Zoho Mail is a solid professional email service. Instant messaging and online office suites are integrated into a free Zoho Mail account. Even better for organizing email, identifying key messages and contacts, as well as sending standard replies.
What is a post office? No, not Zoho’s online apps. A desktop application can be replaced by Zoho Mail, like the editing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs.
Ample Storage, POP, and IMAP Access
Besides the 5GB of free storage for personal accounts, you can use Zoho Mail to send and receive email from other accounts. Zoho Mail also supports POP and IMAP.
You can set up Zoho Mail in your favorite desktop or mobile email program, or have it forward new messages to any email address. It would be nice to filter out certain messages to forward. The actions that Zoho Mail rules can take are generally limited.
With certain paid accounts, you can also set up Zoho Mail via Exchange ActiveSync for mobile devices, calendar and address book synchronization.
Filters and Search
The essentials are there. Filters can delete or file mail and assign labels. With Zoho Mail, labels are called Tags, and a powerful search helps organize and retrieve mail.
Saving search criteria as folders and self-learning folders would be useful. Of course, the spam filter learns, and in my tests needed a lot of teaching.
Zoho Mail offers message templates that act as text snippets that you can easily insert into your emails for commonly used phrases or entire mailings. Managing and using multiple email signatures is similar.
Zoho Mail integrates email with other apps and Google Docs. However, the interaction is often sparse. Zoho Mail doesn’t detect dates, so you have to copy and paste a contact’s address. The Zoho Chat integrated can talk to many IM networks.
Using Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail has useful keyboard shortcuts and a web-based application-like interface with both a traditional and wide-screen view. To keep folders clean, automate archiving. Simplicity seems to have lost out to features, buttons, and menus.
Highlights
- Zoho Mail is a free email service for personal use with 5GB storage (and daily quotas).
- Zoho Mail can retrieve mail from POP accounts and send mail using all your addresses.
- POP and IMAP are both supported by Zoho Mail.
For push email and synchronization, paid Zoho Mail accounts offer Exchange ActiveSync.
- Organize mail with folders and labels. Rules automate some tasks, and spam filters junk from the inbox.
- An auto-responder can answer emails for you.
- Flexible search options to find emails (and attachments) precisely.
- Zoho Mail integrates with Zoho apps and Google Docs for attachments.
- A tree view allows you to read emails in context. Zoho Mail can archive old mail.
- Templates save email text for later use, and an outbox delays mail delivery to allow for unsubscription.
- Your own domains and email policies are allowed with business hosting (for, e.g., quotas and access).