When comparing Mailbox vs Spark, the Slant community recommends Spark for most people. In the question“What are the best Gmail clients for iOS?” Spark is ranked 2nd while Mailbox is ranked 3rd.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Great features for processing mail quickly
Mailbox brings simple to use, swipe gesture-based ways of dealing with your incoming messages:
- A short swipe to the right archives a message
- A long swipe to the right deletes a message
- A short swipe to the left snoozes a message (puts it off until later)
- A long swipe to the left adds a message to a list (folder)
Pro Allows putting off messages until later
Swiping an e-mail message from the inbox to the left gives an option to 'snooze' it for a set period of time. You can manually enter the date for when to return it to the inbox or choose from options like 'later today', 'this weekend', and 'someday'.
Pro Message composer has a dedicated camera button
When composing a message, a button that allows for either taking a photo or quickly adding one from your library is at the bottom-right corner.
Pro Automates common actions
This app via a feature called 'auto-swipe' tries learning behavioral patterns and take appropriate actions on its own, like organizing mail into folders, snoozing certain mail, etc. You can view set rules and manually add and change them according to your needs in an easy to understand way.
Pro Free
Mailbox is available for free, although a premium version with added features might be in the works.
Pro Good looking design
Mailbox has a minimalist design. It divides your incoming messages in three categories - your inbox, things you've postponed and things you've gotten rid of.
Pro Custom quick swipe features
Pro Free
Pro Robust customization options
Pro Syncs across devices
Pro Unified inbox
Pro Free snooze options
Cons
Con Can't save drafts
Con No access to Gmail drafts folder
Con No Gmail labels
Con To be discontinued
Mailbox will be shutting down on February 26, 2016.
Con Privacy concerns
There's concern of privacy, because Mailbox has access to your emails, since they're passing through their servers. After being acquired by Dropbox these concerns have been somewhat alleviated, because of Dropbox's stable track record, but not completely.
Con Horrible privacy policy
- Sends statistical data to several services known for bad privacy policies (Google, Facebook), also there's no way to opt out.
- Automatically creates an acount with the first address entered and subscribes you to their newsletter.
- Stores credentials for your email accounts on their servers.
- Stores your emails on their servers to push them to your devices.
- Server infrastructure seems to be located in the US.
Con Doesn't support many services
Many services such as Spam filters, Pocket, and other apps are not supported.
Con Doesn't show the counts of emails next to the folders
- On the Mac platform will show +999 for the folder that contains more than 1000 emails.
- On the iPhone, the platform will not show the counts next to the folder unless they are new emails.