For many, the prospect of "inbox zero" seems impossible – the unicorn of modern communication. Mailbox understands this struggle to stay atop the constant deluge of digital correspondence, and sees the problem not as a matter of personal effort, but rather perception. As such, rather than resemble typical mobile email options, Orchestra's new iPhone app takes its inspiration from the to-do list, challenging users to clear their inboxes like checking tasks off when completed, with a handful of breezy actions used to facilitate the process.
Currently designed to work only with Gmail accounts, Mailbox enables snap judgments with the swipe of a finger. Archiving an email from the inbox is done with a light swipe to the right, which a more complete right swipe sends the unwanted message to the trash. Despite the similar actions, they're differentiated enough to avoid mixing up your intentions, and the approach makes it easy to smash through an overnight stockpile of notes while the morning coffee's pouring.
It's the leftward swipes that give Mailbox a larger toolset than the average client, however. The smaller swipe lets you remove an email from the inbox and reappear at a specified date and time, allowing you to hide certain notes until pertinent. Meanwhile, the full left swipe unveils a list of folders (examples include "To Buy" and "To Read") to let you sort emails for easy access later. You can add your own from the app, and they'll all show up alongside the marked-for-later folder wherever you use Gmail, whether it's web, the official app, or Mail.
In practice, Mailbox offers an elegant way to stay atop the madhouse that is your email inbox, and it's a largely smooth experience throughout. It has a couple of nagging annoyances, though, like messages that still appear unread in the app when you read them elsewhere, and likewise notifications that hang around when that mail is read somewhere else (unlike with Apple's Mail). Also, while you can browse your Gmail archive and search within locally available emails, there's no option for searching emails on the server, nor can you access existing labels from the outset – you'll have to re-nest them under "[Mailbox]" within Gmail's settings to access them through the app.
We were already on the fence over whether Mailbox could be an all-in-one Gmail solution considering such annoyances and omissions, but we got our answer when Mailbox's servers went down a week after release, leaving users without access to new messages for several hours. Mailbox is young and promising, but following that surprise downtime, the idea of putting a middleman between our iPhones and Gmail's servers suddenly seems hugely unappealing. Until the app matures and stabilizes, we'll consider it a helpful secondary sorting tool rather than a primary resource.
The bottom line. Mailbox's smart approach and UI make it incredibly helpful, but growing pains keep it from replacing your mail app of choice.
[Editor's Note: As of this posting, Mailbox is restricting access to the app via a first-come, first-served system, with more than 800,000 people currently waiting to use the service. You can download the app now from the App Store, but expect to be greeted with a large and slowly-dwindling number of how many people are in front of you in line, plus a sure-to-grow tally of those still behind. (Also, added note to review regarding workaround for accessing existing labels via renesting process.)]
iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 6.0 or later
Fresh approach to mobile email makes it easy to stay atop your inbox deluge. Slick UI based around very simple and effective swipe actions.
Servers not stable enough to be a primary email client. Only for Gmails users to start. No ability to search emails not saved locally. Must re-nest existing labels to access them in app.
Calstar713
February 20, 2013 at 11:39pm
I'm just your average everyday iphone user but Mailbox has changed the way I use email. I have never got to inbox zero until I used this iPhone app. In fact not only did I get to zero, I did it easily. My wife and I both use it and we both love it! We signed up long ago and waited quite a long time for it. We didn't complain about the wait because we knew it was worth it. Some people don't have a lot of patience thats fine then just use something else.
As far as the MacLife Review, I completely disagree with it. Apparently Andrew Hayward forgot that the almighty Gmail has gone down before even as recent as Dec 10, 2012. Gmail was down globally for the morning. Are we to conclude that Gmail is not ready for Primetime and that we should change email providers. I don't think so. Mailbox is a great new app with a snooze/reminder feature that no one has except for Boomerang and thats only an add on to the Gmail webmail. Snooze is a great feature to remind you about certain emails that you still need to work on but at a later date. Wonderful. It uses the Clear app's colorful swipe features to get you through all your emails quickly. Amazing! It uses a conversation type chat style to easily identify people in those long email conversations. Thank goodness! Its all wrapped up in a nice very quick elegant package.
Does it have a few things that need to be tweeked? Absolutely. Just like every app out there thats periodically updated. Mailbox is our primary email client and its stable. All my wife and I can say is that Mailbox makes email fun again. Its that good.
yojo056
February 20, 2013 at 10:24am
I think I have to disagree with your review. I agree the outage was unexpected and surprising but I think it misses the point of what the app is currently. Mailboxapp is currently an advanced Beta of the final release that will include access for other mail services. This is a crowdsourced way of discovering the kinks that they are otherwise unable to find simply within a limited beta. Hence, why there is a queue that you had to sign up for and wait in line for access.
In addition, since the purchasing of Sparrow Mail by Google last summer the iPhone community isn't left with many great Mail alternatives to choose from. At least we can be happy with the fact that Mailboxapp out of the box overcomes the shortcomings of Sparrow with access to Push e-mails and great new features.
I would consider doing another review in the future as I am sure Mailboxapp will get much better over time. I certainly have used it to replace Mail for all that i need to do.
Zmrozony
February 19, 2013 at 12:17pm
I'm still in the queue (562,000) and increasingly losing interest in this application. I read here about the problems with the server so I will continue to use Mail.app :)
