I really believe Email Software developers do not understand the most important requirement of good email software.. managing spam and junk emails!
I recently purchased a new software program to manage my emails.
After 20+ years of watching Microsoft’s OUTLOOK descend into an unusable, unwieldy, time-wasting exercise, it was time for a change.
Introducing Mailbird
To begin with, its lightweight, intuitive and easy to setup and get working. The usual learning curve that comes with new software, the odd strange way of doing things but largely a breath of fresh air after Outlook.
Lets put things in perspective! The biggest issues users have with email is not mailservers, folders and managing conversations but SPAM, JUNK AND VIRUS. We’ll throw in phishing and time wasting messages.
Neither software seriously attempts to deal with any of them. Both refer to server-side or third party software like SpamBully (Outlook). Hysterically, Outlook kept disabling SpamBully saying it caused Outlook to close slowly. No mention of the time saving that SpamBully had dealt with 20k odd spam messages.
I’ve previously written about issues with email software so I won’t go back over them, but I do want to comment on Mailbird.
For 10 year old software, its good but misses the mark on a couple of fronts.
No print email option (icon) above emails.
It’s focussed on managing conversations which I believe is over the top. I’d prefer to see an option that gives the user the option to manage a conversation rather than doing it with every message. 99% of my emails are single replies.
One Signature – Strangely, we are afforded ONE signature with each account. I use signatures differently. Beside the standard signature (Regards, name, address etc), I have over 100 signatures that are standard responses to emails to save me hours rewriting the same message over and over. Outlook allows this, Mailbird doesn’t.
Filters / Rules – Outlook also wins with this feature allowing users to create rules for almost every aspect of an email. Mailbird conditions do not include message body (wtf?). In fact, the Mailbird conditions are quite poor, a very important tool in managing spam. Its fine to block the email address on our mail server, but this takes considerable time (I receive thousands). Plus I can only configure one condition per filter (only one signature).. when I’d like to include multiple words.
Strange – any message that has been filtered to a subfolder cannot be Archived (wtf?).. the icon is disabled. The message has to be dragged to the archive folder.
and finally, SUPPORT – I don’t know where the support team is but I guarantee ENGLISH is not there first language. Support requests are comical at best. I asked a simple question (could I create a filter for words in the message body), which started a chain of responses.. 1. thank you, we got it. 2. I’m XXXX and will be helping you (but no actual help) 3. Yes, you can (but not how) 4. Another person, no, you can’t 5. No, you can’t again and a guide to how to setup a filter for the subject line) 6. How did we do? (shithouse) 7. Repeat of 2. 8. Did we resolve your issue (no) 9. Repeat of 2. 10. If this request is not responded to in 5 days it will expire. 11. Repeat of 4 .
Mailbird is headquartered in Palo Alto, 2345 Yale St, United States
I do want to emphasize, this is not critism but a contructive review and feedback aimed at making all email software better. I am a user and this is the functionality that I require to manage email.