All My Mail Lite – Review

Our rating:

By: Invisible Software Inc.

Version #: 1.1

Date Released: 2009-05-13

Developer: All My Mail Lite

Price: 0.00

User Rating:

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The iPhone works great for getting and returning email but it is a bit limited on many levels. First off, if you use more than one email account you needed to tap a lot to change from one to the other. Second, it doesn’t display conversations as conversations. Third, and related to number two, the email is displayed in a linear manner than easily lends itself to missing emails if you receive a lot at a time since a finite number of them are displayed at any one time. That’s where All My Mail comes in… at least until iPhone 3.0 and its beefed up email capability is released.

All My Mail offers a number of different ways in which to view your email and/or the people you are in contact with. There are two versions. The Pro version let’s you access a number of different accounts at once for $4.99 and a monthly subscription that comes to about $20 a year. This immediately removes the issue of having to move back and forth to switch accounts. While I DO have a number of email accounts, I currently have all of them forwarded to a single gmail account. Because of that, the Lite version is all I need. And it is great!

When you first start the app it asks you to create an account and then input your email credentials. Since Gmail is my email of choice I put in my Gmail credentials and, within minutes, was good to go. The app grabbed all my email, analyzed it, and then presented it to me in a number of different ways. For example…

Alpha-

It will show me EVERYONE with whom I have been in email contact. At the top of this screen is a large search field for quickly grabbing someone. Below it is an alphabetical listing of all the people with whom there has been email contact.  It is a far easier way to quickly search, pull up and email someone than opening the address book and searching. For example, if I want to email Dimitri but can’t remember is email address I can simply type in his first or last name and, with each new letter, the app narrows down the possibilities. Tapping his name pulls up all the conversations I have had with him. Tapping any one of those conversations pulls up the entire exchange. From there I can tap the small "return" icon on the bottom right and begin an email back to him. At the same time, it also gives me the option to see any attachments he has sent me or pull up his contact information directly.

This functionality along makes the app quite useful. But it does more…

Top People-

The app automatically sorts contacts by the number of email exchanges. It quickly let me see that I have 177 exchanges in my inbox with Judie from Gear Diary, 91 with my wife (we usually text instead of email), and almost as many with Doug from Just Another Mobile Monday. Tapping any name pulls up a new screen that displays conversations, attachments and an option to display contact info.

Why is this useful? Well it turns out that a huge percentage of anyones email will be with a relatively small number of people. This method of sorting makes those exchanges easy to see and grab. Sonce email is, in large part about expedience, this is one more way to make things move faster.

Recent-

Finally, the app also sorts email contacts by those you have been in most recent contact. From there the same options of looking for conversations, attachments and contact info are available.

This is super useful since it lets you quickly see what has been going on lately.

In all the app has already proven itself to be quite useful. The ability to quickly locate a contact and/or an attachment received FROM that contact is a huge benefit. There are, however, areas where it could use some improvement. First, a method to do a universal search of email would be great. I have been using SkyDeck to manage my voicemail and text messages (review coming on Gear Diary) and am quite happy to be able to search any WORD in a text of voicemail (they get transcribed to text). It would be great to have such universal search for email. Thankfully, that is on the development roadmap for the app. Moreover, it would be nice if there were an ever present icon at the bottom of the app that would allow you to start a new, fresh email. With those two additions I am not sure I would be using anything else.

Quick Take:

Value:  High. I have no need for the pro version and the Lite version is FREE

Would I buy again?:  You bet!

Learning curve:  Low, but it does take some time to become familiar with the various ways it sorts email.

Who is it for?:  Anyone who lives by email

What I like:  Free and works great at giving me more control over my inbox

What I don’t:  Needs a few additional features before it can become my goto email app.

Developer’s Notes…

All My Mail Lite by Attassa turns your iPhone/iPod Touch into the most powerful mobile email device on the market, putting all the people, messages and attachments buried in your email history right at your fingertips. With All My Mail Lite, you’ll find any contact, document, or conversation, no matter how long ago it occurred, in just a few taps.All My Mail Lite comes with a free basic subscription to Attassa’s service that connects All My Mail with your email, files, and people from a single Gmail or AOL mail account. Attassa will support other webmail services soon as well.Get the full version of All My Mail from Attassa, which comes with a three-month free trial of Attassa’s premium subscription service, and you can connect as many email accounts as you like to All My Mail, including mail directly from Microsoft Outlook.Users of All My Mail Lite can upgrade at any time to the full version of All My Mail and add additional email accounts.Features:1. All My Mail provides people-centric access to your email archives.a) View all of the conversations you’ve ever had with a particular person.b) View all the messages and attachments that have passed back and forth in the course a conversation.c) Reply, Reply to All, or Forward any message.d) View all of the attachments that were sent by a particular person. Access not only the attachments, but also the messages and conversations related to the attachments, so that you can quickly decide which attachment is the one that you are looking for.e)Start from a list of everyone who has ever sent you an email, the people who have sent you the most email, or the people who have most recently sent you a message.2. All My Mail provides contact details for everyone who has ever sent you email.a) Quickly access anyone who has sent you an email. Find a person by typing their first name, last name, email address, or email domain (i.e. company.com).b) View email addresses and other contact details for a person. Send an email by selecting an email address.c) Quickly add a person to your iPhone contacts. If the person is already in your contacts, access any existing contact information such as phone numbers or web sites.3. All My Mail lets you manage your email accountsa) Add, Delete and change passwords for Gmail and AOL accounts