Spike - Email & Team Chat Reviews

by Room_Service

Honestly why'd you guys fix something that wasn't broken? This was my goto personal email app specifically because it showed emails like they were text conversations. Unless im missing something it seems like you guys tried to pack 10 pounds of features into a 5 pound bag. You split the text UI of the email off into actual texting with "groups"

WHY are all of you email apps trying to get business people and ITDM's to consider your email app as a solution for a business. I'd be stunned if you were to tell me even a 1/3 of the people using this were using the group chat besides for texting themselves random notes to self... Because I use(d) this for my personal email. I liked the way it interacted. Having a whole new part of your app devoted to "groups" and chats with funny stickers and gifs.. Isn't something I'll use.

If anything that just reminds me that I hardly have a social group because I work 60 hour weeks and during that time I will, like it or not, forever be on Outlook. Stop trying to cram enterprise group coordinating with Slack-like funtionality and a calendar all in such a simple app.

When did we suddenly decide every personal email app also needed Slack and Basecamp and Skype crammed in?

Ugh I hate falling for apps like this. Too young / insecure to know what you're doing right so you do it all wrong instead.

Back to Airmail.

by TheY2D

So Spike has an interesting concept but from security point of view its very bad. When you are providing access to your email you are allowing Spike to collect all the data in your email account. Now, on some accounts I may be ok with it like gmail and msn etc since these service provider companies already collect ant track analytical data about your email (that’s why its free), but not on corporate accounts... that its problem 1. Problem 2 is that there isn’t any apparent way to prevent the load of external images. If true, it is a huge problem as it allows spammers the ability to track you and know when you have opened the email. I like the idea of Spike. I would gladly pay money for it to remove the analytical tracking but I am guessing that analytical data is worth much more then what Spike can ever generate in revenue on Spike Store not to mention they don't have to share analytical revenue with apple but they do have to pay a percentage on all app revenue in the store.

by Alliiieee5821

I’m not sure what is going on with Spike . I downloaded it specifically because it needs less phone permissions, etc etc. This probably would have been a 4-5 star review if it didn’t cause these problems. I noticed after downloading it that my browser was taking forever to load pages, sometimes freezing. I thought it was our internet having issues. Other apps on both devices started acting buggy as well but I had shrugged it off initially as they probably just needed updating. After I got suspicious, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling this app. The problem with the browsers and apps resolved after deleting the program and immediately returned after the program was set up on my devices again. It makes me wonder a little, and my husband said his antivirus software wouldn’t let him download it because of it being a suspicious possible malware program when he tried to download it from the Play store. He does have very strict security settings on the computer, but this is only supposed to be a program for email.

by M ▌◣≡▌ ▀ ▃

I really like where Spike is going I love that you can group messages by sender like texts

I love that they have a mac app and an iOS app

I love that this app lets you see when other people open your emails.

I love that you can embed gifs

I love that you can add multiple accounts

I love the encryption options

I love that you can unsend emails... But I wish there was a button for that with a timer.

I love tht you can organize by priority

I love that you can customize the swipe commands

I wish the icons wernt so big on the left next to senders name and subject

I wish you could hide the bar on the bottom
most if those are useless to me

I dint understand the groups

or the point of the calling- ill use my phone for that

it wasnt obvious that u had to tap the logo to get ti the settings

the logo is actually annoying there

the thing that disappoints me the most is that

this app doesn't block other people from seeing if you opened their emails.

Polymail, Mailspring, Astro, gmail plugin helps with this even Outlook does this out of the box smh.

the UI is 4/5
the UX is is 3/5
the features 4/5
the company 5/5

overall thats 4/5 star app

but I’m so letdown by the fact that you let users see if people open their emails but your users cant block trackers themselves

Plz correct me if I’m wrong.

by Chicago Dave

I work at a very small business and only recently was given an email address there. I don’t even use it every day. After looking at a few options, I decided to try this app—partly because there were no “in-app purchases” listed. I had barely used it enough to really get a feel for it yet when I started getting notices about my “Free Trial” coming to an end. What?
Considering some of the paid email apps that I passed on because they required a subscription, I figured maybe it would be only a couple of bucks per month. I click subscribe. I’m taken to a page that tells me it’ll be $12/month to keep using it for my “Business email” that I use like once or twice each week. I won’t even pay $12/month for a video streaming service that I’d use every day. That is a ridiculous price and a suspect way to implement it. I was under the impression that Apple did not allow apps with subscriptions that didn’t use in-app purchases. (Didn’t a large video game company recently get taken down for doing just that?)
So, I guess I’m deleting this app and will never discover if it's even worth $12/month.
I’ll give it a few stars because it seemed like a decent app, but I have no idea how much value comes with the cost.

by Coach Big L

1. Add a ‘Task/Reminders’ element to Spike.

2. When putting in a calendar appointment, if you’re adding a contact name...it would be nice if it auto filled the contact with their information, i. e. Name, phone#, address (location)...but of course all this info should be in contact first. When using Apple Calendar, if you had an appointment with the same contact earlier, that appointment pops up automatically and it is easier to edit...than re-entering all that info again....or better yet...when you pull up a contact, one of the action items should include an appointment on your calendar.

3. We should be able to choose which ‘map app’ we want to use as default, instead of Google Maps.

by Ginsengbomb

I am an email app junkie. I have spent a lot of time with a lot of apps (Newton, Spark, Outlook, Trove, Astro, Boomerang...I am sure I am forgetting some here). Newton was my all time favorite for awhile but lately has become a bit buggy and slow.

Hop is fantastic. It is LIGHTNING fast. Like the UI is just soup to nuts blazing fast and responsive. The SMS like approach to email seemed gimmicky at first but this is a really great implementation of the idea. Some really interesting ideas around common recipient groups. Search is incredibly quick. Calendar integration works. Love the ability to easily send so many different types of media (GIFs, drawings...). Integrated voice calls (!!). It's packed with good ideas that are uniformly executed perfectly.

Only shortcoming is it uses IMAP for Gmail instead of the Gmail API and my employer (a very large software company) blocks IMAP access so I can only use this for personal email. Ordinarily that'd be a deal breaker for me - I love having one app for all my accounts - but Hop is so good otherwise that I'm using a second app for work email.

If there's any way to support the Gmail API in future I would seriously pay for Spike. It's good enough to be worth money (like Newton).

by Niatish

Love the priority vs other granularity for notifications. I have been opposed to using email as chat; preferring tools like slack/messages to fill those gaps. This is the first tool to make me reconsider - it makes email feel like texting by removing the extraneous bits and making quick replies.

I have many apps for communications based on the person of the context - and now for people who use email to quickly communicate I have an app for that too. This isn’t a replacement for my email app anymore than slack is a replacement for texting. Normally I turn off all email notifications and process my inbox on an alter schedule - but by using this app I can now quickly reply to those people who see email more as chat.. in the same way I use wechat, line, Facebook messenger, etc. for those who prefer chat on this platforms. Given the chat like features such as read stays, grouping attachment in the same bubble - is really is just one more chat app for the people who prefer email.

by Aragorn90

I love being able to delete all messages from a sender. It would nice to have a popup that would let you select emails to delete. I know that might be difficult on a small screen like the iPhone.

I think it was a weird choice to make the selector to reply to an email two arrows pointing away from each other diagonally. I had to press on things to find it, totally unintuitive. Why not a swoosh left arrow for reply and right for forwarding? Sometimes innovations in UI are not good.

I actually alternate between Spike and Spark, since it has a more traditional interface which I like sometimes. Is there a view to look at your latest emails, whether priority or other? I have some pinned emails in this app which I want to keep pinned but it takes up the first page of the priority screen and I’d like to see the latest emails.

by GDSecurity

I am in Cybersecurity consulting as a profession and am paid daily to advise fortune 500’s in their cyber endeavors. For as long as I can remember though, my own little quirk which goes against the saying of “Practice what you preach” was my usage of around 5 different email clients due to never finding one single client that sarltisfied ALL of my email preferences whether it was being able to smoothly allow usage of multiple email accounts, unsubscribe and block/cleanup newsletters and spam, attach large files, have compatibility which is device agnostic across (one of my clients works epically for my iPad, but has no ability for MacBook usage...???

Although I HEAVILY use people’s reviews whenever purchasing things myself, I have probably written under 10 reviews online myself over the years...
No I’m not a robot nor a compensated reviewer or company employee.

I just figured that I could use the extra time only reviewing 1 instead of 5 emails has saved me, to congratulate/thank/and assist both the people who created this app, as well as the people on the fence about whether or not to try it!

Only addition I can come up with would be to add the ability to transfer even larger files as I have recently ran into a roadblock emailing 4K video files due to size on ANY email client without merely sending an iCloud/OneDrive link. This would further cement Spikes digital world domination! Lol

by Tedley70

I’m a (nearly) reformed email hater: I DESPISED email. I hated it so much. I had used mostly gmail, but also a lot of outlook (and yahoo). I’d just used their web apps, or their mobile apps, and a lot of the time, I had also pushed them through Apple’s native “Mail” desktop client.

I won’t say “they sucked,” but I will say “I always hated email, until this app.” I love the way this app organizes my email. I feel almost like this app partnered with me in my efforts to unsubscribe from everything I don’t want. The “unsubscribe” feature is gorgeous.

I’m a Graphic & Web Designer with significant UI/UX Design experience, and let me say that the UI for this app is like an 8.5/10 on the “Intuitive” scale. I love the way it makes my email look and feel more like text conversations, but also allows me to check to make sure my email looks “official” and includes my signatures and stuff.
I love that every email I get that’s not from a “real person” that I interact with, this app folds it into a different category, but one I can see inside my main inbox, all together. I love that I can mark individual emails or groups of emails “read” with a long press.

That’s not all, but let me tell you, I have tried EVERY top-rated email client you’ve heard of. I was on a crusade for 3 years, to find a better email experience. I’m a this app Evangelist, because it’s THAT good.

by Shardtheatre

This is an updated review. I was experiencing difficulty with my iCloud account syncing, but that has been resolved. I’m giving 5 stars because Spike does what I need it to do - and it’s fast, fun, and functional. Email works at lightening speed where other apps (even native apps) are sluggish and cumbersome. It’s fun to use! The layout is minimal and it’s easy to work quickly through the inbox. Finally, the thing works. I need something reliable for multiple accounts that will help me stay up to speed for personal and professional email. This is the best I’ve seen. One request - please allow me to choose whether or not to include a signature while typing an email. I’d love to have the choice to include it or not include it based on the kinds of emails I’m sending WHILE they are being composed. It’s too much of a pain to go into settings each time. This is a particular gripe when working in my professional inboxes. Sometimes I need that signature. Other times, I don’t need that full signature. Thank you for making something awesome!

by David7756

I have used many email apps. So far, this one is the most usable, at least for my personal use. (I use corporate Outlook on an exchange server at work.) I love the way that this app is organized by People and looks like and is organized like text message chat. I also love (and find essential) that the people at the top of the list are the ones with the most recent emails. (It is hard to say emails, because they look like texts.) Yet when you send a “text”, the recipient sees what looks like a formatted email in the traditional appearance.

I find myself reading, responding, moving, archiving, and trashing emails at lightning speed compared to other email apps! I have about 100,000 emails, and my backlog is disappearing fast!!! In the meantime, all my contacts must be amazed at how responsive I have become!!!

Another great feature: my start-up questions were answered in a friendly and efficient manner within hours by real humans, not by automated responses or canned instructions.

by Bakari C

So glad I discovered Spike. As much as I liked Spark, this app's UI is less cultured because it doesn't have the Sent, Trash, Archive, and other folders visible in the left column like most email clients do. And best of all, the Unread section makes it easy to achieve Inbox zero because it only presents unread emails and hides my previously read emails. That means I'm processing emails faster and efficiently. The Priority and Other sections are a good idea, but I prefer the Recent and Unread display. The chat layout of emails also hides cluttered subject lines, and you don't have to open emails in a separate window unless you choose to. I also like the Snooze, Search, Tag, and Pin functions. These features cause me to archive emails more instead of moving them to folders. this app's Search seems to work, so there's less need to file away emails. And finally, I can't wait to use the group chat feature for a project or ongoing discussion. It works similar to Slack, so it should be useful. My wishes include the ability to create signatures for alias email addresses, add or change avatars of contacts, select event logistics and create an event in the this app calendar.

by KnightSkyFern

I normally don’t publish reviews but I want to say something about this app. I’ve used many email apps including outlook and apples default mail app and one thing I realized is that email hasn’t been reinvented yet for the 21st-century. I really enjoyed the conversation or layout that this app has to offer and after using this app it’s very difficult to go back to the old way of doing email. I wish that every other email client will focus on conversational messaging just like text messages do and other modern messaging systems have for a while now. I definitely highly recommend this app to all my friends and family and even two businesses to be able to use this app to communicate with one another as a modern communication platform.

by Scottfree74

This email app is amazing!!

I was tired of dealing with outlook on windows and the Apple Mail app on a Mac. After looking at Email apps such as spark, Gmail (Spike ), thunderbird and superhuman...

this app has won me over as the most innovative and useful email app. Superhuman is amazing but at $30/month making email a “luxury” was not something I wanted to do at monthly rate that rivals most streaming subscriptions. Thunderbird and spark are solid apps with nice interfaces but didn’t do anything To make email that much more just a fresh skin ontired old email.

Enter this app- Spike treats your emails like text message conversations. It strips headers, footers and marketing messages embedded in the email to bring me only what’s important— the message.

this app productivity features allow me to snooze group emails or single messages, keep priority messages in a clean inbox front and center of my day and enable me to quickly process my inbox without being overly complicated in its use.

I find this app to be fun, innovative, and productive… I highly recommend Spike to anyone looking to take charge of their inbox without getting overly complicated but instead getting down to the business of processing your inbox and moving on with you day.

by SwainFlu

I was searching for something after Outlook quit playing nice with my main email (Verizon, which is technically AOL Mail now) and repeatedly signing out of it and requiring me to log in at any given time. The final straw came when I checked my email on a Monday and I hadn't received an email since Friday. I found Spike in a top ten list online, and now I wonder where it's been my whole iPhone life.

I love the text conversation layout that makes it very easy to keep track of who you're replying to, especially in a group email where replies can be many. The "other" inbox, like Outlook, keeps the clutter separate and lets you focus on the important emails first.

When I first downloaded and reviewed Spike , the setting for calendars would not work for me no matter how many times I tapped that option in Settings, so I couldn't change them. I also wished there was a way to customize the swipe action like you can in Outlook. "Archive" is not important enough for me to swipe ALL the way left before I see the Trash option. However, both issues were resolved pretty quickly after the support team took a look.

Therefore, I can't really find fault with Spike. It's well worth trying out if you're looking for a solid third-party email solution on iOS.

(There was a later issue with my account being wrongly flagged for having a custom domain and being pestered to subscribe to this app Pro, but that was quickly resolved. Great customer service!)

by Ellenaphant

Before downloading this app, I used the standard email app installed with iOS on iPhone. After using it for years, I was fed up when it wouldn’t recognize my ICLOUD email. I went searching for a new email app in Spike Store. I found this one after seeing numerous excellent reviews & ratings for it. At first, I thought it was only for a business-type user base. But oooooh man. I was 100% wrong, because Spike is perfect for anyone who uses email.
I have 4 email addresses that I use for various things. A couple personal, a couple for online accounts. Spike is easy to personalize, makes viewing conversations and email threads pleasant and gives you the option to use a “classic” style inbox format, or use this app’s format, which I love.
All said, I really enjoy this app email app. It does everything I need it to do, and does it well! Download this app! Yeah!

by SmudgePod

I’ve been using this app for quite a while now and I had no real issues with it except that the previous versions did not make good use of the screen real estate on my iPad like some other email apps did. For it to be perfect, it needed to have a split-screen of the main email viewer and the account/folders/settings screen. So I left some feedback in October asking for this feature and got a quick reply back saying they were looking into it. Lo and behold a few days ago (its November now) I downloaded the latest update and they implemented the feature...all because of me! Well ok I don’t know that for sure, but I’d like to think it was all me. Anyway, this app is a great piece of software and the this app team is very responsive! They’re quick to answer questions, take feedback and implement new features.

by Dukeofdavidland

Spike changed the way I deal with and interact with email!!!!!

I am a college student and have a few part time jobs which communicate primarily over email... Since most of my projects involve multiple managers I am constantly bombarded by strings of inter-relating emails when they back reference content that has since been lost in my inbox of hell. I also (I guess as a millennial?) dislike using emails as a primary form of communication due to the lack of visibility most of them have.

Hop changed all of that!! Not only giving me the ability to follow the string of a conversation as if it was a text message, but also giving me a window into when my content is actually received by providing read receipts! On top of that it filters out all the junk I receive on a daily basis that while I would still like to occasionally read, don’t need in the same area as my work communication.

by Petekrueger

I really like Spike and I want them to succeed!

What's great about it:
* It's what Slack thinks it is (but isn't)
* Removing all of the extraneous quotes of quotes of quotes for each reply is genius! You just see the messages, like a conversation, in order. Filter by people and you only see the conversation with that one person. It's great!
* Starting from a person, and seeing one view of all your interactions with that person, is fantastic! Indexed email is better than email search.
* It's a small thing but I love that the icon in calendar view for the "go to today" button rotates to the left when you go back in time, and rotates to the right when you go forward in time. Nice attention to detail!
* (If you are one of that small group of users that was sorry to see Google Wave go away, I think you'll like this app.)

What's still needed:
* The ability to share the text of any email or conversation to the iOS share sheet, so I can create to do items, or send them to Bear to start writing a proposal, or anything that I need to do with them.
* Ability to respond to calendar requests inline.

Add one of these and it gets 4 stars. Add both of these and it's 5 stars.

by ImJff

Really love Spike. Newton was my go to app until they closed their doors so when i was on the look out for another great email app for my photography business (Jeff Thatcher Photography) I gave ‘Hop’ (now this app) a chance.

I was really impressed with the features it has, primarily the conversation view of the emails. They make following along email chains super easy.

Overall it’s a fantastic email client with one pretty major flaw (for me) that prevents me from using it has my main email client which is is Drafts.

Or the lack of synced drafts. I often will start an email on my computer and would like to finalize it on my iPad or iPhone but the drafts aren’t synced. That’s a giant bummer. Especially if im on the go like at the air port and want to send finalize emails before i take off. I can’t.

Granted, this app’s support mentioned they are currently working on that feature. But in all honesty, that’s a feature every other email client has and was surprised it wasn’t on here. Not even within the this app app (ie i start an email on my iPhone using this app and want to finish on my iPad).

In conclusion, this is an awesome email client. And i look forward to them adding drafts sync for me to use it as my main email client in the future

by Rcniman

I don't think there is one perfect email app, and ultimately it comes down to how you personally use email. I use this 90% of the time, and Spark the other 10% on my phone, and reversed on my iPad.

Anyway, I generally love Hop, but it has had a persistent buy the last several months. Spike quits when trying to attach a photo from my admittedly large photo collection. The view of my photos will never appear. With each update I hope it has been fixed, but alas it persists. No other app crashes like that. When that gets fixed Hop will go back to being a 5-star app.

by Manaej

The concept of Spike is great and when it works it is the most amazing email app ever. There are a few issues and features missing that would make it perfect.

Maybe if you’re a light email user with 1 account it would be perfect, but I’m a very heavy email user for multiple businesses I own and I would actually pay for Spike if it had the following features / issues fixed:

1) There is no way to change the auto signature of the email, even when opening the full view. In spark the signature in email is there and able to be edited before sending.

2) When I soft reset the phone it deleted all my accounts and I wanted me to add them all back. This caused me to stop using Spike is a major issue and for this reason I cannot use Spike anymore.

3) Spike uses its own “pinned” emails and does not get my already pinned/flagged emails from the server.

4) Does not work with my Microsoft Exchange account.

Good luck with Spike and hopefully you guys can fix the above issues.

by MackPA

There is a lot to like about Spike. I really like the decluttered conversation view. It is different from conventional email apps and that will take some getting used to, but I will persist and give it a real go.

The jury is still out on whether I can use this app exclusively to manage my email. I use folders to keep my emails organized and moving email into folders is painful using Spike. The folders are in some sort of random order and the move function requires a few taps to get there.

by Jonmap

I've always had trouble keeping track of messages, especially my emails. Threads were confusing, attachments hard to find & overall I just dreaded having to go through and respond to them. That all changed with Spike though! Responding to emails is a breeze and the UI is just about the cleanest I've seen in any messaging app. The little features like seeing when your email's been read and compiling all my "other" emails into a separate area to keep everything all tidy. Spike is just what I was looking for and one of the most useful I've downloaded in a long time- thanks for making it!

by Creativecodeology

I’ve been trying to switch my boss’s communication ecosystem from email to a more collaborative friendly medium like Slack for example - but his aversion to anything new combined with his diehard dedication to email puts a wrench in getting him to adapt it.

I completely understand where he’s coming from however, and so I was excited to find this nifty app after a night of frantic searching for “email centric collaboration apps.”

I’ve been using Unibox for Mac to organize the frenetic influx of emails-as-office-communication that exists in this company into a more conversational style - but this app takes this to another level with the “chat but with email” style threading, plus I really like how it separates anything that’s newsletter, automatic emails, etc into a “Other” category and keeps the main screen for conversations only.

It appears after a few days of use that I can finally give up the preach on converting my boss to an office chat app - he can keep using email and I can make it work for me.

Keep up the good work!

by SMaclean

I'm an obsessive email superuser. I have several business accounts and clients and I am constantly looking for the best Email client I can get. To date that was Airmail, followed by Spark and then Outlook and Mac.

Here's the thing, while all those solutions are great for business managemnet and emailing and have all the bells and whistles HOP focuses on the simple taks of comnicating fast and following conversations without hassle. 85% of my emails are reponses or follow ups on prior threads...for that there is nothing better than HOP. When I am composing a new email to a client or adding icloud files (hope does not integrate documents from Icloud yet) Iuse Airmail. It's also out of habit and getting the assurance the format is right for that first email. But follow ups are much faster on conversation (message) format, withotu the distraction of distriution lists or email signatures or different formats from different participants.

Text in a bubble, respond in a bubble...Hop takes care of fomratting and follow through.

It works!!