Looking at Alternatives for Email Apps Now That Alto Mail Is Discontinued
Alto Mail, an email client we dubbed one of the best, is being shut down. The app, brought to you by AOL, is a casualty of that company’s sale to Verizon and transition to the new organization, Oath. That means the existing users of the app will need to find a replacement once the day comes that Alto Mail is discontinued. I have a few suggestions.
A Focus Shift Means the Death of Alto Mail
In an email sent to all Alto Mail users, the team behind the product explained what’s happening. The developers are “one big happy family” under their new employer, Oath, but are shifting their focus to “something new and exciting.” This means no further development on the email app. In fact, it means Alto Mail is discontinued entirely as of Dec. 10, 2017.
The team certainly has the skills to come up with something cool, since the Alto Mail app seemed to come out of nowhere to become one of the leading alternatives to the native iOS email client. You can see some of that in what they came up with to innovate in the email niche.
Browse your email by Stacks
In Alto, you can view a traditional email inbox, or you can sift through the email by Stacks. These allow you to see email that's personal, email you've snoozed, messages that contain files, or ones that include photos. There are plenty of other Stacks, too: unread, starred, shopping, travel, finance, and social. It's a great way to organize your email by topic, allowing you to focus on what's important at that time. You won't be distracted by Facebook email notifications, for example, when you're trying to sort through the email your colleagues used to send you the latest version of the TPS report. You can even create your own Stack, a custom and gorgeous way of putting email filters into place for those ultra-important messages.
On Nov. 9, 2017, Alto Mail will disappear from the App Store. At that time, it won’t be possible to create new accounts with the service. As of Dec. 10, support for Alto Mail is discontinued completely. One would presume that means the app will effectively stop working, since it depends upon an Alto Mail account as well as your email credentials.
'New and Exciting' Projects Await the Alto Mail Team
With the developers’ new focus on something “new and exciting,” I wonder what the team has planned. They’re not saying yet, indicating only that something is coming that will incorporate what the developers have learned since first releasing Alto Mail.
Innovation and product development continue to be what we do, and we plan to incorporate many of our learnings and technologies across current and future products and experiences.
- The Alto TeamWe might presume that to mean a new email client, since that’s what the developers have learned the most about. It could also be another calendar app, but really, I’m just guessing here.
Great Choices to Replace Alto Mail
If you’re an Alto Mail user, you’re probably wondering where to turn once Alto Mail is discontinued. You can take a gander at our listing of the best email clients, and find some terrific choices there. My own personal favorites are listed below.
If you don't need a unified inbox, this final choice offers a terrific virtual assistant built in and many great features.
