In its first version, Airmail is a client built to customize and integrate your email with popular apps and services, with no intention of transforming email into something new or different.Īirmail doesn’t reinvent message snoozing, which is built on top of the same inbox-to-folder mechanism used by other apps.
Airmail doesn’t strive to combine your email and calendar in a single workflow like Outlook, nor does it attempt to categorize and make sense of your email like Google’s Inbox. Unlike modern interpretations of email such as Google Inbox and Spark, Airmail follows a traditional mailbox model: a unified inbox with a list of messages prettified by optional profile pictures, and a sidebar where you can navigate messages and pin your favorite labels and shortcuts. I’ve been trying Airmail for the past couple of months, and it brings some unique features and options to the table, but, as usual, the road ahead is going to be long. Airmail is up there with MailMate in the club of desktop email clients that allow you to configure and fiddle with settings to make email as welcoming as it could possibly be.īloop is hoping to replicate its desktop success with Airmail for iPhone, launching today on the App Store at $4.99. Through the years, Airmail has become one of the most powerful email apps for the Mac, with support for multiple accounts, keyboard shortcuts, and a long list of preferences to tweak the app to your needs. There was a time when Apple didn’t even accept third-party email clients on the App Store today, you can find hundreds of similar and drastically different takes on email on the Store.ĭeveloped by Italian indie studio Bloop, Airmail was first released on OS X in early 2013, capitalizing on the shutdown of Sparrow with a design reminiscent of that popular client acquired by Google (which, in turn, borrowed heavily from Loren Brichter’s Tweetie, the grandfather of those kinds of interfaces). And, reinvigorated by the demise of Mailbox, dozens of other developers have tried (or have kept trying) their hand at improving email on iOS. The power-user oriented Dispatch has also continued to grow, with an eye for iPad users adopting iOS 9.
Airmail vs spark for mac review series#
Spark, launched by Readdle last year, has received a series of improvements with the promise of future Mac and iPad versions. Outlook – a runner-up to my App of the Year in 2015 – is the email app I recommend to anyone who wants to try something different than Mail.
Airmail vs spark for mac review full#
Perhaps most notably, Microsoft surprised iOS users with a solid client, evolved from an acquisition and quickly improved to accommodate fast search and notifications, calendar integration, and full iOS 9 support. In case you’re wondering, I’m that guy in the last group, assembling yet another email client review, making a list of ideal email features for an iOS app.Īnd I actually love it, because the past 12 months have brought a ton of interesting changes in the email market for iPhone and iPad. Every time a new email client is released, you will find users who are perfectly content with it, others who prefer the built-in app on their devices, and some who are intrigued, but still unhappily waiting for the email client of their dreams to be made. The fact that, eight years into the App Store, I’m still cherry-picking my ideal set of features for an email client says a lot about the landscape. I like my email client to bear the speed and polish of Microsoft’s Outlook, the clever touches and integrations of Dispatch, and, if possible, the smart options of Inbox and Spark. I have written my fair share of email client reviews since 2009, and I’ve made my stance on what I’m looking for abundantly clear. You have to believe that, if this planet were to end tomorrow, cockroaches and IMAP would survive it. Messaging services may rise and grow and fall and shut down, but email will always be there, humbly humming along, hoarding thousands of unread messages in your inbox. And yet, for better or worse, we keep using it.ĭespite its archaic nature and stale protocols, email works – it’s the closest thing to a common standard for digital communication we have. Email has been deemed unfixable, unmanageable, and unhealthy. Over the course of (almost) seven years of writing for MacStories, I’ve seen email pronounced dead (multiple times), reinvented, redesigned, and, most recently, made smarter with machine learning and cloud services. If you want to drive an average tech nerd crazy, try to talk about email clients.
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