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Alternative Mail Apps
- Thread starter AJsAWiz
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Really CloudMagic Andy? Don't you miss features? I would then choose Outlook. CloudMagic UI is nicer though.
The badge app icon works again with their latest App Store version. I have it now running since a few days and it seems pretty reliable. Although I did see it happen sometime when I opened the app and read the e.g. 2 new e-mails and I left the app quickly that it still said it had 1 new mail in the badge but then when I go back to the app there isn't one. Maybe the sync is a bit slow. I switched back to Spark from Airmail recently mainly because of the UI. Airmail has more nice features though which I hope will be added also to Spark any time soon. My wish for both of them is still showing attachments above the message like Outlook app does.
For me reliability of incoming notifications and sync across my Mac & iPhone is the #1 deciding feature for me. Additionally, I'm not too needy in terms of features personally. I increasingly find my email usage less and less over platforms such as Slack and even messaging platforms like Telegram.
Do you have lag when scrolling though e-mails in a certain folder or inbox? I haven't seen that when I used a for a short period of time.
I switched back to Spark a while ago when they fixed the badge app icon. I do think that it's annoying with both Airmail and Spark that you see that you have new e-mails (badge icon, notification center) but when you open the app they still need to be added to your inbox and for that you have to wait a few seconds.
Yes, mostly when scrolling through the combined inbox. If I'd close the app completely and reopen it, it would be gone.
I've switched to email now for the time being. It's very fast but I'm missing a few features that airmail had.
To which e-mail did you switch for the time being? Spark, Outlook? I really like Spark but it still lacks a few features that Airmail has though. I would also like to see with both of them to have the option to show attachments above the message like Outlook has.
It's called email
Attachments are displayed at the top.Email - Fast and secure mail for Gmail, iCloud, and Yahoo by Easilydo Inc.
https://appsto.re/us/wAla3.i
It's called email
Email - Fast and secure mail for Gmail, iCloud, and Yahoo by Easilydo Inc.
https://appsto.re/us/wAla3.i
I have tested it in the past so it seems but I see why I skipped it at the time.
It's really great and has lots of nice features (especially great that it doesn't store your e-mail on a third party cloud and have the option to show attachments above your message).
What I'm missing in comparison to e.g. Spark/Airmail is:
- it seems you can't search in e-mails older then 3/4 months old or even less
- advanced search (e.g. search on certain predifined options and search for e.g. e-mails from 'Nick November' and get all e-mails from November from Nick
- have an option to show favorite Gmail folders to swipe an e-mail to
- you can't save files without the share sheet to a certain cloud storage
- you can't attach multiple cloud files in one go (like Spark can with Dropbox)
- there is no threaded conversation option
- lacks iPad support (and Slide Over/Split View)
- save e-mail as PDF
- no TouchID support (Airmail only right now)
- no calendar support
- no POP3 support
- no one tap reply option (Spark only right now)
- no avatar/icon support in inbox/email conversation (Airmail only right now)
- no language support (e.g. Dutch) (Airmail only right now)
See also my updated Excelsheet comparison in this topic.
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Give them time. They just launched on April 27
I will. It looks promising. I have send them my list and they would look into it. I've noticed that iPad support and TouchID support is in the pipeline for this year. I hope that will also soon add an option to search in archived e-mails and have an option for threaded conversations + add multiple attachments in one go so it would be a great option to switch to. For now I will stick with Spark which isn't perfect either but overall works nice.
Im not so happy with the way the build-in mail app pushing notifications, i would like to get instant notification when im getting new mails, but how can you trust these third party mail apps with your passwords and sensitive mails\info ?
Ultimately you can't, you have to make a call how much your trust them & their security methods. A lot of them use Amazon servers which are pretty well fortified.
Do these 3rd party mail apps actually see your password or is it encrypted by iOS and apps only access encrypted password to authenticate?
What would be really secure is iOS encrypts your password and issues a token for the app to authenticate with your mail provider, so that the app doesn't actually see your password.
What would be really secure is iOS encrypts your password and issues a token for the app to authenticate with your mail provider, so that the app doesn't actually see your password.
I think it depends which e-mail provider you are using. See also this blog post from Spark.
"
Spark’s server needs to check and send emails from your email account for these functions to work. And to achieve this, we need to store your email account’s access token. For services with OAuth authentication, like Gmail or Outlook, it’s special application specific token that you can revoke at any moment from your email account in the web. For services like Yahoo, AOL and Exchange accounts, this access token is your email login and password.
Given a choice, we would prefer to not have access to your login and password information, because it’s a huge responsibility to store them safely. However, since many email services still haven’t implemented OAuth, we have to.
To make everything as safe as possible, we are not using our own servers but rely on the most advanced and secure solution available in the industry – Amazon AWS. This is where almost any well known tech company – Dropbox and AirBnB, for example – is storing and processing their users’ data.
All connections to our servers are protected with TLS. The Amazon AWS databases are encrypted, and to make things even more secure we additionally encrypt your password in the database. It makes it totally unreadable by a human being.
Some people raised a question about why do we store access tokens even if you have decided not to use Push Notifications. It’s a valid question and, in the next update of Spark, we will change this behaviour. Spark will not send your account information to our servers if you decide to not use Push Notifications when adding your account for the first time. Please note that this will disable other server side features as well. Also, if you enabled Push Notification on first launch, we will transfer the information needed to access your account to our server. To delete it, you can either disable “Allow Notifications” switch in Spark Settings or delete Spark from your iPhone.
When you delete Spark from all your devices, we remove all your account information from our database as soon as we are aware."
Thanks for the info.
Does it mean that for gmail and outlook accounts, Spark uses a token and does not have access to your password?
Does it mean that for gmail and outlook accounts, Spark uses a token and does not have access to your password?
Yes I think so. You could always contact their support to get more details about the matter.
@pacorob Hi, I've been using Spark for a while now but have been considering switching to Airmail for all the bells and whistles it offers compared to Spark.
However, I noticed Airmail hasn't been updated in 3 months, which seems like a pretty long period if one is to judge by their devs' initial responsiveness in fixing bugs and adding new features. Are they planning an update soon?
One thing that still bothers me about Spark is that the notification number often appears on the app's icon and when you tap on the app it still needs a second or two to load the new mail. But from what you wrote above Airmail also tends to have this 'issue'?
Another thing is when I read a new email in Spark on my iPhone and then unlock my iPad, more often than not I still see the notification on iPad's Spark icon until I actually open Spark on iPad so that the app connects to the server and syncs emails. Does Airmail sync any faster? I.e. if I read an email on my iPhone will the new email notification disappear from its iPad counterpart's icon?
Another thing I'd like to know concerns safety/privacy. For example, in the default Mail.app you can select "Use SSL" option and "Server Port 993". Do you happen to know if Spark / Airmail offer these options as well?
However, I noticed Airmail hasn't been updated in 3 months, which seems like a pretty long period if one is to judge by their devs' initial responsiveness in fixing bugs and adding new features. Are they planning an update soon?
One thing that still bothers me about Spark is that the notification number often appears on the app's icon and when you tap on the app it still needs a second or two to load the new mail. But from what you wrote above Airmail also tends to have this 'issue'?
Another thing is when I read a new email in Spark on my iPhone and then unlock my iPad, more often than not I still see the notification on iPad's Spark icon until I actually open Spark on iPad so that the app connects to the server and syncs emails. Does Airmail sync any faster? I.e. if I read an email on my iPhone will the new email notification disappear from its iPad counterpart's icon?
Another thing I'd like to know concerns safety/privacy. For example, in the default Mail.app you can select "Use SSL" option and "Server Port 993". Do you happen to know if Spark / Airmail offer these options as well?
Spark & Airmail store your credentials on their servers. If your email offers OAuth this isn't so bad and pretty safe, if they have to store your raw username / password it's your personal trust of their servers (a lot of them use Amazon).
Thanks for your reply. I only use Gmail services, so what does that mean in terms of security?
Your email gets routed through Spark's servers, but with gmail OAuth you aren't exposing your password & can revoke access anytime.
I have been using Airmail for a while and it has worked well for me. I have tried most email programs and they have worked well but fell short on one or two things. Airmail has filled those gaps and has been my go to app until something better comes along. What I really like about it is it works on my iPhone, iPad and Macbook pro. I really liked Outlook but for some reason any new contacts added to my Gmail account never showed up in the outlook unless I uninstalled and reinstalled the app. That pushed me to Airmail.
Was anyone able to get in on the beta of Polymail?
Was anyone able to get in on the beta of Polymail?
As long as it works as described I don't see the problem that they didn't update in a few months. If it's 6 months or longer I would think indeed that it isn't good. Some e-mail apps update weekly but with small changes (Polymail), others updates ones within a few months but with major features.
I agree that it's annoying that you don't see your new e-mails although the badge icon shows that they are there. I would also love to have the option to see the new emails but indeed Airmail does the same thing. I was thinking that it has to do with the way the e-mail is grabbed/fetched. I now that e.g. Outlook and CloudMagic do this better but there are not so safe in comparison to Airmail and Spark for what I've read, see also here.
Airmail is indeed very nice but I didn't like the iOS look and feel. I decided after a short while that I used it on iPad and iPhone to go back to Spark because of e.g. attaching multiple cloud files in one go. I also love the simple search of Spark with 'Jim attachments July' and get all e-mails I want. I do think they can still improve a lot and add more features at Spark which Airmail already offers. See my comparison here which covers a lot of those features.
I was able to test out Polymail a few months ago (beta) and the last time I tested was about a month ago. I've only used it on iOS but my experience was that it lacked quite a few features that Airmail, Spark do have. The UI is nice but I had problems seeing e-mails (Gmail) and it also lacked the option to add cloud attachments at first but this was added recently.