A new year means starting fresh, like getting that inbox count down to zero for once and for all. Seeing those emails piling up into the 1000’s is no time for self-reflecition: It’s time to get angry at your current email client for letting you get to that point.
Mail apps are tricky startups because they need to have some sort of bell or whistle to get new users in the door, they need to work perfectly, and it needs to be basically free (even though I use my mail software the most).
After a long but dragged out relationship with Sparrow, currently I’m using Dropbox-acquired Mailbox on my Mac, which does the job… ok. Having finally gotten used to the zero-context whitespace in the UI, Mailbox still has some connection quirks that don’t make up for it’s reminder system.
Anyway who cares about me going postal – lets check what’s getting built up north.
Teller
One mail app that’s still under development but looks promising is Stockholm-based Teller, which promises “No discipline required” – a selling point I’ll surely test out when I get my hands on the beta. When you’re working and checking your email all day it seems like it’ll behave like a somewhat normal email client, but will sort your emails to show you what’s important first.
Teller actually says the longer you wait to check your mail, the more efficient it becomes thanks to their sorting algorithm. After a long holiday like this past Christmas you should be able to react better thanks to prioritized sorting and allowing you to batch delete useless emails, getting you up and running with no stress that anything is buried.
Mail apps make a lot of promises they can’t keep, but a good sign is that Kaj Hed’s MOOR Capital has taken a bet in the Stockholm-based firm. When begging for a beta last Fall the company said they should be announcing something relatively soon.
Zendesk Inbox
One tool that might be interesting to startups looking to take care of their [email protected] address or other shared addresses is Zendesk’s email CMS. There emails can be shared with a team, answered as they come and go, can be assigned to a certain user, and can be commented on in the background without having to email reply to a certain team member or CC in everybody.
Zendesk’s CMS system appeared like it might be a good fit for our [email protected] account, but at that point we’d have to maintain our personal accounts and joint account separately, which becomes a mess. Still, if you’re a new company starting up fresh it might be worth checking out if you think you’ll be using Zendesk anyway.
Mailbird
This “Sparrow for Windows” client is said to be coming out with a big update this quarter. Mailbird has some Danish roots, but left those behind to build the client in Bali, Indonesia.
I was a big fan of Sparrow, so if you’re running Windows they’re probably worth taking a look at. Actually anything with a Sparrow-type UI would be so nice to have… I was a big fan before it was acquired and got buggy as it was abandoned.
Sign up to their newsletter on their site if you want to be the first to know when Mailbird 2.0 is hitting the streets.
Or kill email – Collaboration Objects
One startup worth thinking about is Collaboration Objects, a Helsinki-based team that want to kill email by moving it over to their own social intranet which plays well with others. Their platform gives you a centralized interface for communication with your team, collaborative calendar management, and dropbox-style document sharing. Collaboration objects cuts down to the core of things by being very task-focused with the goal of improving efficiency much greater than your standard email.
It’s one part intranet and one part Google apps replacement, but I like where their head’s at. Rather than limit themselves just some B2B collaboration software, their goal is to kill email.
“The enterprise collaboration tools on the market today have only added an extra layer of communication and complexity to the working process of both teams and managers. We aim to correct that through our centralized platform that can be shaped to a company’s needs,” says Co-founder Tuomas Jaanu.
