Despite being one of the earliest forms of electronic communication, today email is probably the most disrespected formats. Be it the unscrupulous marketing mailers, mountain of spam or an overloaded inbox, everything works against the underlying platform – email. Even being a free, simple and relatively unintrusive modes of communication isn’t helping enough.
Every attempt made by technology companies, large and small, to improve the condition of email has either failed miserably or ended up just as a cosmetic addition. The need to being formal and elaborate is touted as one of the setbacks preventing email from becoming an effective communication tool. Shortmail is here is to change just that.
Overview
Staying true to its name, Shortmail restricts all emails messages to just 500 characters. This ensures that all emails are concise and to the point. There are no attachments (yep!), no junk mail and no folder management. Just productive communication – with any email user, anywhere. The service works just like a regular email service at the backend and you can connect using IMAP, POP3, SMTP settings or use the web interface instead.
Overview
The account can be configured and accessed from your smartphones too. Shortmail is currently free, but is in closed beta. I got the invitation after a couple weeks of placing the request.
Ease of Use
The first step is to claim your Shortmail address with Twitter. This process was simple and happens via OAuth, so with just a couple of clicks, you should have claimed your Twitter handle. You will have to go through the same process everytime you sign in to the app.
Dashboard View
Without much ado, we land on the dashboard (or the email inbox). The word clean flashes in mind as soon as you see the inbox for the first time. The app has the rather standard two column layout, but looks trendy and refreshing.
The Inbox
I took a few minutes and tried to figure out how the app looks so clean. First, there aren’t any folders – no sent mail, drafts, trash or anything else. I can understand the need to eliminate unwanted clutter from the app, but why delete sent and draft folders? Hope they make it in the future updates.
Message View
Emails are displayed based on the people who sent them. It is a nice change to the current chronological order of the traditional inbox. Since there are no custom folders, you have only one option to do with the mails – archive them all together. Curiously, I couldn’t find an option to delete the emails.
Sending and Receiving Mails
I sent a test mail from my personal account to see how well the app handles incoming email. The emails took forever to arrive and if you are accustomed to the auto refreshing Gmail inbox, you are gonna be disappointed.
The Compose Window
The compose window has just three options – Send, Send & Archive and Cancel. You can add multiple recipients by separating the email addresses with a comma. Since Shortmail is all about being social, you have the option to make the conversation public or keep it private. The app allows you to add your Twitter buddies in the loop as well.
Conversation Threads
The conversations are automatically threaded and since there are no headers attached to each mail, it’s so easy to focus on the body of the message without any distractions.
When I tried to send a mail with more than 500 characters, nothing happened. While the concept of Shortmail is clear, some sort of warning message indicating that the user has gone beyond the limit would be really helpful. Yes, there is a character counter in the compose window, but still an overlay could help the less tech savvy.
Accessing Settings
So, all outgoing messages are appended with a signature and a logo promoting the app. To get rid of it, head over to the Account section of the app. Just remove the signature and the logo will also be automatically deleted from the signature. All the details required to configure a desktop or mobile email client with your Shortmail account can be obtained from the Advanced Settings page.
Deleting the Signature
There is a section in the settings page marked Quarantine, but I could not find a way to use this feature. All your Gmail and Twitter contacts can be imported from the Contacts section of the app and from here, you can manage all contacts from a neatly alphabetized index.
Final Thoughts
I had a wonderful time using Shortmail. But unfortunately, fellow AppStorm writer Ryan Stubbs didn’t. His account had some issues and despite being brought to the notice of the customer care team, it has not been resolved until now. For a service that is gaining the attention of all leading digital publications and garnering positive buzz all around, complaints like this don’t bode well.
After being used to writing tens of lines of fluffy stuff before getting into the subject matter, some might find it tough to adapt to this web app. But since it takes a shock treatment to get over age old habits, restricting yourself to 500 characters per message will help improve your email habits even if you ditch Shortmail after a short stint.
Share your Thoughts!
So did you like the concept of Shortmail? Is the web app too restricting and is too fancy to use for official use?