Inbox by Gmail Review

I hate email.

Okay, so that's not exactly new: most people hate email. But I want to emphasize that I am very much one of those people. The constant notifications are awful, but necessary, but there haven't been great solutions to dealing with them as of yet.

And I have to use email. My job as an independant contractor essentially relies on email, and timely response to it. So I essentially have to have email connected with my phone and with me at all times.

I picked up Mailbox almost two years ago, and I particularly appreciated the user interface and features of the app. In particular, the focus on getting to "inbox zero" (having no emails in the inbox) was great. It only improved with auto-swiping features which automatically filtered mail as it came in so that you wouldn't have to deal with frivolous email immediately.

The biggest problem, however, was that the filtering didn't go far enough without going so far as to make me miss that one important email per day. That's where Inbox by Gmail comes in, and I'm happy to say succeeds.

I first heard about Inbox by Gmail the day it was announced and knew that immediately I wanted to try it. Google Now does so many things "auto-magically" that I figured it would work wonders with email. I applied for an invite and received it about a week ago, and have been testing Inbox every since.

Inbox by Gmail is an invite only public "beta" right now, and I managed to get an invite directly from Google (score). I say "beta" because it's incredibly stable, but it's not released for the general public the way that standard Gmail is. If you want your own invite code, keep reading for details on how to enter to win one.

Inbox is everything I loved about Mailbox, but better.

It really was what I was expecting: Google Now auto-magically sorting my email, only notifying me for truly important emails. I spend so much less time triaging emails, you have no idea. Google is very intelligent at sorting emails, and so far, I haven't received any frivolous notifications, nor have I missed important emails (my biggest fear).

The fewer notifications that I get is also great, because it means slightly improved battery life over what I was experiencing with Mailbox. I feel like I do check my email a few more times per day with Inbox (I had an "email hour" with Mailbox, where I would essentially delay all emails until nighttime), but I definitely have the app open for less time on any given day.

The app also has a clean interface that looks quite refreshing. Mailbox looked bad by no means, by Google's "material design" is pretty nice looking. I haven't experienced problems with the animations slowing down my phone either, which is a bonus. The icon also looks good, even on my iOS device.

Another thing that I like is that Inbox has a dedicated web app, so I can have the same experience on my phone as I do on my computer. It doesn't translate perfectly, since the interface definitely feels designed for touch interaction rather than mouse, but the consistent UI and UX is appreciated. Mailbox had this to a certain degree with their Max OS X app, but I don't yet own a Mac, so this is useless to me.

One downside on the UI side of things is the lack of dedicated iPad app, or optimization for the iPad screen. You can still run the scaled up version of the iPhone app, but it looks atrocious, and I've taken to just using the regular gmail app. I feel like the Android side of things is a little bit better, but this was an unfortunate oversight on Google's part.

What I miss from Mailbox is the quick swipe to delete feature. Inbox focuses more on their "done" feature, which is essentially a swipe to archive option, but I receive a lot of email that deserves deletion more than archival, and I wish Inbox made it easier. The feature does exist, and you can still do batch deletion, it's just not as fluid as a swipe gesture is.

The snooze feature also isn't as well worked as Mailbox's, where you can customize what "tomorrow" or "later today" or "this weekend" mean. It's still a nice feature in Inbox, and I use it frequently, but it's not as well thought out as I'm used to with Mailbox.

A nice feature that Inbox does include that Mailbox does not is reminders in the inbox as well as pinning emails to the inbox as a reminder. This works with your Google Now reminders to turn your inbox into the to-do list that it basically already was. This is a departure from the "inbox zero" philosophy, but one that I find to be useful.

So what do I think: am I going back to Mailbox? No, I think overall, my best experience with email has been with the Inbox by Gmail app. I won't be switching back unless it is to try new features that Mailbox may reveal. I think the best, most powerful feature of Inbox is Google's intelligent auto-sorting of email that only notifies you when you really need to be notified. That's been the game changer for me. I no longer feel like I need to buy a smartwatch just to triage email. That's an incredibly powerful feeling.

Now, about that invite:
I still have one invite for Inbox available, and I'm looking to give it out to you, my interested readers. To qualify, just leave me a comment with what service you use for email management and how that works for you. I will pick a winner at random from the comments section and contact you about the code.