Email is one of the revolutions in human life that changed how we communicate with one another. Combined with mobile technology, email might be the ultimate modern communication tool. Even though other new communication revolutions have arrived, email is still playing a huge role in today’s digital environment.
But things might not always be so bright and sunny in the email app village. We’ve just lost Mailbox, one of the popular email clients for iOS, Mac, and Android. Dropbox, the company that acquired the app, decided to shut the project down. If you are one of the loyal users of the app who loves the innovations it brought to the mobile email world, you’ll have to find a worthy replacement. Here are several Mailbox alternatives for iOS that you can try.
Apple Mail
Apple’s Mail app is the default email client baked into iOS. It doesn’t offer as many bells and whistles as other mobile email clients, but it’s a good app, and it gets the job done. It supports multiple email accounts, offers several swiping gestures, and integrates well with other iOS features. If you are not looking for shiny features and don’t want to bother installing additional email clients, Mail is a reliable client that covers most users’ emailing needs.
Gmail
Google’s Gmail users are so massive that the name becomes almost identical with the email itself. And if you are using Gmail for your personal email, using the Gmail app will make you feel right at home. The features and interface of the app are identical to the web version. It supports multiple accounts but not unified inbox. Yet. You can also mute threads that are not important.
Inbox
Inbox is another mobile email client from Google. While Gmail tries to retain the familiarity, Inbox is more like the experimental app. Google wants to see email clients from different perspectives and tries them via Inbox. Some of the “rethought” features are adding reminders to the top of the inbox, hiding emails until the specified time by snoozing them, and grouping emails by categories such as purchases, finance, updates and social.
Microsoft Outlook
Long before Gmail, there were already many email service providers but not many good email clients. Outlook is one of the outliers. It’s a robust email client plus calendar and task manager. Years after its initial start, Microsoft acquired Acompli, a popular iOS email app, and merged it with mobile Outlook. It integrates many of Acompli’s great features such as swiping gestures to delete/read/unread, different sections for important emails (Focused) and others, and seamless integration with third-party online calendars and cloud storage services.
Spark
Different from many other email clients, Spark is built with mobile users in mind. The developer is not trying to create a desktop email client in mobile size. Spark categorizes your emails into cards such as New, Notifications, Newsletters, Pins and Snoozed. You go through your emails by expanding and collapsing the cards. You can also use the traditional inbox where everything is listed chronologically. You can add, remove, and customize the cards to fit your workflow. Spark also integrates well with third-party cloud storage services.
CloudMagic
For those who prefer a clean and uncluttered interface, you should try CloudMagic. Other than the minimalistic design, it’s also light on system resources. The app is available for iOS, Android, and Mac and supports multiple accounts. Similar to many other top email clients on the list, CloudMagic also integrates well with third-party cloud services, so users can add attachments from these services and back up email and attachments to them.
Boxer Lite
Other than being fast and integrating well with Apple’s Contacts and Calendar, Boxer Lite supports cloud storages, integrates with Evernote, has a configurable interface, tells your availability based on your calendar, integrates social profiles of your contacts, and more. But user’s most favorite features is the pre-configured responses for a quick reply and the ability to lock the app with a password.
While Boxer supports multiple email accounts, the free lite version only allows you to add one account. To add more accounts, you need to upgrade to the paid version.
Mailburn
If your mailbox is filled with tons and tons of emails from various mailing lists, then maybe you want to try Mailburn. Its main feature is the ability to unsubscribe from mailing lists quickly. The app groups emails into tabs according to their categories. Mailing lists go under Reader tab. To unsubscribe from a mailing list, open the Reader tab, pick the one that you want to discard, then swipe left.
This email client can also prioritize important emails and display them in a chat-like interface similar to SMS or Instant Messaging apps. There’s also email tracking that will notify you when your email has been opened. Currently, Mailburn only works with Gmail accounts.
How do you manage your mail on you iPhone? What are your favorite apps? Please share using the comments below.
Image Credit: Hernán Piñera
Jeffry Thurana is a creative writer living in Indonesia. He helps other writers and freelancers to earn more from their crafts. He’s on a quest of learning the art of storytelling, believing that how you tell a story is as important as the story itself. He is also an architect and a designer, and loves traveling and playing classical guitar.
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