Apple Productivity App Review: Email
Originally Posted: March 28th, 2021
Apple Productivity App Review: Email
Documenting My Decent Into ̶M̶a̶d̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ the World of Productivity Apps
Recently the pace of my work has picked up, and efficient productivity has become more important. Like most people I’m working remotely, spending hours each day in email, text, and video chats. I also rely on ticketing software, shared documents, and an ever-growing number of online services. This has made organization, workflow, and the features of the apps I use more important.
Apple’s Mail, Calendar, and Reminders apps are mediocre. They’re good for the basics, but a lot of better third-party options exist. I’ve tried a few in the past, but I inevitably circled back to Apple’s defaults. There’s a few categories of productivity apps I want to look at, but first we have to start with a solid foundation: Good old-fashioned email.
Apple’s Mail app is the email client included with every Mac, iPad, and iPhone. It’s usually harmless, and I’ve used it for years without giving it much thought. Those were the Before Times. Now that digital communication is primary, the quality of our digital tools makes a big difference in our work. Good tools help us organize, process, and retrieve information. Good tools let us accomplish tasks with less effort and frustration. Bad tools are a drain on our time and energy.
A few weeks ago I ran into an issue with Apple Mail’s built-in search, forcing me to manually dig for an email I knew was there. This wasn’t the first time this happened, but it was a reminder that I needed a better email client. I casually strolled through the App Store, seeing the usual suspects and a few old friends. Before committing on any app in particular, I tried to do some research. It turns out searching “best iPhone email app” doesn’t lead to anything helpful. I was on my own.
The world of productivity apps on Apple’s platforms requires careful exploration and some trial and error. Sometimes you have to try out a few options to see what works best for you. That’s what I did recently with email. Before I knew it, several new accounts were made, in-app-purchases were in-app-purchased, and every email generated 7 notifications. Thus begins our decent into the land of productivity.
What I Want In An Email App
Native support for all of Apple’s platforms. Windows support is a bonus.
Well-designed user interface with good navigation, organization, and search.
Good support for multiple email accounts.
All dark mode, all the time.
What I Don’t Want In An Email App
Web views or web apps. If I’m going to a website, it might as well be gmail.com
Services that require your co-workers to all use the same client. I can’t force anyone I work with to adapt my app of choice.
AI-powered, machine-learning-driven, super-magic intelligent features.
Read receipts, built-in calendars or task managers, social network integrations, and other frilly bits. Just the emails, please.
Email Apps I Disqualified
Any iOS app without a Mac counterpart.
“Visit our websi…” No thanks. “But we have a great web experi…” No, seriously, stop.
Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, and any other provider-specific app.
If they weren’t disqualified for lacking a Mac app, they were disqualified for being generally terrible.
Microsoft Outlook. It’s a good app, but I don’t live in the Microsoft world or use Microsoft services, so most of its charm is lost on me.
Apps like Proton Mail which focus on encryption and security above all else. I value their service and I have an account, but I’m searching for a client to house all my personal and work addresses, including my Proton Mail account. Organization, effectiveness, and appearance are my priorities, and you don’t need to use their client to get the benefits of their encryption.
Services like HEY (HEY!) which are novel or clever. I am not looking to revolutionize or reinvent anything, I want a straight-forward email client. I don’t want yet another email address.
Services like Polymail which focus on having all of your co-workers using the same email app, and have an expensive per-user subscription.
I am very willing to pay for a premium app or subscription to support the developer’s work, but I don’t want my email app to be an expensive co-worker-less island.
My iOS/iPadOS/macOS Email Client Contenders
Of all the apps I tested, I focused on these four:
Edison Mail
Canary Mail
AirMail
Spark
Edison Mail
Good:
Clean interface, good dark mode.
Handy automatic features like package, travel, subscription and receipt tracking.
Majority of features are free, and you can opt out of their data sharing.
Bad:
Compared to the alternatives, bland and very similar to Apple’s Mail client.
Not very customizable.
Some questionable default settings, like defaulting to reply all.
Edison mail on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. (Image credit: Edison Mail)
Edison mail caught my eye because of its design, and few good features like automatically tracking deliveries, receipts, and subscriptions. Those features are good, and the app ticks most of my boxes. I like that the app prominently discloses their anonymous data harvesting which supports their trends research business. I also like that you can opt out, even if they try to guilt you into keeping it on.
What I didn’t like about Edison Mail was it’s overuse of AI-powered hype. They also have the weirdest premium plan I’ve seen, where one of the 4 major features is... LinkedIn integration? Overall, despite some genuinely useful features, I found Edison Mail bland and similar enough to Apple’s Mail app that I had trouble sticking with it. There isn’t enough in Edison Mail to keep me.
Canary Mail
Good:
Clean interface, good dark mode, and handy 3-panel view which shows contact details, history, and previous attachments.
Automatic end-to-end encryption and PGP support.
No subscription, but there is a 30 day trial and a $19.99 one-time fee to unlock all features.
Bad:
Controls are placed too close together on the iPhone version. You can’t avoid their dashboard, whether you want it or not.
No options to change the layout, and minimal customization.
Persistent tutorial and pushy trial reminder.
Canary Mail on the Apple Watch, Mac, and iPhone (Image credit: Canary Mail)
You can tell a lot about an app by which features they advertise first. The first thing for Canary Mail is security and privacy. The app doesn’t require a subscription, doesn’t harvest your data, doesn’t have ads, and has automatic encryption and PGP support. It also has a lot of the common email power user features like snoozing, one-click unsubscribing, email templates, and calendar integrations. It has a pretty good Mac app, and I love the 3rd column view which shows your email and attachment history per contact. Canary Mail has a lot going for it.
Seriously, there’s no way to get rid of this tutorial.
Unfortunately, their iOS and iPadOS apps stink. The controls along the top of the phone screen are too close together, and there’s no way to change that. The menu in the top left is very close to the button for their “dashboard” which shows your read receipts, newsletters, and top contacts. It’s nice that those are there, but I found myself hitting the dashboard accidentally.
The dashboard also has a tutorial that stays at 100% completion, with no option to dismiss or hide it. The iPad app is a stretched out version of the phone, so no points there either. If I was able to remove the dashboard button or customize the appearance more, I’d consider paying the $20 to unlock all the features. Until then, I’m 100% done with Canary Mail.
AirMail
Good:
Clean interface, good dark mode, highly customizable.
Deeply integrated into Apple’s platforms, and supports most features like iPad Split Screen, Mac Touch Bar, widgets, etc.
Most features are free, and all the apps are good*.
Bad:
Requires $2.99/month or $9.99/year AirMail Pro subscription for multiple email accounts, push notifications, and some features.
Bad iPad trackpad support.
AirMail on the Mac, iPad and iPhone (Image credit: AirMail)
I really like AirMail. The app looks great and works well on the Mac and iPhone. The iPad app is a good example of how to make something that isn’t just a stretched out phone layout. The overall design, theme options, and customization were the best of any of the apps I tried. It’s also one of the few that doesn’t try to shove other things into your email app, like a calendar or task list. Those integrations are there, but they’re optional. Overall, AirMail matched my expectations the closest, but there was one big issue for me. Fiddly nested folder controls, and bad iPad trackpad support.
If you hit the carrot icon with your finger, the folder expands. Hit it with a trackpad and it selects the folder.
The iPad app works well with a finger, and it mostly works with a trackpad. The deal breaker for me is that every time you go to expand a folder with a cursor, it selects it rather than expanding to show it’s contents. As a nested folder enthusiast, this instantly offset all the nice parts of the iPad app. I bounce in and out of folders too often for me to get used to that.
The same select-not-expand action happens on the phone too, unless you carefully put your finger in the right place. I use nested folders very heavily, and this seemingly-petty complaint was enough to make me stop using the app. If that interaction is changed, I’d strongly consider going back to AirMail. I’ve paid for the subscription and submitted feedback to the developer, so I’ll keep my eye out for that to improve in the future.
Spark
Good:
Clean interface, good dark mode, almost as nicely designed as AirMail.
Good support and organization of multiple email accounts, including color coding per account or folder.
Lots of good features for teams of people to work together and delegate email.
Free, unless you need more support for the teams features.
Bad:
Tries too hard to be clever with it’s smart inbox and “revolutionary” teams features.
Not as customizable as others.
iPad app is a stretched out phone app.
Spark on Apple Watch, iPhone, Mac and iPad (Image credit: Spark)
Spark was the most interesting to me, and the one I spent the most time with. It has most of the good looks of AirMail, with great support for multiple email accounts and color coding. It offers the usual integrations with calendaring and to do services, and has a robust set of features for teams to delegate and discuss emails in the app. Even without using those features, Spark is a well designed, fully-featured email client. There is a bit of frilly AI-driven buzzwords flying around, though. The smart inbox, snoozing, templates, and other features are nice if you’re into that sort of thing, but they’re easy to ignore if you’re not.
The Mac app is mostly good, with a few weird omissions. There’s no way to create new folders by right clicking the list, you have to go to a separate menu and funnel your way back down to where you were. There’s not much to customize, and I wish I was able to hide the all caps CALENDAR in the upper left. The app has a tendency to ignore my font preference, and there a few other minor issues I’ve run into. The iPhone and iPad app are mostly good, if a little basic.
Today’s Winner: Spark
There are two types of people when it comes to email. Either you don’t care at all about your email app, or you care a lot about every minor detail. I think you can tell which category I’m in. There’s an infinite number of ways to handle email, and an infinite number of clients to pick from. I wish I could pull features from all of these apps and combine them.
Adjusting your email workflow and testing multiple apps on multiple devices at once isn’t fun. At times I was tempted to get rid of them all and retreat to the comfort of Apple’s Mail. Little things kept me coming back to certain apps, and little things pushed me away. The deciding factors between them ended up being small differences. AirMail’s trackpad support, Canary’s dashboard and nagging tutorial, and Edison’s lack of style ended up pushing me away the most. Your preferences are likely different than mine.
If I have to pick one app from this list, it would be Spark. It isn’t the best in every way, but it doesn’t have any major flaws. I’m still learning Spark’s quirks, but on all three platforms, Spark offers enough advantages over Apple’s Mail that I’ve fully switched over. For now.
