Alternate Mail Program?

[iPadre]

The iPad Mail program has way too many bugs to even attempt to fix. It's just totally unreliable. I can't seem to find ANY alternative. Smells like that's on purpose. Am I wrong?

iPadre

 

[GenerationX]

So what exactly is wrong with the mail app. Seems perfect for me.

 

[Seadog]

I keep track of two different email accounts with no problems.

 

[col.bris]

I agree what is wrong with it. I have used mail on both iPhone and ipad for more than 2 years no problems. I use gmail as a hub for 5 different email accounts then sync with apple mail on all devices

 

[sgtcasey]

I use it with 4 email accounts including my work Exchange server and no issues here.

Dace

Sent from my iPad using iPF

 

[iPadre]

Messages randomly come out blank, and either say not dowloaded, or give me the option to click and download 0 more bytes; If I have to switch outgoing mail servers due to some random port block from wherever I am, if I've already started typing, my choices are to start over from scratch -- or copy everything, reselect the message from the list, reply, remember to switch smtp servers first, paste, then go fish out the unsent message from the outbox and delete it; every third message or so crashes mail when I try to delete it, and if Mail crashes, all previously deleted messages come back again, yet if I accidentally delete a message and Mail doesn't crash, I can't undo it.

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

The iPad Mail program has way too many bugs to even attempt to fix. It's just totally unreliable. I can't seem to find ANY alternative. Smells like that's on purpose. Am I wrong?

iPadre

Works perfectly - no problems at all. Far prefer it to Windows Mail. Very solid and reliable - never had an issue with it.

Tell us something more about the problems that you've experienced and perhaps we can help in sorting them out. It's certainly not the Mail app that's the problem.

Tim

 

[sgtcasey]

Messages randomly come out blank, and either say not dowloaded, or give me the option to click and download 0 more bytes; If I have to switch outgoing mail servers due to some random port block from wherever I am, if I've already started typing, my choices are to start over from scratch -- or copy everything, reselect the message from the list, reply, remember to switch smtp servers first, paste, then go fish out the unsent message from the outbox and delete it; every third message or so crashes mail when I try to delete it, and if Mail crashes, all previously deleted messages come back again, yet if I accidentally delete a message and Mail doesn't crash, I can't undo it.

The port issue isn't the mail app. It sounds like the network you're trying to use. The accidentally deleting a message thing would tell me to be careful before deleting. What mail service are you using? With Gmail (or any of the services I use to check email) deleted emails are put into the deleted items or trash folder and are easily recovered.

Dave

Sent from my iPad using iPF

 

[DontUnderstandMyIpad]

Messages randomly come out blank, and either say not dowloaded, or give me the option to click and download 0 more bytes; If I have to switch outgoing mail servers due to some random port block from wherever I am, if I've already started typing, my choices are to start over from scratch -- or copy everything, reselect the message from the list, reply, remember to switch smtp servers first, paste, then go fish out the unsent message from the outbox and delete it; every third message or so crashes mail when I try to delete it, and if Mail crashes, all previously deleted messages come back again, yet if I accidentally delete a message and Mail doesn't crash, I can't undo it.

Not being able to send the emails, depending on where you are has to do with the way SMTP works and is mostly a configuration issue.

If you use your broadband provider email, but are not at home, than with a normal POP setup, there is no way for the provider to know, whether it is actually you, or someone else sending the email, as the protocol doesn't require authentication, so the provider just blocks the emails from sending. I may be wrong here, but this sounds exactly like the issue you are having.

There is a workaround and that is to either use a provider, such as Gmail/Hotmail, or to setup the email account properly as an IMAP, or Exchange account.

 

[iPadre]

all email accounts are POP, so it doesn't make sense to set up as IMAP does it? SMTP Authentication is via password, so yes, they do know it's me, otherwise what's the point of a password. And it works randomly from "foreign" locations, regardless. And if I receive emails on a different channel, but forget to toggle the account to gmail, then I have the debacle I mentioned earlier. Thank you, I've finally found the trash. Does nobody else have the crashing problem? And "being more careful" is pretty useless when it's so easy to accidentally bump the screen in the wrong place. The fact remains, I'd love another alternative to Mail -- seems strange that there are none for such an important utility.

 

[Heaviside]

Yes, there really is a severe limitation to the email app in my opinion: no user definable folders.

 

[Tim SPRACKLEN]

Yes, there really is a severe limitation to the email app in my opinion: no user definable folders.

If you're using IMAP then any folders you define on your mail server will be reflected on the iPad - so you can have any folder structure you like. I agree you can't do this with POP, like you can using Windows Mail, though.

Tim

 

[jazmo]

When I first got the iPad, I could not get the email program to work with my ISP (Qwest). That's because Qwest was using live.com

I purchased an app, mBox Mail, $10. It worked very well for a year, but now Qwest has dropped live.com and has their own servers. Apparently, mBox Mail only works with the various flavors of Hotmail (live.com). Now the default email program works but the issue i have is with folders.

If mail is set up as a POP acct, no custom folders are available. If set up as IMAP, custom folders are available, but must be managed by logging into webmail. Besides that, there are some folders that appear that are not mine, not wanted, but can not be deleted. This, for me, makes the ipad Mail program, in a word, clunky.

I got spoiled by mBox Mail. With that program, you can create, Rename, delete your custom folders at will. Easily, as long as you are using some variant of Hotmail. It does not seem to be a lot to ask of a mail program.

I would love to hear that I am wrong on some of the points as listed, and that there is a good solution at hand. In particular, would love to hear that there is some way of getting mBox Mail to work with my current address at q.com If there are some tricks to managing custom folders in iPad Mail, would love to hear those. Short of that, would love to hear that there is some alternative to iPad Mail that is available, not too expensive, and is as simple and easy to use as mBox Mail. I have looked, and have not found one.

 

[iPadre]

The only solution I've found so far is to forget that my iPad has the Mail app. It reduces the utility of my iPad considerably, but overall it saves me time and frustration. Most of the replies to my original post in this thread seemed to suggest that I just didn't know what I was doing, but I've since found that I'm hardly the only one. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that I am a novice, I thought he whole point of this thing was that it was ever so intuitive.

 

[Heaviside]

Yes, there really is a severe limitation to the email app in my opinion: no user definable folders.

If you're using IMAP then any folders you define on your mail server will be reflected on the iPad - so you can have any folder structure you like. I agree you can't do this with POP, like you can using Windows Mail, though.

Tim

Tim: Yes, I am using a POP account. As I understand things, an IMAP account stores my emails on the server, rather than downloading them to my iPad. Is this right?

I've always been a bit uncomfortable leaving my private stuff on a server. Maybe that's why I don't cotton to the cloud?!