The most important thing I can say about Mimestream, a freshly released email app for Mac after years of beta, is that it finally made me stop visiting Gmail.com.
I’ve tried many email apps over the years, and they all have at least one fatal flaw. (Some have more than one.) The most common cause is searching. Few apps can find messages as fast as Gmail. So over the years I’ve ditched everything from Spark to Edison to Apple Mail to Newton. But some apps struggle to find contacts, others do weird things with inbox organization, somehow fail to stay online and actually deliver all your messages. I can’t even start an app that seems to work. For years, I downloaded apps hoping for a better, more native email tool than Gmail’s cluttered interface, only to reluctantly return to the cluttered interface for years.
Mimestream is different. Created by a small team led by Neil Jhaveri, the app does almost everything Gmail does, at least as well. (Jhaveri is a former Apple engineer, and for years he’s worked on Mail and Notes. Guy knows his apps well.) A lot of the time, it’s because it can. that’s right The Gmail Way — Mimestream makes heavy use of Gmail’s own API for everything from email retrieval to searching.
In some ways, Mimestream isn’t really an email app because it doesn’t do all the functionality of standard email apps like IMAP or POP3.that is Gmail app. Jhaveri and his team are focused on building a better way to run his Gmail, so Outlook and his other email providers are not yet supported. (However, he says he’s working on supporting his Outlook.) Instead of all the sidebars, tabs, ads, and autoresponder suggestions, Mimestream just serves emails. You’ll see your inbox on the left and your open messages on the right. It’s more like Apple Mail than Gmail. It’s fast, clean, and not very visually appealing, but it’s probably the best when it comes to email.
I’ve been testing this app for over a year now, and nothing is too familiar with Gmail. Mimestream inherits the same keyboard shortcuts, the same labels and filters, the same everything. Its search is fast and good. That’s because we’re offering Gmail’s own search in a new way. Mimestream has an unsend feature that has saved me many times, supports all email aliases, and lets you respond to calendar invites. Much better than Gmail in almost every way.
Mimestream search is fast and excellent. That’s because it’s a Gmail-only search offered in a new way.
That said, there are many things we would like to see added to Mimestream, including Windows and mobile apps. I also wish Mimestream made it easier to link to emails. Currently, you can copy the link into any message, but the link actually just opens Gmail when Mimestream should open it. It should also support Outlook and other providers, especially if you want to be people’s primary email client. And with so many power users who don’t want to throw Boomerang or Mailtrack away, Mimestream will eventually need a way to replicate Gmail’s plugin structure.
Javeri said Mimestream is working on a lot of that. Ultimately one of his goals is to sell Mimestream licenses to businesses, which makes plugins and Outlook support even more important. He also believes Mimestream Mobile will be great.
Until then, Jhaveri believes the best first use case for Mimestream is users with multiple Gmail accounts. All accounts he adds to Mimestream, and you can flip through individual inboxes or see everything in a unified list. Mimestream also supports his Gmail inbox categories, so you can view promotions and updates separately if you want.
You can also manage in more detail. If you have many work addresses or several different emails that you use for personal use, you can group them into what Mimestream calls “profiles” to see all related messages together.
Mimestream also has some nice Mac-specific features you can’t get from the Gmail web app, like focus filters and integration with the native notification system. This allows one profile to send alerts on weekdays and another profile to send alerts on weekends. .
Mimestream has obvious consumer appeal, but the pricing is very similar to enterprise and power user tools. It’s a subscription app that costs $50 a year or $5 a month, but the first year he gets for $30 at launch. You have to pay a fair price to get Gmail that looks good. However, that’s nowhere near the $30/month of services like Superhuman, and on par with other productivity apps like Fantastical and Todoist. Other email apps, such as Spark Premium, are similarly priced. In Javeri’s view, a few dollars a month is a reasonable amount for a better email life. But ultimately, for many users, Mimestream will compete with free. And you can’t beat free.
Personally, I’d pay the annual subscription fee without a second thought. I spend hours on email every day, and every minute, every day, email gives me much of the information I need. Gmail continues to add ads, Meet icons, and features, so I’m willing to pay a few bucks a month for better answers. Mimestream is Gmail’s best minus Gmail’s worst. That’s the app I was looking for.
