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Spark for iPhone is a fast, smart way to manage your email

Spark for iPhone is a fast, smart way to manage your email

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Smart filters, customizable design, and useful Apple Watch notifications make for a solid email app

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Email sucks. Managing it is one of the most time consuming and irritating tasks for many people. As a result, there is no shortage of apps that try to ease the pain of dealing with an overflowing inbox. Some of them actually make dealing with email a pretty easy process and smartly integrate with other services such as calendars and cloud storage to be even more efficient.

Spark, a new email app for the iPhone, is one of those apps. It's from Readdle, a company best known for its apps that help you manage documents, and is available for free starting today.

At first glance, Spark is a lot like Microsoft's Outlook or Google's Inbox, other very good email apps for the iPhone. It has a Smart Inbox function that automatically categorizes and filters incoming mail so you only get alerted for important messages. It integrates with Dropbox, Box, Evernote, Pocket, Google Drive, and OneDrive for attachments and saving files. And it has the ability to pin messages to the top of your inbox or snooze them for later. Spark's interface is also highly customizable: you can set swipe gestures, add or remove easy access widgets, or change what's in the app's sidebar to make it fit your needs.

Spark also has a companion Apple Watch app that includes quick replies, making it possible to triage and respond to messages as they come in without having to use the phone. All of Spark's features add up to a powerful and enjoyable to use email client that gives even the best options for the iPhone some good competition. I've been using a beta version of Spark for the past couple of weeks and found it to be as good and sometimes even better than Outlook, which has been my email app of choice on iOS for some time.

Despite the proliferation of messaging apps and group chat apps in the workplace, it's clear that email isn't going anywhere. That's why there are so many companies trying to build the perfect email app, with more seemingly arriving each week. A good email app may mean different things to different people, but if your choice is Microsoft's Outlook, Google's Inbox, or Readdle's Spark, managing your inbox doesn't have to be a chore.