Mailbox (application)

Mailbox was a freeware email management application for iOS and Android, developed by Orchestra, Inc. It drew the attention of numerous technology blogs for its usability and innovative features, such as swipe-based email sorting, snoozing and filtering.^[1][2] Weeks before its launch, a pre-registration period resulted in a waiting list of over 380,000 reservations.^[3][4] Upon its iOS launch on 7 February 2013, Mailbox became the second-most-downloaded free app in the App Store that day.^[5]

Mailbox

Mailbox running on iOS
Original author(s)	Orchestra, Inc.
Developer(s)	Dropbox, Inc.
Initial release	February 7, 2013 (2013-02-07)
Operating system	iOS, Android, OS X (beta)
Type	Email client
License	Freeware
Website	www.mailboxapp.com

In March 2013, Orchestra was acquired by Dropbox.^[6][7][8] The rollout of Mailbox was sped up and the pre-registration period ended in April.^[9] In April 2014, Dropbox released Mailbox for Android and announced a public beta version for OS X,^[10][11] which was released in August.^[12]

In December 2015, Dropbox announced the discontinuation of Mailbox, saying that they were not able to "fundamentally fix email" with it and that they rather focus on "[streamlining] the workflows that generate so much email".^[13] It was ultimately discontinued on February 26, 2016, as announced earlier.

Features

Mailbox focused on emptying the user's inbox and favored using folders instead of leaving emails in the inbox. For instance, it incentivized the user with visual cues and gestures to organize emails based on priority and due date to empty to inbox.

Mailbox was limited to Gmail and iCloud accounts. It also supported Yahoo! Mail for three days.^[14] Setting up Mailbox required granting the company's servers access to the user's email account, either through APIs (Gmail) or direct access (iCloud). Mailbox's servers repeatedly queried the user's email account to provide push notifications and allowed the application to refresh its content without having to run in the background for prolonged periods.

See also

• CloudMagic
• Inbox by Gmail
• Outlook Mobile
• Sparrow (email client)

References

1. "Mailbox By Orchestra: The Best Email App We've Ever Used (Review)". Cult of Mac. 2013-02-03. Retrieved 2013-02-08.
2. Inbox Unchained: Mailbox just fixed email on the iPhone. The Verge (2013-02-07). Retrieved on 2013-07-30.
3. "Mailbox CEO says insane 380K person wait list kept app from crashing today". VentureBeat. 2013-02-04. Retrieved 2013-02-08.
4. Mailbox for iPhone suffers downtime even with slow rollout. The Verge (2013-02-14). Retrieved on 2013-07-30.
5. Seth Fiegerman (2013-01-22). "Mailbox Email App Finally Released on iPhone (Sort Of)". Mashable.com. Retrieved 2013-02-08.
6. Darrell Etherington (2013-03-15). "Dropbox Buys Mailbox, All 13 Employees Joining And App Will Remain Separate". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2013-03-15.
7. Todd Wasserman (2013-03-15). "Dropbox Buys Mailbox". Mashable. Retrieved 2013-03-15.
8. Jon Fingas (2013-03-15). "Dropbox acquires Mailbox, teases an email and cloud collaboration". Engadget. Retrieved 2013-03-15.
9. "Mailbox now available without the wait". 2013-04-16. Retrieved 2013-05-15.
10. Brad Molen (2014-04-09). "Dropbox brings the popular Mailbox email app to Android and desktop". Engadget. Retrieved 2014-04-10.
11. "Mailbox goes beyond iOS, now available on Android and coming soon to OS X". 9 April 2014.
12. Baldwin, Roberto (August 19, 2014). "Mailbox for OS X Enters Public Beta". The Next Web. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
13. "Saying Goodbye". Mailbox. December 7, 2015. Archived from the original on February 12, 2016. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
14. "Mailbox: now for iCloud and Yahoo Mail". Retrieved 2014-06-02.

External links

• Official website