A Quick Glance at Polymail

I miss Mailbox. A lot. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Dropbox for killing it. After a year of using Slack for everything, I’ve come full circle in realizing how powerful email can be as a central hub when the interface is right. That’s what Mailbox nailed for mobile and was closing in on for desktop.

Today, I decided to try a new email app called Polymail after reading about it in The Macro. Polymail flaunts testimonials comparing it to Mailbox, so I figured it was worth a shot. After a very quick trial (less than an hour), I found it to be an early stage product that is still rough around the edges.

This is an extended version of the review I left in the Mac App Store.

Polymail is built to sell

My first reaction to the Polymail website and download was, “this is being built to sell.” I don’t mean sell to you, the consumer, though. I mean to a bigger company. Everything from the mass collection of consumer data, to being featured in The Macro, to the “if we are acquired” language in the privacy policy, just sounds like this is a product that’s being built for an acquisition, not for consumer productivity.

Tracking who opens your sent email seems like a key differentiator for selling the business, not just for the product itself. And on that note, I’m not sure how I feel about a third-party injecting tracking code into the email I send. Seems invasive to everyone involved.

Of course, a business strategy goes hand-in-hand with product commitment. But I’ve often suspected that a product built with an exit in mind from the get-go lacks the passion and attention to detail that other products have—like what Mailbox had.

This is just a first impression, though, and it’s quite possibly wrong, and that the 3 founders of Polymail are passionate about email and building a better experience for consumers.

Privacy?

So I download the iOS app and the Mac app on my laptop. First thing to do of course is add an account, so I try my Office 365 account. Username/password all go through in the usual way, and then this:

Polymail wants (needs?) a very warm welcome to your data. So with “Access your data anytime” in front of me, I took a look at the Polymail privacy policy to get a better understanding of how my data will be handled.

Here’s a few excerpts:

We are very careful with what we do with your information.

That’s a nice thing to say. What information exactly?

Information we get: … your search queries…IP address…your actual location…nearby devices…your sent e-mail and your recipient’s actions…[personal information] on your device…your contacts and other people that you e-mail or that e-mail you

So, everything. Do I have any control over this?

Whenever you use the Application, we aim to provide you with access and choice with respect to your personal information.

Really? Then what about this from a different section?

the Application and our website do not respond to “Do Not Track” signal or other mechanisms that provide users with choice about the collection of their personal information

So, any third-party tools to protect me are not respected. What are you doing internally, then, to give me control over my data?

we strive to give you ways to update it quickly or to delete — unless we have to keep that information for legitimate business or legal purposes

I’m not sure what that poor wording means for me. So if I get uncomfortable with how you’re handling my data for any reason, can I bail out and take my data with me?

We may reject requests that would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backup systems).

So as soon as my data hits one of your “backup systems”, it’s yours forever. Now I’m concerned. But, finally:

In the event you delete your data from Polymail, or revoke access to your data, or delete your Polymail account, your entire index as well as your authentication/password information is completely and permanently deleted from our servers, and we therefore do not have access to any of your data anymore.

That was what I was looking for. Feeling (a little) better, let’s move on to the actual app.

First Impressions

The on-boarding process was fine. After coming to terms with the privacy policy, I loaded in my Gmail and Office 365 accounts. Microsoft Office 365 has a “Clutter” folder where it moves email that isn’t “spam” but that you’re probably not going to read or even care about being aware of. I love it. Unfortunately, Polymail thinks this is part of my Inbox so I have thousands of emails staring at me now.

Mobile Interface

The icon is fresh and looks nice on my home screen. The new email sound is satisfying. I value good notification audio—short, crisp, pleasant.

I opened the app (because I got an email) and was greeted with an infinite loader.

Killing the app and reopening it seemed to get things moving.

The interface has clean, girly colors. Not appealing to me, but clean nonetheless.

The inbox screen is nice: Search is front and center, clear indicators of messages unread, threads, attachments, etc. Short swipe to archive, long swipe to delete just like Mailbox had. The gesture animations aren’t quite as snappy as I remember them being in Mailbox, but I assume that will improve over time.

Opening an email has this weird scroll-down effect that gets annoying pretty quick—an aggregate waste of time. At the bottom are your actions for the email:

• Move to Inbox
• Add to List
• Snooze
• Archive
• Delete
• Unsubscribe (this is cool)

“Replying” to the email didn’t quite fit, so it gets it’s own floating bubble. If you want to forward the email, you have to find the 3 little dots at the top of the message and then choose from: Reply, Forward, Print. At the very top are 3 more dots where you can mark the thread unread, mark as spam, or print it.

It’s a lot going on, and sort of scattered. But it’s functional.

Composing a new email looks pretty standard. It reminds you about the email tracking feature—I’ll be turning that off).

Other things from Mailbox are present: “Read Later”, “Lists”.

I give the mobile app 3 stars barely.

Desktop Interface

I appreciate that the mobile app has a companion desktop app. I use my phone, my laptop and my iMac about equally, and like to have as much consistency between them as I can.

That said, the desktop app does not seem to have received the same amount of love as the mobile app. It feels like there were a lot of design shortcuts or omissions.

The side nav has a “compose” button hovering at the top. The message pane is very boxy. An email’s content is in a box within a message detail box within a message thread box within the greater message area box. You expand and collapse different messages in a thread in a way that feels unnatural.

On the right is a contact pane that has historical emails with the current contact, attachments, and links to their social accounts. I’m not sure how useful this will end up being, but it seems nice to have.

Opening up the preferences covers the entire screen in an unorthodox un-mac-like way. Here’s a couple options.

The text in the dropdown box is misaligned. For a product that’s “out of beta”, this lack of attention-to-detail is telling, IMO.

Animations are slow and distracting (e.g. watching “Load More” bounce around every time I move to a new message). When you click on a new message, there is an annoying crossfade that is too slow and frankly unnecessary.

Some Gmail keyboard shortcuts work (yes!), others do not (e.g. “R” to reply doesn’t work).

Selecting individual accounts shows empty even if they have mail. I assume this is a bug.

Overall the desktop app feels cluttered and rushed—like it needs several months of fine-tuning, maybe an overhaul. I give it 2 stars.

Conclusion

I give Polymail 2 stars. I’m glad something is picking up the baton from Mailbox. But can it run? Not quite yet.