Animations in E-mails? What?

"You've got mail, sir." This is what my personalized, dressed in a black tuxedo butler informed me when I logged onto IncrediMail for the first time to . He even delivered it on a plate for me. My first impression of IncrediMail was that it was a bit quirky.

I feel slightly torn between being a power user and a kid at heart. The kid inside me likes that I have tons of animations and a throng of emoticons that I can use in my e-mails. IncrediMail adds a great fun factor in the mix when you send out your e-mails.

But the power user side of me finds this program a bit overwhelming at times with no good reason for all the animation. There's always an e-mail client out there that's different from your typical Outlook and this one definitely spices up the mundanely demeanor of e-mail clients.

Inside

The first thing that I can say after I installed IncrediMail was that it was very awe-inspiring. It is a very dominating program on your desktop. Aside from the dominating effect it had on me, I was also surprised by the many visuals it had to offer. You can personalize your background stationery from an assortment of types like animals, art, technology and moods.

It supports recorded voice attachments and the premium version supports skins. It comes prepackaged with about 50 backgrounds. But this is where the animations stopped being that entertaining and the lack of functionality kicked in.

It's a good thing that it has a junk mail filter, but I was somewhat perplexed when I couldn't even turn it on. Yes I understand I need to purchase the full version to fully use it, but I was expecting to at least get a chance to see how well it functioned before I threw down $40.00 for only a year's subscription.

IncrediMail is somewhat of a system hog. With all those graphics constantly running, be prepared to have some system draining. There's indeed a price to pay for all those lovely effects.

IncrediMail has cool little notifiers that you can attribute to certain people, or even e-mail accounts if you have more than one. Yet, I keep noticing that for every cool animation or emoticon it has, it's missing necessary e-mail functionalities that tend to be included in other products. Like the fact that I can't spot any sort of encryption option anywhere. It's cool that I can have emoticons in my e-mail, but it's not cool that everyone can probably hack in and read it.

IncrediMail Premium and JunkFilter Plus are two different products, this is what Incredimail claims. If you think that you don't have to pay because you have the Premium version, think again.

It only supports IMAP and POP3 mail servers. IncrediMail lets you manage multiple POP, IMAP (download-only) AOL and Hotmail e-mail accounts. It's similar to Outlook on mail management.

The Good

IncrediMail offers lots of personalization options to make up some very interesting looking e-mails. Your stationary can become filled with pictures. Lots of options come with IncrediMail and there's a lot more to download if that's not enough.

The Bad

Well, I was only able to test out the Demo version of this application so I didn't have a chance to partake in the wholesome fun that would have come from IncrediMail premium, but I don't get why people have liked this mail client so much. Yes you can send/receive e-mails with fun characters and set your stationary background, but you can do some of these things by yourself. If you want all the benefits of having IncrediMail, you have to purchase the product, pay an extra $40.00 yearly for their JunkFilter Plus, then an extra $25.00 (for Gold Membership) to get all the updated backgrounds and graphics. Where's the encryption and security? Only IMAP and POP3 support.

The Truth

Well, this e-mail client does have stunning visuals, you can't deny the fact. But the fun seems to stop there. Whenever you think of buying a product, definitely check out reviews first (especially for this product, and not only on our site). The Trial Version is definitely different from the full version folks, so don't get caught up with the initial looks, be prepared to dish out some serous cash when purchasing the full version. Buyers beware of this one. As an overall e-mail client, it lacks some fundamentality that you wish was there. The encryption and security issues need to be addressed quickly. This is great for your kids, just not recommended for grown-ups.

Check out the screenshots below.