You’ve got email - With Mailbox, the best email app for smartphones, shutting down, the search is on for options. Here are some

You’ve got email

With Mailbox, the best email app for smartphones, shutting down, the search is on for options. Here are some 

You may dread the notification tone that signals the arrival of yet another message in the inbox—but there is no running away from it. Email, whether personal or professional, is something that has to be dealt with, every day. And a lot of users found themselves adrift after cloud storage service Dropbox shut down its popular Mailbox email application on 1 March. 

When Mailbox was released in 2013, it clocked one million users in the first week itself, and went on to become a must-have app. This month, we have been searching for the perfect alternative, something that offers ease of use, the flexibility of using multiple email accounts, and works well even if the 3G/4G network isn’t the best. Here are a few options. 

LOGICAL CHOICE: GMAIL 

Free on Android, iOS, Web

 

If you are already using a Gmail account, chances are you would already be using the Gmail app. There is support for multiple Gmail accounts, personal or work related, as well as support for Microsoft Exchange email accounts, something that professionals will find relevant. It also allows users to configure and access email accounts on Microsoft’s Outlook and Yahoo! Mail. This rather neatly designed app allows you to set conversation views as well as the number of days to sync emails (anything from one day to 999 days). You can also sort email into various categories: Social (mail notifications from Facebook, Twitter, etc.), Promotions (mails from e-commerce websites) and Updates (LinkedIn emails).

VERSATILE CLIENT: OUTLOOK

 

Free on Android, iOS, Apple Watch, Windows, Windows 10 Mobile, Web

 

Let’s accept it—Microsoft is making perhaps the best free-to-use email app for Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhones. In the case of the latter, it even supports the Apple Watch. During our tests, email notifications popped up on the Outlook app a couple of seconds earlier than on the Gmail app. It works with Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and iCloud accounts and syncs the built-in calendar too. The cloud storage feature allows access to the OneDrive, Google Drive, Box and Dropbox services, so sharing files over email becomes much simpler. The unified inbox feature for all mails is extremely useful if you have configured multiple email accounts with the Outlook app. 

MAILBOX EXPERIENCE, RELOADED: SPARK

 

Free on iOS, Apple Watch

 

Mailbox had some unique swipe-gesture controls for marking mail and sorting it. Users who miss that will like the fact that Spark is trying to recreate that experience. Like Mailbox, Spark also has a series of configurable long and short right and left swipes—archive mails, pin them or leave them on snooze for a later time. The unified inbox is known as the Smart Inbox. On the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, the app also supports the 3D Touch feature to allow access to certain parts of the app without having to actually open it. There is complete access to cloud storage services such as OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox. Once you install the app, Spark integrates it into iOS, which allows you to directly attach content, such as Photos, from apps.

THE UNEXPECTED OPTION: YAHOO! MAIL

 

Free on Android, iOS, Windows 10

 

It was towards the end of 2015 that Yahoo! revamped the Mail app, on the service’s 18th birthday. The biggest new feature was that you didn’t need to remember the mail password to log in to your account every time—it uses an Account Key to verify the user’s credentials. Apart from its own email, Yahoo! added support for the Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and AOL accounts. The search feature for mails, attachments and files is a highlight, and Yahoo! has successfully focused on improving in-app searches—something that we saw recently in the photo-storage app Flickr—it would pull out precise results from the photo gallery even with random search terms such as “car” or “house”. Apart from emails, the news feature will allow you to catch up on the latest happenings around the world. 

SERIOUS STUFF: MYMAIL

 

Free on Android, Android Wear, iOS, Apple Watch

 

MyMail has a usable interface that focuses on clean icons and easy-to-read text in the side bar. This app has pre-set swipe actions which are not customizable. But it ticks off most of the other essentials, such as a unified inbox and easy switching between different accounts, as well as the ability to create a customized signature, support for corporate email services such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, ActiveSync protocol and folder management. It also supports Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCloud, Yahoo! and AOL accounts. 

THE UNDERDOG: BOXER

 

Free (Lite version);Rs.300 (Pro) on iOS and Rs.600 (Pro) on Android

 

Boxer supports the Exchange, Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo! and AOL accounts. This app will remind you of the now defunct Mailbox app, with its customizable swipe actions, to-do lists and Smart Folders to file mails for a look later. There is integration with cloud storage and an add-on feature for filing mails on Evernote. Boxer allows you to respond to an email in a Facebook-esque way, through Likes. While the Lite version is free, the paid Pro version adds Exchange via ActiveSync corporate email protocol, multiple account support and custom-quick replies and signatures, which are relevant for accessing official mail accounts. 

FULLY LOADED: CLOUDMAGIC

 

Free on Android, Android Wear, iOS, Apple Watch, Mac OS X

 

It works with all Gmail, Exchange, Yahoo!, Outlook, iCloud as well as IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) accounts. The developers claim that it is lighter on the phone’s battery than its rivals, but the benefits will depend on the phone’s specifications and usage. Unlike CloudMagic, not many email apps offer add-ons such as Pocket, Todoist, Evernote, MailChimp, Microsoft OneNote and Instapaper. There is integration with Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box and iCloud storage. CloudMagic also integrates a very useful (yet often ignored) feature that allows you to set different colours for each email account, so that it’s easy to go through mails in the unified inbox. The fact that this is a true cross-platform app makes it even more relevant for power users.

Source | Mint – The Wall Street Journal | 23 March 2016

Regards

Pralhad Jadhav

Senior Librarian

Khaitan & Co

Upcoming Event | National Conference on Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) during April 22-23, 2016.

Note | If anybody use these post for forwarding in any social media coverage or covering in the Newsletter please give due credit to those who are taking efforts for the same.