There’s no shortage of great alternative email apps for iPhone, or for the iPad for that matter. In the past year, we’ve seen the introduction of some stellar options such as Spark and even Airmail, which has been my favorite email app for OS X for years. Yet ever since iOS 8 came out, I can’t bring myself to use any other email app than the stock Mail app, no matter how good the competition gets. Here’s why: Prior to iOS 8, I was a die-hard Mailbox fan. I used it on both my iPhone and iPad and relied on
Airmail when on my Mac. Then when iOS 8 brought auto-detection for contacts, events, flights, and more, I felt like I needed to give it another try. I quickly realized that auto-detection wasn’t the only thing Apple improved upon. Almost two years later and it doesn’t seem to matter what email app hits the App Store, it doesn’t end up staying in my dock for very long. While there are lots of factors for what keeps drawing me back to Mail.app, here are my top 5 reasons:
1. Auto-detection
As I previously mentioned, iOS 8 brought with it the ability for Mail to automatically detect tons of data including calendar events, flights, and even changes to someone’s contact information. I spend loads of time communicating with developers, PR people, and clients. I love the fact that if someone changes their phone number, or an address, Mail can now detect that and alert me. It’s tough keeping track of everyone and Mail makes managing contacts loads easier. Flights are another big one for me. I hate trying to figure out time changes and typing different flights and info into my calendar. Mail automatically finds my flights in an email and I just tap add and I’m done. Not only does Mail import the correct times, it also lists the passengers, frequent flier numbers, reservation numbers, and anything else the airline may have included. This works for tons of other kinds of data too. Manually managing contacts and events from mail are a thing of the past for me, and every time I try and use a different email app, I instantly find myself missing this functionality.
2. Defaulted
Currently iOS doesn’t give any other email app the power to be the default client of choice like you can in OS X. That means that if I want to share an article from Reeder, or any other app that has support to share via mail, I’m forced back into Mail.app. That isn’t to say action and share sheet extensions haven’t made this somewhat more manageable in the past few years, but all developers don’t use the default share sheet. That’s where the problems come in. Is this a huge deal? No. But it’s something that makes the experience consistent, and that does matter. There’s also the issue that if I’m forced to use Mail.app to share from certain apps, that means I have to have my accounts set up in two apps. Even if I have a manual fetch schedule set up for most of them, that’s still annoying and wastes unnecessary resources and local storage.
3. Low power mode
Low Power Mode was introduced in iOS 9 and is a fabulous way to conserve battery when you’re running low. Enabling this setting automatically disables mail fetch, background app refresh, and many other system resources that may drain battery more than others. By its very nature, Low Power Mode was made to work seamlessly with Mail.app. That means if I have Airmail or any other third party mail app running, that app will still push and fetch mail like normal. Unless I manually disable those features inside that particular app, I’m not reaping all the benefits of Low Power Mode. To find out how much validity there was to my theory, I used Low Power Mode for several days. Some of those days I used Spark or Airmail and some of those days I completely uninstalled any third party mail app and strictly used Mail.app. The days I was only using Mail.app, I typically ended the days with 15-25% more battery life. Sure, some of that could be contributed to different usage patterns. I’m not claiming my tests were scientific by any means. Either way, it was enough to convince me that Low Power Mode is far more beneficial to me when a third party email app isn’t also polling 4 different email accounts for new messages.
4. Drafts, drafts everywhere
iOS 8 also added much more flexibility for creating draft messages. Just start typing a message and if you need to view your inbox again, flick it down. When you’re ready to continue working on your message, just tap on the bottom menu and select your draft. Prior to iOS 8 I used to hate the way I couldn’t access my inbox to refer to anything, or I’d have to manually tap into an account and dig for the drafts folder. Sure, there are other apps that offer this functionality, but it was one of the reasons I stayed away from the Mail app to begin with. Now that it isn’t an issue, it’s one more notch in my Mail.app bucket list.
5. VIP
Last but definitely not least is VIP support. There are other email apps that offer this kind of feature but it’s never implemented on a system-wide level the way Mail.app does it, because just like auto-detection, it can’t be. For most third party apps, they have to rely on funky labeling and sorting methods to implement VIP actions. This isn’t the case with Mail.app and that makes it even more valuable to me. I also love that I can have separate tones for VIP contacts. This way I immediately know if I should stop what I’m doing and glance at my iPhone. I also use VIP as a way to filter out noise. There are emails from certain people I want on my Lock screen, but many others I don’t want in order to conserve precious battery life. With Mail’s extensive notification options, I can choose to only show messages from VIP on my Lock screen while all others still get a tone and filter into Notification Center, but they don’t clutter up my Lock screen unnecessarily.
What’s missing All that being said, there are
still a few things I wish Apple would get right with mail. My big ticket item would be much faster search. This is something I’ve long struggled with both on iOS and OS X. Whatever indexing Apple uses in Mail.app, it sucks. I can hop into Airmail and find a message on both my iPhone and my Mac 100x faster than I can with the Mail app. I love that Mail indexes into Spotlight and Siri suggestions, but it does it so slow that it’s not of any use to me in its current form. I’d love for Apple to take a look at how Airmail manages to index emails so fast and do whatever they’re doing, but better. Next, I’d love to see snooze options. Unlike many people, snooze options aren’t a deal breaker for me and haven’t been for a long time. I almost never have more than 50 emails in my inbox at once, and that’s on a heavy day. I’m pretty good at triaging on my own, but clearing out clutter I don’t need to focus on right this minute would be a bonus. And since Airmail recently added snooze, I’ve been able to take advantage of that on my Mac. This way messages disappear from my iPhone and iPad until Airmail on my Mac puts them back in my inbox. It may not work for everyone, but it works for me. That being said, I’d love to know in the comments — what email app are you using on your iPhone and iPad, and why? And what would it take from Apple for you to stick with Mail.app?
Mail.app doesn’t have push for gmail. That is the biggest problem for mail.app for me. And probably many people out there. There is snooze options but it requires the use of Siri.
I have two gmail accounts and it doesn’t bother me. I don’t consider email to be immediate communication. Not sure what you mean by snooze and Siri though. Link?
I *think* the snooze feature with a Siri being referred to is when within an app asking Siri to “remind me about this on “X” day”. That’s the only method I would know of but still isn’t a true snooze.
I am bummed about not having Gmail push anymore but it’s not that big of a deal.
IMAP Advanced would be a nice addition to the stock mail app to offer better synchronization. One of my main issues is search. Search is trash on the stock mail app.
Yep that’s my main wish list feature too. MUCH faster search.
Mailbox was the first big third party email about that I was really excited about. Outlook & Spark have been my two main drivers for the past year, but recently Airmail hasn’t only been my favorite email client, but one of my favorite apps period! You are making me want to revisit Mail.App AGAIN!
The default Mail.app is missing some relatively minor items that make me prefer Outlook: Lack of filters, priority inbox vs other auto-sorting, poor threading support (Outlook includes sent messages and finds the rest of the thread consistently), and of course: the search stinks.
Everything you’ve outlined are some good compelling arguments and Apple has improved mail significantly over the years. Snooze is so necessary for me but2 I’ve also found so much to love in the third party arena. I’m on Airmail on Mac and since went to it on iOS for the smooth consistent experien
Mail.app never sticks for me for one silly reason – I don’t like that there isn’t an option to return to the Inbox list after deleting an email. It drives me nuts that it moves on to the next message!
I love that it goes to the next message.
Gmail still works like crap on Apple mail app. Very annoying given that it works perfectly everywhere else. I don’t care if it’s apple’s or google’s fault it’s makes native mail app an instant non-starter for me.
I do admire the comment “I don’t consider email to be immediate communication.” I have clients who expect answers in minutes and the volume of emails is unbelievable. I have to have another look at Mail.
I use the gmail app for the folders (primary, social, etc.) and search. Lack of push isn’t a huge deal.
For #2 in your list, I keep an instance of gmail open in mail with all fetch set to manual, no notifications, etc so apps that do use mail.app (like sharing from Photos) can still do so.
I use Airmail on my Mac and iphone. Can’t wait for the iPad version to come out.
I am using it on my iPad Pro.
I have tried just about every third-party email app out there – Outlook, Spark, Mailbox, Airmail, etc. After seeing this post, I went back to the stock mail app and am completely happy with the decision. It just does what I need it to do and I find the UI far nicer than any third-party app.
Agree. To be its those small things that matter. Like with the stock email app you can hide message previews on the lock screen for privacy and also just set a custom tone instead of a tone and vibrate. I don’t think that is possible with non-stock email apps. Also sometimes email just render better
I went from mailbox to cloudmagic, then outlook, and am now back to the stock mail app. I’ve tried every 3rd party app, but they all have limitations. A big plus on the stock mail app is the ability to have an html signature. Most mail apps don’t have that. Quicker search would be HUGE though!
I’ve always switched back and forth between mail.app and some third party options. I too was a huge fan of Mailbox and it got me into the habit of achieving Mailbox Zero. Currently AirMail is my email app of choice. The ability for a fast search is a huge plus.
Same for me. Currently using Inbox from Google for my Gmail and very happy with it. If the mail.app in iOS 10 adds snooze functionality I’ll likely switch back. Love that feature!
I’m bouncing began Spark, Airmail, and Outlook. I like the clean interface, features like snooze, and automatic organization features of spark the best out of those. Integration with services is a most for me and I create lots of Evernote notes, omnifocus tasks, and other items from emails. The OS X beta for Spark is underway and I’ll try it when the final version is released.
I’d still be using native mail except it kept kicking me out of one or other of my Gmail accounts. I had to keep doing the Gmail ‘reset’ thing, often in a daily basis. Since I switched, though, I have grown fond of the snooze.
I do find airmail a bit buggy (iOS and Mac) but unified snooze is so nice.
I hear you on the bugs. I was trying to use a combo of the reply button and the share sheet in safari mobile to respond to Craigslist ads. Since Airmail is not the default mail app, I could not easily click the email address to reply.
I copied the email address to the clipboard, the shared the ad url to airmail. Then I pasted the email address in the ‘to’ field and typed my response.
Then airmail crashed. In fact it seemed to be a time crashed because if I typed and pressed send fast enough, the email made it. If I waited too long, Airmail would close.
But I made it!
After reading this article even though it was posted a while ago I laughed to myself and said “I’m glad it’s not just me”. I kept trying to find reasons to switch to a third party email but the stock mail was always the best experience wise. One thing that is not mentioned in the article is also the fact that with the third party mail apps if you are a mac and iOS user than the true experience happens mainly if your mac is on (i.e. mail rules etc) but with the stock mail it is tied to iCloud so a you can still check your email without using your iOS/MacOS device and I liked that. The closest thing that I am finding as a great replacement for stock mail is Airmail as it does everything that Mail does with one limitation and thats the fact that my mac has to be on for the iCloud function to work in terms of rules (however I can workaround that by using smart folders on my iOS devices). The thing that really made me switch for the moment at least is that Airmail has a better Apple Watch interface than stock mail. Stock mail never seems to be able to view an entire email message on Apple Watch but Airmail does. Its a small thing but its the small things that make a huge difference so for the time being I am using Airmail until I eventually return to stock
There are two deal breakers for me. For the stock app it is the swipe behavior. When I swipe I want something to happen, not be given two or more choices. I want to configure short swipe left – delete, long swipe left – move etc. Secondly, HTML sigs (or lack of) are also a deal breaker for me.
I swing between Spark, Notion, Email (Easilydo). I like CS Mail, but it has the multiple choice swipe options. At the moment I’m using Email (Easilydo), but the UI is boring (no avatars or identifiers for senders). That makes it hard to differentiate mail messages when looking at them. CS Mail is great for this, BUT, as noted, the swipe behavior fails. Notion tries to parse your mail and work out which emails require action. Nice idea, but my sig has a disclaimer along the lines ….If you receive this correspondence in error, please immediately delete it from your system and notify…. which Notion keeps interpreting as requiring some action from me, the law of unintended consequences.
The bottom line, no client is perfect, pick the one that has no deal breakers and more of your nice to have features than any of the others. As I said, Notion, Email, and Spark are the three I oscillate between because they don’t have any of the deal breakers…
Good thread here. I have been using Outlook, Spark and the native IOS email programs. The only drawback for me with the native IOS program is when I need to attach multiple files. It’s a hassle accomplishing that part. Outlook was fine, but I recently deleted that program because it lacked 3-D touch. I really like Spark. It supports 3-D touch, plus it’s a breeze attaching multiple files. Spark is now available for MAC. The only drawback for me with Spark is I haven’t found away to have emails displayed by date order without being associated by thread. I would stick with the native IOS email program if multiple file attachments wasn’t such a pain.
The biggest issue I have with Apple Mail is that it doesn’t support Gmail labels. It puts a copy of the email into a folder with the label name, as opposed to Gmail only needing one copy of an email and applying multiple labels to it. When Gmail launched labels, it made the folder system antiquated. I can’t go back now.
Plain and simple for me. There’s only one thing I don’t like and you mentioned it, push notifications for gmail. Other than that, it’s great. I’ve tried tons of other apps. None are as simple and clean as the stock.
Using Yahoo! email account and an alternative email add (therefore same inbox for these 2). Stock Mail app detects this and doesn’t show duplicate emails in my All Inboxes. Outlook app and many others fail to do so.
What I have always wanted and nobody seems to think of making as a feature is: schedule messages to send. Sometimes you want or need to send an email later today, tomorrow or next friday. Of course you can make a draft and send it when you want to, but it would be a lot better if you write it and schedule it to the day and hour you choose and forget about it.
This feature exists in Gmail as an app called Boomarang and has been around since 2010
Floated between a lot of the 3rd party options – I love the interface of Outlook, but doesn’t play nice with iCould. AirMail was the closest to stock and it worked best with the Apple Watch but I don’t need all of the customization options, and sometimes when I would delete a message on my Watch that wouldn’t sync over to all of my devices. I know a lot of people love the UI of Spark but I just find it to be ugly (reminds me of something you’d find on the latest Samsung phones – which a lot of people like but just isn’t for me).
So when it comes to working flawlessly across my devices and being simple to manage, the stock mail app is still the way to go for me.
I’m using Newton for the email tracking (NOT read receipts), snooze feature, and send scheduling. If all three could be integrated into the native Mail app, I would switch in a heartbeat.