A Task-Oriented Email Application for Your Mac

very good
key review info
application features
  • Set reminders
  • (4 more, see all...)

We all check our email on a daily basis and prepare our schedule, set up reminders and notifications according to the emails we receive from our friends, family and co-workers.

What started as a Kickstarter project in 2012 is now a well-designed and very intuitive email client that enables you to handle and deal with all your emails in various ways.

The installation process is very simple and can be completed in a couple of seconds, just like in the case of all other applications available on the Mac App Store. However, you are required to have OS X Mountain Lion or later running on your Mac and a 64-bit processor.

Mail Pilot comes with a simple and well-organized interface that offers you instantaneous access to all your accounts. In the left panel of the app, you can browse through your emails, while the right panel allows you to view the content of each message.

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Mail Pilot automatically marks all incoming emails as incomplete tasks, until you choose one of the available actions from the bottom menu bar. You can mark an email as Complete, set it aside, add it to one of your lists or folders or setup a reminder. Additionally, you can delete the email or move it to a list or folder by simply dragging and dropping the email in question.

The Complete feature is designed to mark an email as read and archive it right away, whereas the other provided functions allow you to deal with your messages according to their importance.

Thanks to the Remind function, you can attend to your emails on a specific date. Set Aside, on the other hand, helps you handle messages that need a little more attention than just a simple read through. In addition, you can group multiple emails into user-definable lists such as “read it later” or “wish lists” by clicking on the List button.

The Folder feature is similar to the List function, with the only difference that the selected emails are moved to a folder rather than a list. As a bonus, all the aforementioned functions, along with the Delete button, have their specific keyboard shortcut.

From the side panel you can access the Accounts, Complete, Incomplete and Lists tabs. Clearly, the Accounts tab helps you view different email accounts while the Incomplete tab allows you to view your Inbox, Today, Set Aside and Upcoming list.

If you need to check the archive, sent and trashed emails, you can always use the Complete tab. At the same time, the Lists tab helps you check out your custom lists and take care of the remaining emails.

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Throughout our testing period, Mail Pilot proved to be smooth-running and responsive, with easy-to-learn hotkeys and practical features.

Although the design of Mail Pilot is similar to Apple’s Mail app, it might take some time to get used to the way in which messages are managed and organized. In other words, Mail Pilot takes all the good parts from Mail but adds new, much needed features.

By accessing the Preferences window, you can make Mail Pilot the default email client, enable or disable the Notification Center notifications and select the sound you like the most for the audio notifications.

You can also choose the default email account, configure Mail Pilot to automatically quote the original message in replies, disable attachment preview and hot linked images in messages.

Mail Pilot comes with support for all standard IMAP accounts, like Google, AOL, Yahoo, iCloud, Outlook.com and Exchange (with IMAP enabled). Since it is freshly out of Beta testing, it is quite normal that not all email service providers are supported; however, we are sure that more email services will be added in the updates to come.

Regarding the system resources consumption, while using Mail Pilot on our test Macs, the CPU load spiked up to 31%, while the RAM usage was constantly above Apple’s standard email client with 120-160 MB. It goes without saying that these values might vary according to the number of messages in your e-mail inbox and your Mac’s configuration.


The Good

In conclusion, Mail Pilot is a practical and versatile email client that enables you to interact with your emails in a more natural way. Its task-oriented approach will definitely change the way you manage and organize your emails.

The Bad

The only drawback seems to be the incompatibility with non-IMAP email services. However, since Mail Pilot is just at the beginning of its existence, it is expected that this issues will be addressed in future updates.

The Truth

Overall, Mail Pilot is one of the few applications that manage to reinvent email across desktops and iOS devices. On top of that, the user-oriented interface, along with the innovative way to manage e-mails, makes Mail Pilot a must-have for anyone who has to go through lots of e-mails each day.

user interface 5
features 4
ease of use 4
pricing / value 5


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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