Out in the wild, there are many mail apps available, but which one is the best in terms of functionality and design? Let’s see.
However, due to the different types of email providers we can have, I will not be covering those mail apps that can only support one certain email provider.
So here are the apps, in no particular order:
All Email Providers
This app claims in the description that you would be able to “Access all mail from all email providers in one fast, simple app!”, and when I open the app, I am presented with the following screen:
Does this look familiar to you? It might, as it is jQuery Mobile, fitted into a Android WebView App.
When I tapped on the settings button, I was shown a few options, and I tried them, but there was a rather significant delay that could be seen before it loads the “Customise View” screen. Choppy scrolling could be noticed, too.
Then, I started to wonder, how do I let an email provider reappear in the app again? After a while, I found the “Restore Hidden Providers” button, that just restores all of the email providers, including those that I would like to hide, making it a really bad user experience.
Somehow, when I search for ‘Hotmail’, I get QIP.ru Mail as one of the results, which didn’t really make sense.
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In overall, this app is just a long list of mail providers with links to their webmail login, but if I were to need webmail access one day, I would prefer saving all these links as bookmarks in my browser of choice (Chrome Dev)
Rating: 4/10
Download: Google Play [All Email Providers]
AquaMail & K-9 Mail
Both apps felt nearly the same, which is why I decided to write about them together.
These two apps had almost the same process of setting up accounts, which was pretty easy.
They almost adapt the same look in terms of the interfaces. AquaMail, as the name implies, makes use of blue elements, such as the blue navigation bar, button fab (the write button), while K-9 Mail has a more toned-down and low profile look.
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Both apps were simple and had the basic functions needed for reading/writing of emails, and were pretty smooth.
Rating: 7/10
Download: Google Play [AquaMail] and Google Play [K9-Mail]
Libero Mail & SolMail
Both apps were pretty easy to setup, had similar functionality and were clean, but on any day, I would prefer SolMail over Libero Mail (thanks to the white theme that made everything look cleaner). However, I liked the sidebar in Libero Mail better.
NOTE; Libero Mail has ads.
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Rating: 7/10
Download: Google Play [Libero Mail] & Google Play [SolMail]
MailDroid
MailDroid had all that was needed for reading and writing emails, and was able to automatically detect the email provider I was using and let me skip through the remaining parts of the setup (IMAP & SMTP server setup), making the initial setup quick.
There were many options allowing me to customize the looks of the app to my preference, backup and restore my settings, make use of a few plugins like PGP, Anti-spam, etc to make reading/writing emails easier / secure (but Anti-spam was a paid feature :/)
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Rating: 8/10
Download: Google Play [MailDroid]
TypeMail
TypeMail does everything that a normal mail app could do, but in addition, it was able to automatically detect the email provider I was using and let me skip through the remaining parts of the setup (IMAP & SMTP server setup), making the initial setup quick.
Like MailDroid, there were many options in TypeMail, allowing me to choose different themes and toggle the Dark Mode (protects your eyes in the dark), making it a really versatile app, but having used the app for the past 6 months, I feel that the developers should really spend more time on optimizing the app and making it less sluggish at times.
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Rating: 8/10
Download: Google Play [TypeMail]
Mailbox
Mailbox is an app that somehow, til this day, only supports Gmail and iCloud mail, which is a real bummer as the app is the simplest to use and has the best user interface, but most people would also have email accounts from different providers, for example Hotmail and Zoho (for domains), meaning that anyone who wants to have access to their all email accounts on the go would have to install more than one mailbox app if they have email accounts from providers other than Google and iCloud.
The simplicity of the app is pretty consistent and could be seen throughout, providing the basic functionality needed to read/write emails. And, there is material design elements in it!
The best part about the app was the gestures, as they were easier to remember and use than they were in other apps, therefore making email management pretty swift.
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Rating: 7/10 (9/10 if there was support for more email providers)
Download: Google Play [Mailbox]