Emails have become essential part of our life and we like using our iPhone to check personal or professional mails. Default mail app of iPhone is good enough to cater our basic needs but there are alternate email apps available which are faster and better than the default iPhone Mail App. Lets check a list of best alternate email apps for iOS (iPhone/iPad).
1) CloudMagic Mail App –
It is a fast and easy to use mail client available for mobile and tablets. It was recently launched and it has gained a lot popularity in a short span of time.
CloudMagic Mail App has got minimalistic interface which is similar to GMail Mobile app but its not limited to only GMail accounts (unlike Mailbox and Gmail Apps). It supports almost all famous Mail providers including all types of Exchange Servers.
CloudMagic Mail is a feature rich app and it supports all the features which you will desire to have –
– Free
– Bulk Editing by allowing multiple selection (deletion/Archieve/ of mails at once in Edit Mode)
– Set Reminders On Mails
– Single Mailbox for All Accounts
– Supports GMail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail/Outlook.com, All Exchange Servers (ActiveSync, EWS, IMAP), Office 365 Mail, Google Apps, iCloud and any custom IMAP Server.
– Push Notifications
– Gesture based editing (swipe left to expose options)
– Uses different colors to symbolize mails from different accounts (in unified inbox), making it easier for you to know which mail came to which account.
CloudMagic mail restricts you to only five email accounts, which they say is important to maintain the speed of application by making manageable indexes.
By default it adds a tag line below every email – Sent Using CloudMagic, this can be turned off from Settings.
CloudeMagic Mail App is definitely a reliable mail app which can be used as primary email app on your mobile. CloudeMagic is available for iOS and Android.
One issue we noticed was its badge sign, it was always showing count as 1 for unread mails, even if you have more than 1 unread mails.
2) Hop –
Hop is one application which does many things in new way. Biggest attraction is that Hop shows emails as chat conversations, therefore all mails are grouped by Contact name.
Hop does not work like any other mail client, you don’t see mails in different folders such as Inbox, Sent etc.It shows mails in two tabs – Chats and Incoming.
In ‘Chats’ tab you see contact’s names and mail threads as chat threads for every contact. As a result you can reply to mails quickly without any need to provide Subject Line or signature (although you can add a subject line if you wish to).
In ‘Incoming’ tab you see mails which does not require you to reply. Such as Newsletters, promotional mails etc.
What attracted most is that Hop is not only doing this one thing differently, it is has taken care of other things also such as attractive interface and support to different account types.
Lets check a quick list of features –
-Free
– A beautiful Chat like interface, making writing emails a quick thing.
– Push Notifications
– Support to different Email Providers – Gmail, Yahoo, Aol and iCloud.
– Attached Images appear as cover photo of the mail.
– Filter Mails by ‘Media’ and ‘Document’. This will show all the recently attached media files (images, videos) or recently attached documents.
– Gesture based controls. Moving finger left or right exposes more controls.
– Quick edit options for every mail. Just keep your finger for a while on the mail and menu comes up.
– Set different color and notification sound for different Contacts.
Overall Hop is a well thought and nicely made software which was good enough to impress us, however it has a couple of short comings which definitely needs to be corrected.
First problem is its unusually long waiting list. Mailbox was notorious to keep its users waiting but Hop has even surpassed them and they have a big waiting list where users need to wait for more than a month before they get invited. Hop definitely needs to speed up this process.
Second problem is that although Hop supports different email providers but at a time you can login into only one account. Therefore it does not give you unified Inbox where you can check all mails from different accounts. However their Customer Support said Hop team is working on it they will support unified Inbox in its coming releases.
3) Boxer –
Boxer gives a complete package of mail client with all the features you can ask for. It is one of the best mail clients available on iOS. Boxer comes with almost all features which a user will need to manage emails.
– Support to – Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, Hotmail, Exchange and IMAP/POP mails
– Push Notification.
– Add email in ToDo list.
– Gesture based controls. Swiping left or right will expose more options. You can customize controls shown on swipe action.
– Integrates with your Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Sanebox and LinkedIn accounts. This allows Boxer to use your cloud storage for attachments or to fetch Contact information from social profiles such as profile pics.
– Quick Reply Templates
– Passcode Protection
Boxer is currently available as a paid application at iTune App Store or a free Boxer Lite is available with limited features.
4) myMail –
myMail is a beautiful, simple and lite email client. It also comes loaded with features.
– Free
– Minimalistic interface with great looking icons.
– Supports Gmail, Outlook.com, Hotmail, Yahoo and any IMAP/POP based email.
– Supports complete folder structure of your mailbox.
– Schedule based Push notification. So you can choose when you don’t want to be disturbed by notifications.
– Gesture based controls. Swipe left and you get all the options.
– Fast search for mails.
– Its available for both iOS and Android.
However one drawback associated with myMail is that it does not support unified Inbox. You can check your mail accounts one by one.
5) LightMail –
LightMail is a good email app which supports Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail/live/Outlook.com mails. It has got unified Inbox to check all accounts at one place.
Biggest attraction of LightMail is its interface. It shows mail listing in big blocks, which gives a good preview of content even before you open the mail.
This interface makes it easy to manage mails and make a decision to either keep it or delete it.
When I started testing this app, it used to cashed many times while starting up. However recently LightMail got its update and in this update it has got a slicker interface and biggest improvement was that app crashing stopped.
LightMail has got many interesting features such as you can check all attachments at one place, you can access all mails offline and mails can be downloaded for later viewing by clicking on the download icon at the bottom of screen. Application gives you very useful visual feedback on every action.
Overall impression of LightMail was very good. If you do not need to use Exchange Server mails, you can definitely go for LightMail.
LightMail is available for iPhone as well as for Android.
Final Words –
All these email apps are wonderful and all of them have few unique things which make them appear different in the crowd. However as an alternative email client we recommend ‘CloudMagic Mail App’ and ‘Boxer’ for their completeness and for astounding list of features. Apart from this using Hop was a real fun as it gave emails a new perspective, this app will gain more popularity with time (once they deal with their issues).
Many people asked me why Gmail or Mailbox was not listed here. Reason is simple, they don’t qualify to be here because they are limited to only Gmail accounts.