Dealing with emails from your iPhone is a great way to stay productive on the go, but only if you’re using the right email app.
The built-in Apple Mail app is fine for anyone who just has a few emails to check every day and doesn’t need anything beyond the basic read-and-reply functionality.
However, if email is a big part of your professional life, you’ll definitely want to use a third-party iOS email app to optimize your productivity.
Below, we’ve listed four of our favorite alternative iPhone email apps, in order of how great they are.
Our Top Four Email Apps for iOS and Why We Love Them
- Spike Email
In our opinion, Spike is the best email app for iOS out there. Spike is the world’s first conversational email app. It does something that no other iPhone email app out there does: turns your emails into chat conversations.
Spike was created because traditional email threads can just get too cluttered sometimes — all those repeating subject lines, signatures, and other content make it hard to find the info you need and respond naturally. Spike does a great job of addressing this problem.
When you sync your email account (or accounts) to Spike, you instantly start receiving your most high-priority emails in chat windows, with the latest replies appearing as instant message-style chat bubbles.
Conversational email takes the hassle out of reading and replying to messages in your inbox and makes it feel like a much more intuitive process, just like having a real-time instant messenger conversation.
We love Spike’s innovative conversational email functionality, but that’s not the only reason why it’s at the top of our list of the best third-party iPhone email apps.
Spike also has tons of other built-in features and tools that let you use it for project management and collaboration, for you and your whole team.
For instance, there’s the built-in video meeting function that lets you instantly start a video conference inside Spike, so there’s no need to use other third-party video meeting apps when you’re using Spike.
Also, you and your team can start group chats or collaborate on notes and tasks in real time, with a convenient sidebar chat feature built in.
We could go on about all the other useful features of Spike email app for iPhone, but you’ll just have to give it a try and see them for yourself!
- Microsoft Outlook
If you’re an iPhone user who prefers the look and feel of Microsoft’s email client to that of Apple’s, the Microsoft Outlook email app for iOS might be what you’re looking for.
Naturally, the Outlook app is great and easy to pick up if you use Outlook for all your browser-based email needs, but you can also sync non-Microsoft email clients (like Gmail) with the app.
There’s no built-in team chat or any other collaboration tools, but Outlook handles your basic email server needs very well, including syncing with your calendar and contacts.
Outlook also integrates with useful file sharing apps, like Dropbox and Google Drive, making it super easy to save or send attachments.
- Gmail
For people who use Gmail for all their emailing, the Gmail app for iPhone is an excellent option. It has support for multiple Gmail accounts, so you can sync both your work and personal email accounts to the app and stay on top of them both from your mobile device.
There aren’t really any surprises or bonuses when it comes to the Gmail app’s functionality, but you’ll feel right at home using it if you’re used to the web-based browser version of Gmail.
There is one handy feature that can be a lifesaver: the ability to quickly unsend emails. This is great for those times when you catch an embarrassing typo in an email you just sent out to a client, or when you already got the answer to a question you emailed someone and don’t want to waste their time by making them respond to you.
- Protonmail
If security is your top concern when it comes to email, you might consider trying Protonmail. Switzerland-based Protonmail features robust end-to-end encryption and advanced security features, as well as ensures the anonymity of its users.
All Protonmail user data is protected under strict Swiss privacy and security laws — consider it the “Swiss Bank” of email apps.
You might think that with such an emphasis on security, Protonmail would give something up in terms of usability, but that’s not the case. The app is very user-friendly and has extra features like a built-in calendar and cloud storage, as well as integrations with other third-party apps.
In Conclusion
Everyone’s email needs are different, but we believe that choosing the right iOS email app is a simple hack for boosting your productivity and making dealing with emails from your iPhone a much less daunting task.
Whether you want the conversational email and all-in-one workspace Spike provides or prefer one of the other experiences, there’s sure to be an email app that’s a great fit for you and your emailing needs on the list above.
