Yes, I ran into that problem, too. Proton Bridge isn’t free. That’s the only limit I know of, other than having every email tagged “Sent with ProtonMail”. I can live within these limitations.
A timely topic! Here are my notes on using Spark the last couple of weeks, because of issues with Mac Mail synching in a timely fashion with Gmail. Somebody here who was dissatisfied with Spark on the Mac mentioned Outlook. It seemed it was missing a few features, like easy filing, and “send again.” Has that changed?
Anyway, here are my Spark notes:
Spark vs Apple Mail on the Mac
Spark is a viable alternative to the standard Mail app on the Mac, and also for the iPhone and iPad. I’ve previously written about Spark on iOS/iPadOS (https://lerner.net/spark-an-email-app-for-your-iphone-and-ipad/) and it is my main email app there.
All the things I mentioned in that article apply to the Mac app as well: better mail filing, better searching, useful FAQs, better message threads, better notifications, HTML signatures, etc.
On the down side, limitations in handling inline images also applies, so that is something to consider, and what keeps me from using Spark exclusively.
I recently started looking at Spark as a replacement for standard Mac Mail because of problems lately with the standard Mail app. Spark is more responsive than Apple Mail, which often gets bogged down with “loading” for the content of messages, and is often out of synch with the Gmail server. Spark stays in synch much better for some reason.
I have 6 main email accounts: three are Gmail (with custom domains), two are standard IMAP accounts on a hosted server, and one is my iCloud email. Spark works well regardless of the account type, and it’s easy to set up new accounts.
For Gmail, Spark goes the extra mile. Unlike standard Mac Mail, Spark handles Gmail multi-labeling naturally and easily. That’s definitely a big plus.
Filing messages in folders, which I do to keep things organized, is easiest in Spark. Even the standard Gmail app in iOS doesn’t have a way to do that, such as with shortcuts, as you can do via a web browser. The standard Apple Mail app is pretty pathetic in how it occasionally might recommend a folder for filing, but that’s it (unless you buy third party add-ons for that).
Spark also has a very cool Mail links feature. You can share an email not simply by forwarding it, you can actually create a link to an email and share that. You can limit who can see such links.
As mentioned above, search is vastly better. Usually. Mostly I find things easier in Spark. I can search, for example, "in mailbox-name from sender-name keywords " and things pop up quickly. However, there is one drawback - there is no easy way to “open” a folder you’ve created. That can sometimes make the searches a bit cumbersome, with varied results. I hope Spark adds a shortcut to jump to a folder.
Being able to see your calendar easily along with any of your inboxes is also a convenience.
The downside? Spark still doesn’t handle inline images nearly as well as regular Mail. For that reason I still will sometimes go into standard mail when I need to share images - especially if they need annotating or resizing.
In Spark, you can paste or drag images into a mail draft to see them inline, but that’s about it. You can’t mark them up directly like you can with Apple Mail. You also can’t resize them in the draft. If you’re happy with just the image and how it appears when you paste it in or drag it in it works fine. But if I’m adding images and then want to annotate them or resize them I would still do that in regular Mail until Spark deals with this deficiency.
Also, when pasting screenshots sometimes they look overly large in the draft, even though they look the correct size in the sent email. It should look the same in the draft so you know what the recipient will see.
But all the other features keep drawing me back to Spark. And Readdle’s support is always very responsive, helpful, and friendly. You get the feeling that they really do listen. So I hope they do better with inline images in a future version. Then I would give it 5 stars for sure.
In the meantime, I’m using it for the positive reasons mentioned above.
There are lots more features too, which I don’t make use of, such as Smart Mailboxes and much more under the hood. There are different features which appeal to different people. I’m sure I’m overlooking some important ones here that others will love. I look forward in trying more as time goes by.
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@doug2 thank you for an interesting review. I have heard about Spark but not really looked at it. Like you, I am experiencing Mac Mail difficulties with my gmail account. Thanks again.
Thanks. I’m still working on it and switched back for a day to standard Mail, then switched back to Spark this morning:
Addendum 9/6/2020
For the time being I’ve moved back to Apple Mail as my main email on my Mac.
I use MsgFiler with Mail for shortcut filing into different mailboxes, and also to open different mailboxes. That is actually a bit easier than Spark’s message filing. It requires less keystrokes because after typing V to move, and keywords, a suggested mailbox gets selected and you just need to return. With Spark you still must select from the presented mailboxes - even if there is just one! And with MsgFiler you can use the O shortcut to choose a mailbox to open and jump to. As I mentioned, Spark doesn’t have that feature yet.
I continue to use Spark in iOS for now, mostly because there is no good iOS Mail method of filing messages. I’ll keep checking back with Spark though and see if there are upgrades.
The main drawback of using Apple Mail on the Mac, even with MsgFiler, is that there is definitely a big time lag in syncing things like “marked as read” and “red flagged” and even moves to different mailboxes. So I look forward to being able to move over completely to Spark at some point.
Addendum 9/7/2020
I got an email from a member of my Sunday volunteer class at Hibikinokai saying she can’t see the images I sent from yesterday’s class, which I sent via regular Mail. So I resent the exact same mail from Spark just now and she can see them.
And the syncing issue with Mail (syncing folder moves and red flagged emails) has gotten worse.
So I’m back with Spark on my Mac again for now!
I haven’t tried Spark, but I have been very happy with Airmail.
Randy contributes to TidBITS Talk and has many useful lists of software comparisons. Always a good starting point and sometimes the final word.
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