Review: Airmail email client for iOS. Email on iPhone and iPad. Review of the best email apps for iOS

Despite the expansion of instant messengers, I use email all the time. It resolves both work-related issues and some personal ones that do not require an immediate response. There are a ton of email apps in the App Store, but it’s quite difficult to choose just one. Somewhere the design was screwed up, somewhere the necessary functions were missing.

My optimal set looks something like this:

Modern minimalistic interface.
Convenient work with several drawers.
Timely notifications (hello, standard Mail).
Multiplatform.
Various features like a calendar and task manager elements.

After digging through the App Store, I selected what I think are the five best email apps: Spark, CloudMagic, Airmail, Inbox, myMail. I’ll tell you what I liked and didn’t like, and at the end there will be a survey, and you can decide for yourself which email client is the best.

Spark

What do you like

It's difficult to find the information you need when your feed is filled with mailings, receipts, and simply unnecessary data. But there is a cool feature - Smart Inbox. A single hub that collects all letters and sorts them by type and importance. An extremely useful thing, it helps you quickly clear out your mail and find the letter you need.
A set of five widgets greatly expands the capabilities of the mailer. You can quickly access the built-in calendar, attachments, or pending emails. Widgets are placed either on the top bar or at the bottom, in a drop-down button.
The developers managed to create a minimalistic and yet flexible interface. You can display widgets on the main screen, change side menu items and swipes. Absolutely everything is customizable: from notifications and badges to signatures and sounds. In terms of customization, Spark is, if not in first place, then definitely in the top.
Spark supports most well-known services like Evernote, Pocket, Google Drive, and so on. You can easily save a note to Pocket or send a document from Dropbox.

What's not to like

The only downside is the lack of a version for macOS and Android. But the email client is developing rapidly: not so long ago, Spark became available to iPad owners and acquired a Russian language. In addition, the developers have already shown a screenshot of the application for macOS, so we just have to wait for the release.

CloudMagic

What do you like

The application has a simple and concise interface, not overloaded with unnecessary design flourishes. Each button is in its place, the boxes have their own color, which allows you to quickly figure out where the letter is from and where to send it: to the archive or trash.
The developers took an interesting approach to integration with various services. They are presented in cards, which, firstly, looks cool, and secondly, is convenient. The following services are currently supported: Evernote, Todoist, Pocket, Trello, OneNote, Zendesk, Salesforce, Asana and MailChimp. I actively use Trello, and I really like the ability to save the information I need directly from my email to a board. In addition, all popular cloud storages are supported, where would you be without them?
The application is very fast and easily works with dozens of boxes without a hint of lag or slowdown. In my opinion, this is the fastest mailer in existence.
available for all iOS, Android and macOS devices. Apple Watch and Android Wear watches are also supported. Just a must-have for those who have several devices on different platforms. The Mac application is still lagging behind its mobile version in terms of functionality, but I think this will be corrected soon.

What's not to like

For myself, I did not find any shortcomings. This is an excellent email tool that I can recommend to everyone.

Airmail

What do you like

It deservedly receives the title of the most customizable email client. Change menu sections, feed, notifications the way you want. Every detail in the application is customizable: in which browser to open links, what size attachments to download automatically. The application can be customized as much as possible to make it convenient to work with mail.
The email editor has an additional row of buttons above the regular keyboard. With it, you can format a letter, create a numbered list, insert text or an image. This is a great time saver.
If you use Airmail on Mac, the mobile version is definitely your choice. When you turn it on for the first time, you will be prompted to import accounts from desktop Airmail, and you won’t have to enter anything manually.
Airmail has a great implementation of the delayed reading function. You can fine-tune when you want to read the letter, and the settings are immediately synchronized with the desktop version.
The application supports all possible services; I have never seen such variety in any mailer. Moreover, it is proposed to immediately download the necessary application and save the information there.

What's not to like

This is the only paid email client in the selection. And it costs a lot - 379 rubles. But you need to understand that if you have 1-2 mailboxes and receive at most five letters a day, you don’t need Airmail. It's a great tool with amazing functionality, but it's not for everyone. Airmail will be useful for those who constantly work with mail and have many mailboxes. Ordinary users are more likely to choose free analogues that are enough for them.

Inbox

What do you like

Sorting letters works very well. They are automatically sorted into categories (“Promotions”, “Forums”, “Social networks” and so on), so the feed is always in order. And thanks to the previews, you can see which emails have attachments and whether they are worth opening.
Each letter is also a task, which means that all the tools of the To-do manager are available. Moreover, you can create a reminder directly in the application, the only thing missing is a calendar.

What's not to like

Inbox only works with Gmail accounts, so it's not for everyone.
There is no single feed for all mailboxes; you have to constantly jump from one account to another.

Despite the rapid development of compact and convenient mobile instant messengers in recent years, email remains a popular method of Internet communication. In addition to reading and sending letters, modern email services offer mobile device owners many useful features that are not available in the native iOS Mail application.

In contact with

To help users choose a truly convenient and functional E-mail client, we have compiled a list of the best email applications from the App Store.

Mailbox

This application is the favorite application of hundreds of thousands of users around the world. The application interface is simple and user-friendly, and the user can easily view and reply to messages, as well as create new ones. In addition, emails can be moved to special folders or postponed until later. Application Mailbox available for free.

Sparrow

Many people call Sparrow the best email client for iPhone. It’s not for nothing that in the summer of 2012 the application developers were acquired by Google. Sparrow has full support for IMAP and POP protocols (Gmail, Hotmail, iCloud and many other mail service accounts). Client features: single inbox, smart contacts (most frequent contacts appear at the top of the list), pull to refresh, built-in web browser, attachments and more. The cost of the application is 99 rubles.

Mail.ru mail

An application that is rapidly gaining popularity among iOS users from Russia. Mail.Ru Mail allows you to combine all mailboxes, be it a Yandex, Gmail, Yahoo, Rambler, Outlook or any other service account in one place. Main features Mail.ru mails: personal spam filter, Mail.Ru address book, avatars in the list of letters, search for all correspondence, push notifications. The app supports iPad and is available in the App Store for free.

Boxer

Interface Boxer very simple and reminiscent of Mailbox, however, unlike the latter, the client allows you to log in to Facebook and LinkedIn. The application supports Evernote and DropBox. Besides, in Boxer It's very easy to customize the control gestures as you wish. The client has many templates for quick responses, which can be edited and supplemented independently. Price Boxer is 33 rubles.

Molto

The interface of this application resembles a blog page. The list of contacts is located in the All Stars section, which allows you to quickly and easily find the desired recipient. The client allows you to log in to Facebook and check messages on the social network. In addition, when replying to friends, the user will be able to see their photos. Application Molto available for free.

Gmail

The updated email client from Google allows you to always find out about new correspondence without having to wait for the application to download the letter (Push). Gmail Makes it easy to switch from one account to another, find archived messages, and much more. This application is available for free.

Evomail+

The main feature of this application is the ability to reply and forward emails with just one click. In order to read a message, you need to swipe your finger across the screen to the right, to delete - to the left. Evomail+ allows you to delay sending emails if necessary. The email client is available for free.

Triage

This application allows you to get rid of the chaos that reigns in the email service using a minimalistic interface. Instead of displaying all messages at once, Triage allows you to see only one thing. The user can reply to emails, or archive or postpone them. The cost of the application is 99 rubles.

Mailbox died there. But nothing. There are alternatives.

In this collection we have collected best email clients.

Mail client myMail can rightfully be called one of the most functional and productive for the iOS platform. myMail can not only become a worthy alternative to the standard Mail application, but also turn working with letters from routine work into an exciting activity. The application allows you to work with several email accounts at once, distribute letters into categories and folders, and use custom filters to get rid of unwanted messages.

Features of the myMail application:

support for any IMAP mail service;
user-friendly interface;
quick deletion of letters;
speed of work;
Avatar support has been implemented.

Verdict: If you need a functional replacement for standard Mail, get started with myMail.

If your mailbox is hosted within the service Gmail, the functionality of the standard client of the same name is enough for the eyes. The Gmail client is ready to work with multiple accounts (within Google mail up to 5 accounts), but organizing the work of such a “multibox” is somewhat inconvenient. To check your mail, you will need to constantly switch accounts from the application menu. Google has reduced the number of settings to a minimum. Among the interesting features of the Gmail client, we should note the built-in Autoresponder: by selecting its validity period, you can set a letter template that will be sent to all recipients automatically.

Gmail App Features:

work exclusively with mailboxes in the Gmail.com zone;
minimum required functionality;
presence of an answering machine;
Slowness on mobile internet.

Verdict: A good solution with a minimum of settings, but exclusively for owners of email accounts in the Gmail service.

Good artists draw, and brilliant ones borrow good ideas, refracting them into their creativity. Reflect on the genius of the holding Mail.Ru We won’t, but the mobile email client developed by the company really deserves praise. However, the secret of success turned out to be very simple - the functionality of the Mail.Ru client repeats the foreign analogue of myMail. But since My.com still belongs to Mail.Ru, no one forbids borrowing from itself. The same support for multiple mailboxes, a similar principle of organizing and working with letters. As an addition, in the Mail.Ru client menu you will find a list of applications that are distributed as part of the holding’s PR campaign ( My World, Agent, News and More). You can disable it from the settings menu.

Features of the Mail.Ru application:

convenient organization of letters;
working with multiple mailboxes;
fast delivery of letters for any type of connection;
schedule for letter delivery.

Verdict: The Mail.Ru client is the same as myMail, but with a Russian PR soul.

Yandex Mail[Download on App Store] Developer: Yandex LLC Rating: 4(5)Price: Free

Russian search giant Yandex adheres to the policy of Google's foreign counterpart: in the client Yandex Mail you can use several mailboxes and manage letters, but provided that they belong to the Yandex domain. The application itself is practically devoid of any settings and the most that the user can do is configure the sorting of letters by topic and change the signature.

Features of the Yandex.Mail application:

lack of settings;
good design;
nothing extra – just a client.

Verdict: Simple and tasteful, but only for your own people.

Mobile email client CloudMagic designed in a minimalist style, which, along with convenience and displaying the maximum amount of information on the screen, can become a real problem for people with poor vision (font size is about 5-6 pt). However, you can get full access to the interface settings by using a paid subscription of 2690 rubles per year. To set up mail with all Russian-language mail services, you will have to remember the IMAP and SMTP settings.

Features of the CloudMail application:

laconic design;
working with multiple mailboxes;
economical consumption of mobile traffic.

Verdict: CloudMagic is ideal for people who are tired of bright and colorful email clients. An ascetic but functional application.

Client Boxer can be called a full-fledged competitor of myMail: it organizes work with swipes, provides instant addition of letters to the task list, sorting, and management of attachments. When setting up, Boxer requires a minimum of steps: enter your email address, enter your password and display name. The client will pick up the protocol values on its own. You will have to pay for the ability to work with multiple accounts. 279 rubles.

Boxer App Features:

working with letters using swipes;
support for any protocols of mail services;
advanced sorting settings;
support for multiple accounts (Pro version).

Verdict: Multifunctional client that supports any email services. If you are interested in working with several mailboxes, you will have to purchase the paid Pro version.

LightMail– an ideal solution both in terms of minimalistic design and functionality. Displaying letters in dialogue mode (in this case, the entire history of messages is tied to one recipient), the ability to add audio recordings (voice recorder), work with multiple accounts and simple setup (login and password). LightMail is truly capable of ridding your email correspondence of unnecessary fluff.

On February 1, the Italian company Bloop released Airmail, a popular email client for Mac OS. Despite the fact that the niche of such applications in 2016 already seems, the developers of the new program have already managed to surprise the media and iPhone users, and also justify the rather high price of 379 rubles (there are no in-app purchases) in the presence of competitors.

Editor-in-Chief TJ spent a working day with Airmail and, after digging around in the settings, found it to be the most flexible email client for iOS.

To bookmarks

It would take more than two hands to list all the really good email programs for iOS. Nevertheless, in recent years, a certain balance has been maintained between the most popular of them, which was disrupted by Mailbox in December 2015.

All this time, it seemed that it was impossible to create a universal client that could accommodate everyone at once and take a leading position, so the developers concentrated on meeting the needs of individual niches.

And if the competitors nevertheless adopted the main features from each other, they were not able to overcome some barriers. For example, for a user of a Yandex mailbox, Mailbox with its once innovative interface is useless junk (it only supported iCloud and Gmail).

The Airmail developers, taking advantage of their many years of experience working on the program of the same name for Mac OS, tried to destroy the existing idyll on the market with the help of an application whose main feature is to be able to do everything.

Airmail surprises Russian users right out of the gate. The program supports the Russian language (even if the localization is not perfect everywhere - the interface “swallows” some long words), and also works “out of the box” with Yandex and Mail.Ru.

At first glance, Airmail seems very similar to the standard Yandex client or several other similar programs.

On the main screen there is a list of letters, all actions with which (besides opening) are performed using short and long swipes (if you release your finger a little earlier, the first specified function is performed, a little later - the second).

Swiping from the left edge of the display will open a menu. Also, at first glance, quite standard.

The “magic” in Airmail begins when the user selects “Edit” or “Settings” from the main menu. By clicking on the first of them, it turns out that by default the program hides a good half of its sections from the owner.

In “Editing” you can turn on or off any of them - for example, prohibit showing messages from all mailboxes at the same time or, conversely, disable viewing messages from one account.

In the menu settings, it turns out that Airmail can catalog letters in almost any possible way - for example, show only attached files, only dialogs (email chains), only messages received for the current day, and so on.

These same functions are duplicated in the pop-up menu on the main screen, where there is a filter called Smart. It automatically hides various mailings and letters from online stores that are not spam, but usually do not contain useful information.

The Settings section turns out to be Airmail's main strength and main weakness. To recognize the program as the potential king of all email clients on iOS, you need to tinker with it, which many developers (and users) are afraid of like hell.

However, it cannot be said that Airmail has a high barrier to entry. It is convenient to use right away, and the settings can be learned gradually.

The capabilities of the application are amazing.

Each email account can be assigned its own icon and color code. The first ones will be indicated in the menu, and the second ones - directly in the list of letters (a bright strip on the left side of the screen), so as not to confuse messages for different mailboxes.

The appearance of the list of letters is customizable down to the smallest detail - you can disable icons, remove text previews or expand it to four lines, and also disallow or allow read letters to be greyed out.

You can configure what actions with letters the program will offer to perform in notifications (including on Apple Watch) and when performing four types of swipes on the main screen.

Each email can be put into Snooze mode so that it reminds you of itself later - the same day, the next morning or any other day. And time presets, from which you can then quickly select, can also be configured yourself.

However, Snooze is only a small part of the rather powerful organizer built into Airmail. Any email can be assigned to any day on the calendar to be viewed later.

In Airmail, you can manually select the interface language, the default browser, the size of attachments that are allowed to download automatically, as well as disable and enable spam and trash search.

The developers paid no less attention to the letter editor than to everything else. There are all possible types of formatting, a large selection of fonts, and a function for quickly selecting prepared signatures.

Of course, the program supports synchronization with iCloud (which will be useful for Mac owners) and can work with several dozen popular services - from Pocket and Dropbox to a whole galaxy of well-known organizers.

Airmail in its first version came out with full support for Apple Watch. Right on the watch, you can quickly decide what to do with this or that letter (the standard iOS client only allows you to read the headers), and, if desired, read them in their entirety.

[("title":"","author":"","image":("type":"image","data":("uuid":"https:\/\/gif.cmtt.space \/3\/club\/41\/e4\/dd\/13bb7ee6d5dcf3.png","width":312,"height":390,"size":0,"type":"jpg","color ":"","external_service":))),("title":"","author":"","image":("type":"image","data":("uuid": "https:\/\/gif.cmtt.space\/3\/club\/cb\/68\/31\/2b0bbaa6b82b72.png","width":312,"height":390,"size": 0,"type":"jpg","color":"","external_service":))),("title":"","author":"","image":("type":" image","data":("uuid":"https:\/\/gif.cmtt.space\/3\/club\/c5\/64\/5f\/5eeda49f3c747e.png","width": 312,"height":390,"size":0,"type":"jpg","color":"","external_service":))),("title":"","author":" ","image":("type":"image","data":("uuid":"https:\/\/gif.cmtt.space\/3\/club\/a1\/23\/ 90\/03c42109839019.png","width":312,"height":390,"size":0,"type":"jpg","color":"","external_service":)))]

In addition, the program uses all the main features of the 3D Touch function on the iPhone 6s - email preview and quick launch.

conclusions

As noted above, Airmail's incredible flexibility can be considered both an advantage and a disadvantage. Many users may be put off by this complexity.

However, the main highlight of the application is precisely that you can remove everything unnecessary from it, creating a concise and personalized email program.

The developers can only be criticized for the not very high speed of work even on the iPhone 6s and several strange solutions. For example, if you delete an open letter, the user is “thrown” back into the general list, after which he is shown another rather long animation.

One way or another, on the iPhone, the developers from Bloop appeared fully armed - with native support for all new Apple products, dozens of third-party services and local services, such as Yandex and Mail.ru, which many competitors, including the powerful Outlook from Microsoft, can only envy.

The creators promise to release a version of their program for iPad, but advise not to wait for it too soon. For the Bloop tablet they plan to completely redesign the interface.

Airmail has no in-app purchases, and the program itself will cost 379 rubles. The Mac version costs 749 rubles.