch, gmx.com, gmx.us, gmx.co.uk, gmx.fr, gmx.es
WEB.DE	webde	web.de
Zoho Mail	zoho	zoho.com, zohomail.com, zoho.eu, zohomail.eu, zohomail.in
Mail.com	mailcom	mail.com, email.com, usa.com
Orange	orange	orange.fr, wanadoo.fr
Free	free	free.fr
La Poste	laposte	laposte.net
WP Poczta	wp	wp.pl
Onet Poczta	onet	onet.pl, op.pl, onet.eu, vp.pl
Interia Poczta	interia	interia.pl, interia.eu, poczta.fm
Seznam	seznam	seznam.cz, email.cz, post.cz
Tuta	tuta	tuta.com, tuta.io, tutanota.com, tutanota.de, tutamail.com, keemail.me
QQ Mail	qq	qq.com, vip.qq.com, foxmail.com
NetEase	netease	163.com, 126.com, yeah.net
Sina Mail	sina	sina.com, sina.cn
Sohu Mail	sohu	sohu.com
Aliyun Mail	aliyun	aliyun.com
Naver Mail	naver	naver.com
Daum / Hanmail	daum	daum.net, hanmail.net
Yahoo! Japan	yahoojapan	yahoo.co.jp, ymail.ne.jp
Rediffmail	rediff	rediffmail.com

Installation

Using the node package manager of your choice, either

yarn add sniper-link or npm install sniper-link

Usage

Subject to change while this script is in an alpha version. Currently it builds three versions:

• A node version in dist/node/index.js
• Web esm for React/Svelte etc dist/web/esm.js
• Web IIFE for native and legacy js dist/web/iife.js, exposed as window.sniperLink

Feature Support Table

	Expects	Required?	Notes
email	String (email)	✅ Yes	User's email inbox to search.
from	String		Sender's email address. Can be an email, or partial match.
forceProvider	String ('google', 'yahoo', 'microsoft', 'proton', 'icloud', or any inbox-only provider key)		Optional override to skip email provider being detected from the provided string. Useful for when you already know jessie@company.com is using G-Suite under the hood, possibly via a MX lookup.
daysAgo	Number		Sent within the last 'x' days
hoursAgo	Number		Sent within the last 'y' hours. See note below.

• You cannot use a combination of daysAgo and hoursAgo. If hoursAgo are specified, they will be used in preference.
• Gmail's newer_than: operator has no hours unit, so hoursAgo is sent to Gmail as an after:<unix timestamp> filter instead.
• Yes, you could use forceProvider to make lee@yahoo.com to open mail.google.com -- that's on you. An unrecognised forceProvider value throws an error.
• Yahoo! Japan (yahoo.co.jp) is a separate service from Yahoo Mail, so it is detected as yahoojapan, not yahoo.

Example

A node.js example

const buildUrl = require('sniper-link');

console.log(
  buildUrl({
    email: 'username@gmail.com',
    from: '@userfront.com',
    daysAgo: 1,
  }),
);

// Logs the following
// {
//   provider: 'google',
//   link: 'https://mail.google.com/mail/?authuser=username@gmail.com#search/from%3A(%40userfront.com)+in%3Aanywhere+newer_than%3A1d'
// }

Roadmap

• Return Android and iOS links with app protocols?
• Add a subject/keyword filter (very low priority)?
• Add search deep links for inbox-only providers once they're confirmed

Development

Run either npm run build or yarn build to output to the dist folder

Testing

Run npm run test or yarn test to run tests via Jest. --watch flag supported.

---

Disclaimer

I am in no way affiliated with the team at growth.design, I am merely a fan. All credit goes to Dan Benoni for the idea.