The Best Online Poll Apps and Social Media Polls in 2019

Want to learn if your users prefer Android to iOS? If your event should serve coffee or tea? Or if your followers are dog or cat people? You need a poll: a simple, one-question survey with limited answer options.

Here, we'll explore how you can make a poll on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and present you with our picks for the five best web-based polling apps.

Need a survey app instead? A survey casts a much wider net, allowing you to ask dozens of different questions. A poll, on the other hand, is used to quickly gather feedback on one question. Check out our roundup of the best survey builder apps if you're looking to ask more complex questions or a series of questions.

How to Make a Social Media Poll

Perhaps the most difficult part of creating a poll is making sure people actually respond. That's what makes social media perfect for polls: It offers a built-in community of possible respondents. And Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook all offer polling tools that quickly tell you what your audience is thinking. For most businesses, they're the easiest and most effective way to build a simple poll for free.

How to make a poll on Twitter

Twitter lets you add a poll to any Tweet as you're writing it. Start writing the poll question as a Tweet (just as you normally would write any Tweet), then tap the small graph icon underneath. You can then add answers, set the poll's duration (from one minute to a week), and Tweet it out to your audience. Check the Tweet later to see the final breakdown of your responses.

How to make a poll on Instagram

Instagram limits its polling feature to Instagram Stories. To make a poll, snap a new Instagram Story photo or video, and tap the sticker icon at the top of the Story editor. Select the Poll sticker, then type in a question. Instagram Story polls default to yes/no answers, but you can tap the yes and no buttons and customize the two response options if you'd like. The poll will be active for 24 hours (or until you delete your Instagram Story), and you can see the results by re-opening the story.

How to make a poll on Facebook

Facebook polls are the most in-depth social media polling option. To make a new Facebook poll, start writing a normal status update, then click the Poll button below the textbox. Or, on a Facebook Page, click the Create a Poll button. Now, add the poll question and answer choices, and set the duration of your poll (or let it last forever). Want a more creative poll? Each answer option could be a photo or GIF along with your text, perhaps to let the crowd help you pick your next logo.

Even though they can be limited, social media polls can be a great way to get quick opinions from your social audience. Keep in mind, however, that they're not as powerful as dedicated poll apps. You can't easily export data from social media polls or embed them on your company blog or website—though you can embed individual Tweets and Facebook posts if you want. On top of that, social media polls can only be viewed on the social network they're posted to, so your Twitter audience can't vote on a Facebook poll unless they follow both accounts.

What Makes a Great Poll App?

While social media polls are often the best option, sometimes you need a more robust polling tool to collect additional data about your audience, conduct polls on the go, or liven up a presentation. There are quite a few of these on the market, and we tested more than fifteen of the most popular. We looked for poll apps that:

• Are easy to use
• Offer a unique feature above and beyond the standard polling options
• Include more robust features than social media polls

This roundup focuses purely on poll apps. While you can use traditional survey tools to create one-question polls, those survey apps typically offer features you don't need to create a simple poll.

The 5 Best Poll Apps

• Poll Junkie (Web) for creating free polls without an account
• EasyPolls (Web) for quickly embedding polls on your website
• Poll Everywhere (Web, Android, iOS, PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides) for adding polls to your presentations
• Polltab (Web) for authenticated voting
• Xoyondo (Web) for seeing exactly who voted for what

Poll Junkie (Web)

Best poll app for creating free polls without an account

Poll Junkie will help you make quick polls for free—without registering for an account but with more features than social media polls offer.

Poll Junkie's homepage is simple and gets straight to the point. Click the big, blue button to get started, and then add the title of your poll and the poll's expiration date if you want it to close on a specific day (polls close one month after creation no matter what). You can choose to enter your email address if you want to receive the poll's shareable links via email. You can also set the privacy settings for your poll, either making it available to everyone—and adding it to the "Open Polls" section of Poll Junkie's website—or restricting it to respondents you choose to share the links with.

In terms of question types, you can choose from multiple choice, 1-10 rating, ranking (1st, 2nd, 3rd…), or open text, and Poll Junkie saves your work as you go. You can exit your browser and come back to Poll Junkie later, where it will prompt you to continue where you left off.

After creating a poll, Poll Junkie gives you links to share your poll, see the results, access the admin page, and edit the poll. Be sure to save these links somewhere safe, or enter your email address to have Poll Junkie send them to you.

While the website is no-frills and the features may seem basic, Poll Junkie gets the job done and doesn't require you to sign up for yet another app. Plus, other free poll apps often don't allow you to save your work as you go, choose from multiple question types, or give you an easy way to view results.

Poll Junkie Pricing: Free

EasyPolls (Web)

Best poll app for quickly embedding polls on your website

Embedding polls on your website is an easy way to better understand your customers and gauge satisfaction. You might add new polls depending on the season, new product offerings, or updates to your website. While it's generally simple to create a poll, it's a much more manual process to create the poll, copy the new embed code, go to the right pages, and replace the old code with the new. EasyPolls has a solution with its "poll container" feature.

A poll container is a piece of code that you generate in EasyPolls and then embed on your website—just once. Then, every time you create a new poll, you can add it to that container instead of editing each page with the new embed code.

To use the poll containers, you first need to have some active polls attached to your EasyPolls account. Creating a new poll is easy: Navigate to the Poll tab, enter your question and answers, customize the poll's appearance by selecting one of 21 themes or building your own, and click Save (you'll need to sign up for an account or log in to save your polls).

Then, to create a poll container, navigate to the Containers tab on the EasyPolls site, enter your container name, and click Create poll container. You'll see that the container was created, but that it shows as Empty. Click the gear icon, and all your saved polls will appear. Then click the name of the poll you want to add to the container and—voilà—it will appear in the container on your website.

Note: a container can only have one poll at a time, but you can have the same poll placed in multiple containers.

EasyPolls Pricing: Free

Poll Everywhere (Web, Android, iOS, PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides)

Best poll app for adding polls to your presentations

Polling a live audience? Poll Everywhere makes presentations interactive by replacing the classic hand raise. Create a poll on its website, and add the Poll Everywhere widget to your PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides presentation. Ask the audience your question during your presentation, and they can answer by loading the poll on their phone's browser or texting in a response.

Poll responses are shown to the audience in real time inside your presentation to keep your audience engaged. If you choose to make an open-ended poll (or one with an "Other" field), you can select which responses show on your presentation, filtering out inappropriate or off-topic responses.

Poll Everywhere Pricing: Free for 25 responses per poll; from $19/month for the Basic plan that includes 50 responses.

Polltab (Web)

Best poll app for authenticated voting

Whether you embed a poll on your website, share it directly on social media, or direct users to a link, you always run the risk of spam votes. Online trolls may flood your poll with fake answers or bots may overtake it. You can add safeguards, like restricting multiple votes from the same IP address or adding a CAPTCHA form, but Polltab takes it one step further by requiring that participants log in to their Google, Facebook, Reddit, or Twitch account before they can cast a vote.

Enter your poll question and answer options, and a live preview will appear on the right side of the screen. Then, use the slider at the bottom of the poll-builder to set the level of voting security. Slide it all the way to the left to allow unlimited voting. Slide it to farther to the right to require a Google, Facebook, Reddit, or Twitch login to vote. For whichever third-party authentication you select, the Vote button in the live preview will dynamically update. For example, if you require a Reddit login, the button will change to say Vote with Reddit.

When you're ready to publish your poll, you'll get a customized URL you can distribute. There's not a clear way to view the poll's results, so as a workaround, if you add /results to the end of your poll's URL, you'll be able to see the votes as they come in.

Polltab Pricing: Free

Xoyondo (Web)

Best poll app for seeing exactly who voted for what

Polls are most often used to get an aggregated view of people's preferences. For example, you want to find out if people prefer creamy peanut butter over crunchy. You don't care who voted for creamy or crunchy—you just want to know which one won the majority of the votes.

But there are some scenarios where you would want to know exactly who voted for what. What if you're using a poll to capture lunch preferences? Or plan a family vacation? In these cases, knowing what each person voted for can help your decision-making process.

With Xoyondo, you can create "opinion polls" that let you see which respondents voted for which option. These opinion polls are set up exactly like Doodle, the online calendar tool (but the two apps are not affiliated with each other).

Opinion polls are free to create, and you don't even need a Xoyondo account. But if you plan on creating multiple polls, you might as well sign up for the free account to better manage and organize your polls in one place (versus having to go back to each individual poll link to see the responses).

Creating an opinion poll follows the same steps as a regular, anonymous poll. You enter your poll title, an optional brief description of the poll, and type the poll answers. You can set the poll settings, choosing to make it an anonymous opinion poll (where you can only see the votes in the admin console), only allowing participants to vote for one option, or receiving email notifications each time someone votes or comments on your poll.

When your poll is complete, you will get two links: one to share with participants and one for you to go back and make edits to the poll. As votes start coming in, you'll see the results in a tabular format. The names of each participant will be in a column on the left side, the answer options will be a row that runs at the top of the table, and the middle of the table will display a green checkmark for the options that were chosen and red X's for those that were not.

Xoyondo Pricing: Free

---

Thanks to social media, it's easier than ever to get quick answers to your questions and poll your audience. With dedicated poll apps, you can get more detailed responses and learn more from your poll. Next time you need to find out what the world thinks, these tools will help you get your answer quickly.

Need to gather more feedback from your audience? Check out our roundup of the 20 best survey apps or the 17 best form builder apps for more ways to gather the data you need.

Originally published in February 2018 by Andrew Kunesh, this post was updated in February 2019 with each app's latest features and pricing, and with great new poll apps including EasyPolls, Polltab, and Xoyondo. Image Credits: Header photo by Lukas via Pexels.

source https://zapier.com/blog/best-poll-apps/

The Best Appointment Scheduling Apps for 2019

If you run a business that relies on client appointments, you know how much effort it takes to plan and manage the calendar. Clients, customers, or patients contact you asking for an appointment, and you have to figure out when it can work. It only gets more complicated when you have to slot in emergency bookings, reschedule someone on short notice, or cut your losses for no-shows. There's no need to do this work manually, however, because appointment scheduling apps can do it for you, and they can do it with greater ease and fewer headaches.

What is an Appointment Scheduling App?

Appointment scheduling apps are business tools that allow clients to book, reschedule, and cancel appointments through a web interface. When clients want to make an appointment, they go to your business's website, Facebook page, or anywhere else the technology is supported, and choose an available date and time. It's just like making a restaurant reservation online. The difference, from the business's point of view, is that restaurant booking apps work specifically for restaurants, whereas if you run a salon, medical office, or consulting firm, your needs will be quite different.

On the back end, you enter parameters about when people can book certain services, based on business hours you set as well as the times and dates that your staff or other resources are available. The app also prevents double booking and over booking. Additionally, it gives you flexibility to block off times when certain services may be unavailable. Say you run a pet grooming business and your poodle cutting specialist takes a two-week vacation. You can enter her days off in the appointment scheduling app ahead of time so that your clients won't be able to book any poodle grooming time during the days that she's gone.

What Makes a Great Appointment Scheduling App?

Appointment scheduling apps do more than simply give clients a list of available times when they can come in for a meeting, treatment, or service. These apps also let your clientele cancel and reschedule appointments without having to contact you. Additionally, they make it easy for business owners and managers to do their jobs. Here's what should expect from the very best appointment scheduling apps:

Flexibility. Your business is one of a kind. The best appointment scheduling apps know that different kinds of organizations have different needs. Therefore, they let you deeply customize how your bookings work. A small gym offering one-on-one training sessions should have a different booking experience than a community workshop that rents gardening equipment. Do you want your clients to be able to choose a menu of services? Should they be able to specify the location for their appointment, such as for services offered at the home? The best appointment scheduling apps let you customize these aspects.

Calendar syncing. Nearly all appointment scheduling apps let you sync with a calendar. Some even require it. That way, you can see your business's scheduled appointments alongside other important information, such as days when you'll be closed for holidays or renovations.

Payment processing. The best appointment scheduling apps let you collect a payment at the time of booking. That way, you can take a deposit before for an appointment or have clients pay for their services upfront. If a client doesn't show up, your business isn't at a total loss. Plus, in some industries, having clients pay before their appointment keeps the business running more smoothly and results in a happier customer experience.

Multiple points of access. Once you set up an appointment scheduling service, how will your clients access it? The best apps give you options. Likely you'll want to embed some code into your website to display the appointment scheduler, but you might also prefer a custom URL with all the booking tools in one place. Maybe you have a Facebook business page but no other website. In that case, you'll want to be able to integrate the booking tools on Facebook. Whatever your situation, the more options the better.

One final consideration in choosing the best appointment scheduling apps was to make sure not to confuse them with meeting scheduling apps. Meeting scheduling apps share some similarities with appointment scheduling apps, in that both put the power of booking an appointment into the hands of the people you need to meet. The key difference is that meeting apps are specifically for meetings, whereas appointment scheduling apps are for a variety of appointment types that may or may not include a menu of services but almost always require payment at the end.

Here are the best appointment scheduling services for your business.

---

The Best Appointment Scheduling Apps

• Acuity Scheduling (Android, iOS, Web)
• Appointlet (Web)
• Gigabook (Android, iOS, Web)
• ScheduleOnce (Web)
• Setmore (Android, iOS, macOS, Web, Windows)
• SimplyBook (Web)
• Square Appointments (iOS, Web)
• SuperSaas (Web)
• vCita (Android, iOS, Web)

Acuity Scheduling (Android, iOS, Web)

Best appointment scheduling app for customization

Acuity Scheduling is the appointment scheduling app to choose when you need to customize your booking process to a fine degree. When you design your booking page, you can allow your clients to choose recurring appointments, if it's applicable, complete an intake form, and pay in advance for services. You can also offer coupons and give clients the ability to add on services when they book, such as adding a 15-minute foot massage to a pedicure.

On the backend, the level of detail for customization continues. You can choose to let clients reschedule or cancel their appointments or not. You can change the interval for start times of appointments, which is by default every 15 minutes. You can put a limit on how far in advance or with how much short notice clients can book an appointment. And you can even enable an option called "Make me look busy," which automatically hides some available times so you don't seem desperate.

When you're ready to make your booking page live, you can share it via a direct link, embed it into your website using a few different options, or create a booking button or booking bar. Acuity also has mobile apps to access your account from the business side, letting you update your availability from an Android or iOS device.

In addition to offering so much customization, Acuity Scheduling is easy to use. It goes a long way toward making your business run smoother. You can even integrate Acuity Scheduling with Zapier, which lets you connect Acuity to other business tools you use.

Supported Payment Systems: Authorize.net, Braintree, PayPal, Square, or Stripe; with additional options to use two services: Stripe and PayPal or Square and PayPal

Supported Calendars: Google Calendar, iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook.com

Acuity Scheduling Pricing: Free with limited features; paid plans from $15/month

Appointlet (Web)

Best free appointment scheduling app

While several appointment scheduling apps offer a free tier of service, Apppointlet's is among the most generous, making it the service to choose if not quite ready to invest in a service. With Appointlet, you can create a simple booking page with your availability that you can then share directly with clients, patients, or customers.

Convenient options, such as the ability to add a buffer time around bookings, help keep you in control of your appointments. In the same screen that you set up different types of appointments that people can book, you also can customize reminder messages that will be sent to them before the appointed time.

Appointlet lets you create more than one booking page if you need, where you can customize details such as location, price, appointment duration, and cancellation policy. Each service can also have its own intake form for your clients.

Once Appointlet confirms a new booking, it automatically syncs with your Google Calendar or Office 365 calendar; one of those calendars is required to use the app. Appointlet will also send a calendar invite to the client.

With the free version of the app, you get as many appointments, meeting types, and form fields as you need. You can add your business's logo, but you can't get rid of Appointlet's branding or customize confirmation or reminder messages. Paying members do get those features, plus several others, including integration between Appointlet and Zapier, plus priority support.

Supported Payment Systems: Stripe

Supported Calendars: Google Calendar, Office 365

Appointlet Pricing: Free; paid plans from $10/month per person

GigaBook (Android, iOS, Web)

Best appointment scheduling app for newcomers with complex bookings

Despite the fact that it looks a little old school, Gigabook is a serviceable appointment booking app with great options for businesses that have a variety of needs. If you manage physical resources, such as equipment or vehicles, Gigabook has tools that make it possible to do so. If you have multiple staff members, multiple business locations, or if you take appointments at your client's location, Gigabook allows you to manage those factors, too.

If you're new to appointment scheduling, the setup wizard makes sure you don't forget to anything, from the different locations you might use for appointments to reminders that you can send your clients. It offers other details, such as the ability to automatically add buffer time between appointments for setup, breakdown, or travel time. You'll also find some lightweight project management tools, to-do lists, as well as invoicing and payment services, should you need them.

GigaBook's look leaves something to be desired, but its tools are straightforward and intuitive to use. It's a good options if you're new to appointment scheduling and need to tack on some extra tools to help you run your business.

Supported Payment Systems: Authorize.net, Braintree, PayPal, and Stripe

Supported Calendars: Google, iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook

GigaBook Pricing: $15/month, plus $8/month for each person added to the account

ScheduleOnce (Web)

Best appointment scheduling app for package bookings

ScheduleOnce is an appointment booking app that's adept at handling packages or series of appointments. For example, say you offer a set of three coaching sessions for one price. Any clients who purchase this package need to choose three booking dates and times, not just one. ScheduleOnce has all the usual booking services you'd expect to find in the best appointment schedule apps, too, but being able to account for a package of appointments makes it unique.

ScheduleOnce can also handle other advanced booking types, such as team bookings. On the business side, it has tools for doling out appointment assignments to a team as well, such as assigning upcoming appointments in a round-robin style or by pooling all staff availability.

You can change the design of your booking page easily, too, which isn't possible with many other appointment scheduling apps. The same goes for editing forms created in ScheduleOnce, where it's easy to define and rearrange questions on intake forms that are unique for each appointment type. The app also has options for scheduling rooms and resources, such as vehicles and equipment, as well as invoicing and revenue reports. And while there's no mobile app, there is a mobile-optimized site so that you can access your account from nearly anywhere.

ScheduleOnce can help your business run more efficiently with a comprehensive booking system. You'll also find more ways to be more efficient by connecting ScheduleOnce and Zapier, which in turn lets you connect other business apps to the booking service.

Supported Payment Systems: PayPal

Supported Calendars: Google Calendar, iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Outlook

ScheduleOnce pricing: Starting at $9/month per person

Setmore (Android, iOS, macOS, Web, Windows)

Best appointment scheduling app with offline access

Appointment booking app Setmore sets itself apart from other apps in its class in two ways. First, it's the only service listed here that includes desktop apps, which let you see your appointments even if you're offline. Second, it supports integrations with a long list of business software, including MailChimp, QuickBooks, Salesforce, Zendesk, and Zoho CRM.

Setmore also supports a comfortable list of website builders, and it gives you the right code to copy and paste into each one wherever you want to display self-service booking options to your clients. It has copy-and-paste-ready code for Adobe Muse, Weebly, Wix, WordPress, plus sites running on Joomla and Drupal. There's a Facebook plugin as well.

Setmore can send reminders before an appointment to not only your clients, but also your staff. If you run a business in which your clients like to book with a particular staff member, Setmore is a great option because you can create individual booking pages for each person on your team. Setmore has one of the more generous free tiers of service that includes support for 20 staff members, automated email reminders, and a booking page. You'll need a paid account to take payments via Stripe, use SMS reminders, get two-way calendar sync, and offer recurring appointments. For $89/month, you can hire Setmore to take live bookings for you over the phone. To learn more about what you can do with this app, see how Setmore integrates with Zapier to give you more interactivity with other business apps you use.

Supported Payment Systems: Stripe

Supported Calendars: Google Calendar, Office 365, Outlook

Setmore Pricing: Free; paid plans from $25/month

SimplyBook (Web)

Best appointment scheduling app for international businesses

Because of how many languages and international payment options it supports, SimplyBook is the best appointment booking app for international businesses. SimplyBook is available in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (European and Brazilian), Russian, Spanish, and Taiwanese. It also offers integration with more than two dozen payment processing services so that you can offer a system that works for your customers.

The setup process couldn't be any more lovely, as clear instructions walk you through your options for creating appointment types and add-on services. You can choose a color theme and background for you booking page website. And because SimplyBook is so conscious of the global business community, it only makes sense that it offers Facebook integration, too, for people who do most of their business through the social network (as is the norm in many countries). All SimplyBook plans are HIPAA-compliant, including the free plan, which lets you manage 50 bookings per month.

SimplyBook also offers a dashboard and reports so you can monitor your business. You can see how many bookings have been canceled, workload per employee, online reviews of your business, as well as all the text message reminders that have gone out from your account.

SimplyBook works well and has thoughtful options for businesses around the world. While it no longer offers mobile apps for account holders (it used to), it does have a mobile-optimized website that lets you access your account and see what bookings you have on the table. You can learn how other people use SimplyBook in conjunction with other business apps by exploring SimplyBook's Zapier integration page on Zapier.

Supported Payment Systems: 2Checkout, Alipay, Asiapay, Authorize, Blockchain, Borgun, CCAvenue, Dwolla, ECPay, Korta.is, Gocoin, Liqpay, Mollie, Pagar.Me, Payfast, Payfort, Paymentwall, PayPal, PayU Latin America, PaySafeCard, PayTabs, Pinpayments, Robokassa, Skrill, Square, Stripe, Swish, TapPay, Virtual Card Services, Worldpay, and Zooz.

Supported Calendars: Google Calendar, Outlook

SimplyBook Pricing: Free; paid plans from $9.90/month

Square Appointments (iOS, Web)

Best appointment scheduling app for use with Square payments

If your business already uses the payment processing service Square, consider choosing the appointment booking app from the same company. Square Appointments is designed to help business owners get clients onto their schedule quickly and painlessly. As with any other appointment booking service, clients request appointments through an online booking page, which is based on the business's or staff's availability. You can set the app to automatically approve appointments, or you can require manual approval.

On the Apple App Store, you can find a Square Appointments app, which is for business owners and staff who want to access the back end of their accounts. Clients and customers can book through your online booking page, which is mobile-optimized. In the app, you can see upcoming appointments, checkout clients when they've finished their appointments, and accept payments.

Square Appointments aims for a sleek experience all around, and as such, it doesn't have as many bells and whistles as some other appointment booking apps. If you're okay with minimalism, however, it's a convenient service to use in conjunction with Square, which you can use for client deposits, credit card holds, and payment in advance of service. Additionally, Square integrates with Zapier, which means you can connect it to other business apps you use.

Supported Payment Systems: Square POS

Supported Calendars: Google Calendar

Square Appointments Pricing: 2.75 percent per transaction for accounts for individuals; team accounts starting at $50/month and 2.5 percent plus $0.10 per transaction

SuperSaas (Web)

Best low cost appointment scheduling app

SuperSaas is an appointment booking tool that allows for fine level of detail in customizing what kind of business you have and what types of appointments you offer. Setup is simple and clear, although the backend interface is a little ugly.

SuperSaas offers a well-rounded bundle of appointment booking tools, including support for a number of payment processing services, email and SMS reminders for clients, integrations with both websites and Facebook, and more. The free tier of service gives you the ability to hold up to 50 future appointments and register no more than 50 clients. The free tier of service is ad-supported, however, and it doesn't offer calendar syncing. That said, the entry-level paid plan is the lowest priced one on this list of the best appointment scheduling apps. For $8/month, you can hold reservations for 100 bookings, and you can store an unlimited number of client profiles in the account.

You can do more with SuperSaas by integrating it with Zapier, which lets you connect it to more business tools to make some of your more tedious work happen automatically, such as copying client information from SuperSaas to QuickBooks.

Supported Payment Systems: ePay, Mollie, PayPal, PayU, Stripe

Supported Calendars: Google Calendar, Outlook, or any calendar with a public URL

SuperSaas Pricing: Free; paid plans from $8/month

vCita (Web, iOS, Android)

Best appointment scheduling app for managing customer relationships

vCita is a whole suite of cloud-based tools for businesses, and it includes at least two that are for booking and managing appointments: Client Portal and Scheduling. It's very easy to get started with vCita, though slightly more difficult to customize the app deeply to your needs. In addition, it offers billing and invoicing, lead generation, and marketing campaign tools for email and SMS.

One of the selling points of using vCita for appointment scheduling is that it provides ways for you to develop relationships with customers. Some of the tools aren't strictly unique to vCita, as other appointment scheduling apps allow you to keep notes on your customers; regardless vCita lets you upload attachments, view your history with the client, and even import your client list from another app. vCita also gives you an inbox where you can interact with customers about rescheduling appointments, cancellations, and other details. You can write emails and text messages to go out as a campaign to your client list to promote new services, offer existing special deals, or simply nudge them to schedule their next appointment.

After an appointment takes place, you the business owner or staffer receive an email from vCita asking if you'd like to take any of the following actions next: set a new appointment with the client, send a thank you message, or log it as a missed appointment. These prompts help keep you engaged with the app and active in running your business efficiently.

With a paid plan, you can create a self-service booking page for clients, based on availability for each member of your staff. You also have the option to create a secure client portal where your regulars can log in to manage their information and appointments. The app works with Constant Contact, Facebook, QuickBooks, Weebly, Wix, WordPress, and other tools. Additionally, if there are other business tools you'd like to integrate, you can likely create them by setting up vCita in Zapier.

Supported Payment Systems: PayPal, Stripe

Supported Calendars: Google, iCloud, Outlook, Outlook.com

vCita Pricing: $15/month for scheduling-only; full featured plans from $29/month

---

Whether you run a client-based business on your own or with the help of many staff members, you can find the right app to help you manage your client appointments. It's well worth the time to adopt an appointment scheduling app because it takes so much of the work off the business and puts it into the hands of the clients, which is what nearly everyone prefers! Using a full featured appointment book tool can also cut down on the number of no-shows and late cancellations, and it can help you recoup cancellation fees easily by securing a credit card hold at the time of booking.

Originally written by Emily Irish and published in 2017, this article was updated in 2019.

Schedule image by Freepik.

source https://zapier.com/blog/best-appointment-scheduling-apps/

Build the Perfect Productivity System with Paper Notebooks and Digital Tools

Apps aren't everything. Despite the plethora of to-do apps and note-taking apps available, pen and paper can still be a valuable productivity tool. In fact, paper note-taking and task management systems have been experiencing a revival in recent years, as we grapple with technology taking over our lives and try to avoid the distractions the internet offers.

You don't necessarily have to choose one approach or the other. Both apps and paper notebooks have particular advantages, and it's possible to combine them into one awesome, productivity-producing system of your own.

Notebook Productivity Systems

Perhaps the greatest downside to paper is that it's free-form by default. It's what makes paper great to write and sketch ideas in any way you want, but it also makes it difficult to keep those ideas organized.

That's where paper productivity systems come in. While you don't need a system to use a pen-and-paper to do list, it can be a handy way to add a little structure to the open flexibility of a notebook. These systems are designed to give you just enough structure to help you get things done, while still enjoying the variety of pen-and-paper methods for staying organized.

Here are some of the best to help you get started:

The Bullet Journal

The Bullet Journal is centered around the idea of rapid logging.
(Back Pocket Planner shown above designed by Zapier’s own Jordan Sherer)

The Bullet Journal system has been around for a few years now, and is experiencing a surge of popularity at the moment with thousands of people participating in the "BuJo" community.

Developed by digital product designer Ryder Carroll, the Bullet Journal system is built on the idea of rapid logging: using different bullets to denote types of information (notes, tasks, events, etc.), then writing down the info quickly with little detail. This approach helps you keep from wasting time while still getting an organized journal or to-do list without much effort.

The Bullet Journal uses different bullets for different kinds of information

The core of a Bullet Journal is a rapid logging page (or section of a page) for each day. That contains the day's tasks and events, as well as any notes or ideas that come up throughout the day.

Beyond the daily pages, the Bullet Journal method has a few other sections to help you stay organized. For each month, there's a double-page spread for noting important events, and a list of monthly tasks. There's also a double-page spread for the next six months, known as a "future log," where you can write deadlines or events well into the future. There are also collections, or themed lists such as books you want to read or items you need to purchase.

The Bullet Journal system comes together with the index, usually kept in the front of your notebook. Most pages aside from your daily log are given a reference in the index, noting their topic and page number. This makes everything easy to find later, and lets you use the next blank page in your notebook for anything from a future log to a new collection, rather than planning out sections for different types of pages in advance.

The Bullet Journal system is perfect if you like to have a single notebook for everything from meeting notes to your to do list, and you like being able to use the next blank page for whatever you like. And with collections, you can even keep your store list in the same notebook.

Strikethru

Few things are more satisfying than crossing off something on your task list

If you like the idea of a sectioned-out notebook that still has some of the flexibility of the Bullet Journal, Strikethru might be a better system for you.

The Strikethru system doesn't use an index—something its creator, Chris Kyle, found too cumbersome to manage. Instead, it divides your notebook into various sections: one for your daily task lists, one for your themed lists (similar to the Bullet Journal's collections, except these are all actionable tasks), and one for brain dumps and taking notes.

Strikethru has a more specific setup for daily pages than the Bullet Journal, allocating a full page per day, and advocating you list a maximum of nine tasks.

One unique feature of the Strikethru system is the vault—the section of your notebook housing themed lists of tasks, like gift ideas or project-related tasks. Each page in the vault also houses nine tasks, numbered 1-9. Since the system is based on the idea of only ever working from your daily task list (called the "live list"), you can migrate tasks to your daily list without rewriting them. Simply use the page number and the task number to reference any task in your vault. For instance, 12.5 would be the fifth task on the 12th page.

Strikethru is a great system if you like to keep your various task lists separated, and want a dedicated space in your notebook for daily to-do lists and note-taking.

Autofocus

Autofocus is one of the simplest task management systems

If those two systems seem a bit complicated for you, Autofocus might be a better option. Autofocus is based around one list of tasks, so there's no setting up sections of your notebook or updating index pages. You can even use a plain pad of paper rather than a notebook, if you prefer.

The Autofocus method works like this: You write a list of everything you need to do. Then, when you're ready to work, you read over the list once, just reading it at first without planning to work on anything. And then you read it a second time, this time looking for tasks that jump out at you.

This is why it's called Autofocus: It's designed to provide balance between your rational mind, which knows what you should work on, and your emotions, which tell you what you want to work on. Reading over your list of tasks, you'll find one or more jump out at you, nagging at you to work on them. Some will be things you're excited to work on, others will jump out because your rational mind knows they're important.

What you're looking for is balance. The task that draws you to it because you want to work on it and because it's important. Of course, sometimes you'll have to do important things that aren't fun, but what you want to aim for is a balance of both.

Once you decide to work on a task, the Autofocus system only requires you do some work on it. You don't have to finish the task. When you don't want to work on it anymore, you cross it off the list and rewrite it at the bottom. Eventually you'll work on a task enough times that it'll be finished and you won't need to rewrite it.

This system is great if you don't need to categorize your tasks, and want a way to make sure you're always moving tasks forward, even if they're too big (or too boring) to finish in one go.

Benefits of Notebook Systems

Each of these systems offer something to help keep you productive, but it's easy to imagine an app offering the same benefits with less work. Why should you choose an analog productivity system, instead of just searching the App Store for another app?

Flexibility

One of the greatest benefits to using pen and paper over digital tools is that you can use them however you want. Most software is designed with the ideas and opinions of its makers in mind, so you can't bend it to your will completely (unless you make your own digital tools, of course).

With a notebook and pen, on the other hand, you can use any of the analog systems mentioned above, switch from one to another, or take pieces of each and cobble them all together into your own system.

And with analog methods, you can keep using the same tools in different ways. That's perhaps the most important benefit if you're tired of spending too much on new tools in the hope of finding a miracle tool. If you try the Bullet Journal method and decide it's not for you, you can try something else on the very next page of your notebook. No new supplies (or expenses) needed. And no waiting for apps to provide updates or bug fixes.

BYO tools

Speaking of supplies, one of my favorite things about analog systems is they let you use whatever tools you prefer. Whether you like high-end fountain pens and leather notebooks or ordinary pencils and legal pads, you can use the tools you feel most comfortable with—and can afford—and still benefit from these systems of organization. And, typically, you have the tools you need already on your desk.

Tactile experience

Some people simply prefer a tactile experience. I'm one of them. I love the feeling of putting pen to paper.

But beyond enjoyment, there's a very good reason to handwrite your notes and to do lists. Studies have shown we tend to remember things better when we handwrite them. When taking notes on a keyboard, we tend to transcribe things directly (even when we're told not to—it's just too easy to do).

On paper, however, we're usually slower at taking notes, which forces us to paraphrase, doodle, and shorten our notes. We spend more time thinking about what we're writing when we write notes by hand, because we have to understand and interpret the information so we can write down the most important parts quickly.

Digital Features You Can't Get With Pen and Paper

All that said, paper isn't perfect. It's still an analog tool, without any of the digital niceties we've become accustomed to with apps. That's one of the many things that can push you to go paperless, in pursuit of these features only digital tools can offer.

Reminders

No piece of paper is going to ring a bell to remind you to pay a bill or send an invoice. Paper relies on you putting in the time and effort to stay on top of due dates yourself. If you've been checking your paper diary or calendar every morning for the past 20 years, you can probably rely on writing down important reminders, but if you're not 100% sure you'll check what you wrote, you could miss an important deadline by relying on paper.

Digital tools, on the other hand, push notifications to your phone, computer, or even your watch, that are hard to ignore.

Related: Set reminders and automate recurring tasks in your favorite apps with Schedule by Zapier

Search

Digital tools offer search features that simply can't be paralleled on paper. From searching through years worth of information to searching through task names and notes attached to calendar events, this is a built-in feature a paper notebook can't beat, even with an index or sticky tabs to mark oft-used pages.

Related: Discover 25+ hidden search features in Trello, Slack, Evernote, and more

Backups

If you've ever worried about the safety of important paper forms, documents, or mementos, you know how tricky it can be to guarantee these don't get lost. Although you can often scan and digitize paper, it's a lot of effort to maintain a digital copy of everything.

With software, however, backups are usually done for you automatically, and if not, are easy to set up. And it's much easier to physically spread out your various backup copies when they're digital, to make them even safer.

Related: How to back up all your apps and devices.

Syncing and Easy Access

With most digital tools offering syncing to the web, mobile apps, and desktop apps, it's a lot easier to always have your tools with you. Most of us are used to carrying our phones around, so if our to do lists and calendars are synced to those devices, there's no extra effort to make sure we always have the information we need.

How to Get the Best From Both Worlds

Clearly, both digital and analog approaches have upsides—and you don't have to choose one or the other. Instead, you can use the best of both approaches to stay more productive on paper and still find the things you need and stay organized. Here's how to manage your planning and organizing to take advantage of analog and digital tools together.

Use Paper for Your Daily Task List

There are few things better for focus when it comes to a daily task list than a sheet of paper. There's something very immediate about writing your to-do list on paper, and you can keep it visible on your desk all the time, even when your computer screen is full of other things.

You can also employ handy tricks with a paper to-do list, like using sticky notes to put tasks front and center so they're not forgotten, or using this trick for focusing on one task at a time. With the 1 Post-It Rule, for example, you put all of your daily tasks on the sticky note and only get one sticky note per day—forcing you to prioritize.

Write Notes on Paper First

Since notes are taken better and better remembered when they're done by hand, take a notebook and pen to meetings, classes, or conferences. This will force you to focus on the most important points being made and ensure you understand everything well, so you can paraphrase it in your notes.

If you want to make note-taking more fun, you can also try sketchnoting—using diagrams, doodles, and variety in your writing to make your notes fun to take. Plus, drawing things helps us remember them better, so this approach will boost your memory even more.

Do Your Future Planning with Digital Tools

If you've ever tried to go all-in with pen and paper, you know it can be tricky to plan anything far in the future. Your analog calendar only goes so far, and your Bullet Journal requires you to write out future months, which can get messy and time-consuming if you go far beyond a year.

Digital tools, however, can handle almost any date you want to throw at them. Your calendar or your task manager can likely take a date two, five, or even ten years into the future. And you won't have to worry about migrating the event or task to future notebooks or calendars. Just type it in once and relax.

Tip: Looking for a new calendar app? Here are the best calendar apps to try.

Use Digital Tools for Events, Recurring Tasks, and Timely Reminders

For anything that requires a reminder so it gets done on time, digital is the way to go. It's more reliable, and it comes to you. You don't have to rely on your memory to get things done or show up to events.

This is also the best approach for any important recurring events. Rather than remembering to rewrite these tasks or events every week or month, you can enter them once into a task manager or calendar, set them to repeat, and enjoy the ease of regular reminders.

Hybrid Tools

If you love the flexibility and freedom of paper but you just can’t give up the benefits of digital tools, a hybrid option might be best for you.

Digital Tools That Act Like Paper

The Livescribe pen lets you write on paper and save a digitial copy at the same time

Livescribe has worked for years to bring analog and digital note-taking together. The Livescribe smartpens let you write on paper and automatically make digital versions of your notes. You can even record audio with them. Using specialized paper (which can be purchased or printed for free at home) covered in tiny dots, the pen knows where it is on the page, and can recreate your notes and sketches inside the app.

The smartpens cost between $99 and $190, while a 4-pack of single subject notebooks will run you $25.

A Moleskin notebook plus a companion pen for analog and digital together

Moleskine's Paper Tablet is similar: a notebook designed to look like a tablet that lets you write or draw on paper with a special pen that can tell where it is on the page and log your sketches. A companion app then captures your scribbles in real-time. For occasionally digitizing notes, it’s worth a look.

Pricing for a Smart Writing Set, which includes the pen and a notebook, is currently $199.

A tablet can be a virtual paper notebook for the best of both worlds

Or, you could skip the paper and treat digital apps like a paper notebook. Many Windows tablets and notebooks—including those from the Microsoft Surface line—come with a stylus so you can write or draw on the screen. Similarly, the Samsung Galaxy Note and other large Android phones and tablets let you quickly take notes with a pen. And with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, even Apple’s getting in on this game—and you can get similar effects with 3rd party stylii for older iPads and even your iPhone.

Together, these tools provide an experience closer to analog than any previous devices. For both Windows pen-enabled laptops and the iPad Pro, note-taking apps like OneNote, and Evernote let you write or draw new notes, so you can get the feeling of analog note-taking without having to use a separate app for your typed or scanned documents.

Smart Notebooks: Paper That’s Almost Digital

For that authentic analog feel, you just can’t beat paper. That's where a modern take on the old-school notebook comes in. Combining a specially-made paper notebook and a matching mobile app can make it a breeze to scan and upload your notes.

Moleskine’s Evernote notebook, for instance, gives you the familiar feel of a classic Moleskine, with an easy way to save your analog notes to your Evernote account. The notebook’s lines are made from tiny dots, to help your phone’s camera line up the page, and included stickers are recognized by the accompanying app to automatically tag your scanned documents. Expect to pay between 15 and $25 per notebook.

Leuchtturm1917, another notebook company, teamed up with Whitelines to create a similar offering to the Evernote Moleskine. These notebooks look a little unusual because they have, unsurprisingly, white lines instead of grey or black. These lines, as well as markings in the corners of the pages, help the Whitelines app line up your pages when scanning. You can save the completed scan as an image to your phone, or share it to your Dropbox or Evernote account. The Whitelines Leuchtturm notebook runs about $22, but Whitelines has its own set of notebooks that are between $8 and $15.

For a completely different approach, Mod Notebooks come with a built-in digitization service. After filling up your notebook, simply mail it back to Mod with its included free shipping, and their team will digitize its contents for you within 5 days. Once they’re done, you can use the Mod mobile app to access a digital version of your analog scribbles. You can also sync your notes with Dropbox, Evernote, and OneNote. Prices for the notebooks are around $25 each.

And, last but not least, there's the Rocketbook Everlast, an infinitely reusable notebook that you can erase via microwave or a drop of water and also quickly send your notes to apps such as Evernote, OneNote, Slack, and Dropbox. Prices range from $12 to $25 per notebook, but since you can keep reusing it, it's a lower investment than other notebooks.

---

The great thing about taking what you want from these tools and systems is you can come up with something that works perfectly for your unique situation. Let yourself experiment and find the ways both digital tools and paper-based systems suit your needs.

Related: The best to-do apps and note-taking tools

This post was originally published in August 2016 and updated in March 2019 to include additional details and products.

*Title image by Alejandro Escamilla via Unsplash. Bullet Journal photo by Ryder Carroll/The Bullet Journal. Strikethru photo by Striketh.ru. Autofocus photo by Exist. Livescribe photo via eruantalisse.nl. Moleskine Paper Tablet photo by psfk. iPad Pro photo by Digital Trends. Moleskine Evernote notebook photo by Evernote. Leuchtturm notebook photo by bureaudirect. Mod notebooks by The Coolector. Sketchnotes photo by Mike Rohde.

source https://zapier.com/blog/digital-and-paper-note-taking-systems/

The 8 Best Email Apps for Android in 2019

When was the last time you cursed your phone for being too small to display a picture properly or record a keystroke correctly? Six inches of screen isn't much real estate to be productive, and yet 75 percent of us are using our phones to manage our email.

If you fall into that category and use an Android phone, there are hundreds of email clients to choose from in the Google Play store. You could throw in the towel and use the app that came preinstalled on your phone, but stock Android apps will never live up to the competition. Trust us, we checked.

After putting 50 of the most promising Android email apps through the wringer, we've narrowed the list down to the best eight.

What Makes a Great Android Email App?

A mobile email client needs to nail the basics: connecting to third-party domains, sending and receiving messages, searching your inbox, managing contacts, and keeping everything organized. Every app has a different method for achieving these basic email needs, so we kept our eye out for apps that did it all without making us work for it.

The apps that made it into the final rounds of testing were the ones truly designed with small screens in mind. They were the apps we didn't mind using while waiting for a bus, rushing to a meeting, or between exercises at the gym. Buttons that are easy to find and big enough to tap, workflows that only require a tap or two, swipe gestures that make sense—these are all things we looked for. And, of course, the best mobile apps offer all the power of a web or desktop app but in a stripped-down version that doesn't feel bloated.

Finally, your Android email app should feel right at home on your Android, easily integrating with your phone's notification system.

The 8 Best Email Apps for Android

• BlueMail for detailed customization
• ProtonMail for simplifying security and privacy
• Gmail for organizing your inbox
• Outlook for integrating your calendar
• Spike for chat-style emailing
• Missive for teams with shared inboxes
• Edison Mail for newsletter addicts
• Cloze for a lightweight CRM

---

BlueMail

Best Android email app for detailed customization

When you first open BlueMail, there's not much to differentiate it from big-name competitors like Gmail or Outlook. The inbox layout is pretty standard: There's a tab for displaying popular contacts and their message histories, another for snoozed emails, and another for viewing messages marked as done. It's the settings menu where this app really earns its spot on the list.

There are default light and dark themes, a handy option to automatically switch between them at certain times of day, and a color picker for customizing your theme. Beyond that, there are over a dozen design options, ranging from how unread and read messages are differentiated to how your contacts' avatars are displayed in group emails.

Outside of the app, you can configure even more visual options. BlueMail's unread icon badge can be reset every time you open the app or count unread emails from a single account if you've connected more than one. Notification settings are equally customizable, letting you set how much of the message content is shown, do-not-disturb hours, and your Android's LED notification color—all on an account-by-account basis.

This app even lets you block emails from an address, a domain, or entire URL suffixes, such as annoying@email.shop or sends@toooften.blog. If you want an almost ridiculous amount of control over your email experience, BlueMail can scratch that itch.

BlueMail Pricing: Free

ProtonMail

Best Android email app for simplifying security and privacy

ProtonMail is worth checking out if you think password-protected messages and the ability to render an email unreadable a few hours after it's sent make more sense than social integrations and emoji keyboards. It's a joyfully easy-to-use app that prioritizes security and privacy above all else.

From drafting and reading messages to searching and organizing your inbox, ProtonMail never offers up a window with more than five buttons. For example, its stark email composition interface has text boxes for To:, Subject:, and the message body, plus buttons for password protection, message expiration, and attaching files. Three text boxes, three features—that's it.

Keep in mind that most of ProtonMail's security features force recipients of your emails to open them in new tabs, outside of their inboxes. They'll get an email that says, "You have received a secure message from your@email.com — Click here to view secure message." It's not a totally seamless experience, but it's the best you'll find with such tight security.

Whether you use the mobile or desktop version of this app, its servers have no way of reading your emails, since message contents are encrypted from the moment you hit send until the moment your recipient decrypts what you sent. Creating a free ProtonMail account takes a matter of minutes and comes with all the security features included in a paid plan, so you might as well experiment with it for a day or two.

ProtonMail Pricing: Free for an @protonmail.com account with 500 MB of storage and 150 messages per day; paid accounts start at $6/account/month for custom domains, more inbox storage, and unlimited messages.

Gmail

Best Android email app for organizing your inbox

Even if you think you know everything about Gmail, or if you're reading this article to find an alternative to it, there are plenty of reasons to stick with Google's free email client. Namely, you won't find another Android app that automatically sorts your inbox as well as Gmail does.

Plenty of apps on this list are packed with features for marking messages as important, moving them into folders, or applying custom labels. Gmail is just the most accurate and thorough at doing those things for you. Labels are automatically assigned to messages that relate to Promotions, Updates, Forums, or Social. And many people believe that Trips, Finances, and Purchases will be transferred to Gmail from Google's Inbox app.

In fact, frequent updates to its intelligent labels and interface design are benefits unto themselves. Even during our tests, a heavily revamped version of the Android app was released that improved the mobile experience. Google's material design updates reduce screen clutter, show attachments and linked documents as buttons in a message's preview text, and make switching between multiple accounts as straightforward as tapping your profile picture. It's a safe assumption that this app probably receives more attention from developers than any other Android email client.

One 2018 update that's often overlooked is Gmail's Confidential mode, which lets users set a message expiration date, protect an email with an SMS passcode, or revoke access to messages at any time. You can do even more by connecting Gmail to thousands of other apps with its Zapier integrations, but the automatic organization of your inbox is more than enough to make this app your go-to email client.

Gmail Pricing: Free for an account with 15 GB of storage; paid accounts start at $5/user/month for more inbox storage and security controls.

Outlook

Best Android email app for integrating your calendar

Anyone who has avoided Outlook's Android app based on a fear that it's as crowded and complicated as its desktop counterpart will be glad to know: It's not. The mobile version is one of the most lightweight clients we encountered: basic message composition, inbox organization, and search options. But if a hefty portion of your emails affect your calendar, Microsoft's calendar integration features are a dream come true.

One of our favorites was the Send availability shortcut within the New Message window. Tapping it opens your calendar and prompts you to select dates and times to share with your email recipient. Unfortunately, the message containing your availability isn't interactive for recipients, but when they reply with their preferred time, you can click Convert to Event to quickly create a calendar invite. Invitations exchanged between Outlook and Google Calendar users on Android devices are compatible with both apps' one-click RSVP features.

The app also has integrations for syncing events from Evernote, Facebook, Wunderlist, Meetup, and Bing's Interesting Calendars, which include sporting events, TV schedules, and holidays.

Several of the other email clients we tested allow you to view a synced calendar, but none can match Outlook at editing or updating your calendar from within your inbox.

Outlook Pricing: Free for personal use; commercial users must subscribe to Microsoft's Office 365 suite, with plans starting at $8/user/month.

Spike

Best Android email app for chat-style emailing

There are several apps that claim to be the best at converting email threads into chat interfaces, but in our testing, Spike does it best. One of the reasons we preferred its chat-like experience the most was the simplicity and intuitiveness of its user interface.

For example, if one of your friends sends an email with a long subject line, a dozen recipients, and a high-resolution image, simply tap Full Message at the bottom of the chat bubble to switch to a more traditional email layout.

Ultimately, though, reasons to leave the chat structure were few and far between during our tests. Messages always look clean and come with plenty of convenient options for media attachments. In addition to attaching a file or photo, Spike has integrations for sharing files from saved cloud accounts (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive), drawing and sending doodles, finding and inserting GIFs, as well as creating audio recordings.

And just because this client looks more like WhatsApp than Outlook doesn't mean you can't use it for professional communication. From read receipts to calendar syncing, this app has plenty of options for simplifying how you stay connected to work.

Spike Pricing: Free for personal accounts with restricted search history and group chat rooms; $7.99/user/month for custom domains, unrestricted search history, and unlimited group chat rooms.

Missive

Best Android email app for teams with shared inboxes

The majority of today's customers expect customer service responses in 10 minutes or less. One of the simplest ways to achieve that target is a shared inbox, such as support@mycompany.com. However, simply giving everyone on your customer service team the login credentials will create a logistical nightmare. Missive streamlines shared inboxes with a laundry list of features for ensuring everyone knows the status of an email.

Most email clients in this category have chat features for discussing an email internally before replying to the sender. In some of these apps, the interfaces were so confusing that we accidentally replied to emails with messages that were meant for internal team discussions. In Missive, that's practically impossible thanks to a text box clearly marked Chat with your team… at the bottom of any message.

Even on a mobile screen, adding checklists, attaching files, and tagging collaborators in real-time chats is intuitive. When you've decided who should respond to an email in your shared inbox, tap the Assigned button from the top of the screen and pick from the list of other Missive users on your team, or Mark as closed.

From the app menu, you can organize emails even further with options to filter inboxes by categories such as Unassigned, Assigned to me, Closed, and Assigned to others. Digging into the Preferences menu opens up even more options for inbox organization, message notifications, and team collaboration.

You can merge multiple threads for related requests, and your draft replies have live co-authoring enabled, so multiple people can edit messages from their Android devices simultaneously. There's an inherent quality to Missive's mobile design that ensures it neither overwhelms nor restricts users.

Missive Pricing: Free for teams of five people or less, accounts have restricted search history; paid plans start at $10/user/month and include longer search histories.

Edison Mail

Best Android email app for newsletter addicts

Edison Mail has everything you need to reduce the stress of sending and receiving emails via a tiny screen. The app's onboarding is quick, the inbox touch gestures are customizable, and managing folders is a breeze. The best reason to choose this app, however, is its niche features. They don't seem to have a unifying purpose, but each is useful in its own right.

Edison's most notable feature is automatic bundling of messages pertaining to Travel, Packages, Bills & Receipts, and Entertainment. It even reformats these messages so they only show pertinent information, which eliminates most of the pinching and zooming automated messages demand on mobile devices. This app almost beat out Gmail for automatic labeling, but a lack of Social and Promotions detections left our Edison inboxes far more bloated.

The app makes up for its missing intelligent labels with an invaluable feature that consolidates all your newsletters into a scrollable list with an X and a star next to each subscription. Tap the X and you're unsubscribed; tap the star and that sender is clustered in your Favorites menu.

Also listed under the Assistant features is Security, which claims to monitor "internet databases commonly used to sell and trade personal information." Like the rest of this app, this service is 100% free. Lastly, Edison Mail comes with a read receipt blocker if you don't want senders to know when you've opened their message.

Overall, it's a lightweight and speedy app that's easy to use. If bulk unsubscribing, dark web monitoring, or a read receipt blocker are things you'll use regularly, this Android email client is a superb choice.

Edison Mail Pricing: Free

Cloze

Best Android email app for a lightweight CRM

There's a lot to like about the way Cloze combines email, contacts, notes, and relationship management, starting with its fantastic onboarding exercise.

After granting Cloze access to your email, you'll also have the chance to connect cloud profiles like Dropbox and Slack, as well as your Android's call history. Then you'll be asked about what you'll use the app for: Sales, Consulting, Freelance, Recruiting, Donor Management, and others. And with that, the app gets to work analyzing your existing message history.

By the time it's done, there's a lot of relationship management data waiting. The Agenda tab recommends people you should reach out to based on past habits, notifies you when recipients open your messages, and reminds you to follow up if they don't.

The People tab provides a comprehensive overview of each contact, including a timeline of emails, calls, and calendar events. Cloze also scores each contact based on how many one-on-one conversations you've had, how balanced the number of messages are between you and that person, and several other factors. From there, you can designate which stage of relationship the contact is in and create to-do items for that contact.

If all that sounds more like a CRM than an email app, that's because Cloze serves primarily as a CRM. But it really comes down to your email habits. Functions like sorting unread messages by relationship quality, performing natural language searches like "worked for Acme," and templated responses with mail merge fields were nonexistent in any of the other Android clients we tested. All that combined with Cloze's Zapier integrations make this a great mobile email client.

Cloze Pricing: From $19.99/month for individuals.

How to Choose the Best Android Email App for You

Before you can choose an app, you need to understand your Android email habits. Are you using your inbox as a to-do list and need organization? Are you using it mainly for scheduling and value calendar integrations? Do you value security above all else? As you ask yourself these and other questions, remember that your answers might be different when you're searching for mobile apps.

Try brainstorming what you like about other mobile communication apps (think: chat apps), and pick an Android email client with similar benefits.

source https://zapier.com/blog/best-android-email-app/

The 9 Best Email Apps for iPhone and iPad in 2019

Many a tech blog headline and bold entrepreneur have announced that [insert app name here] will kill email. But like a wicked witch trying to kill a fairy tale princess, these new apps all fall short: Email is here to stay.

You may be happy with a web app like Gmail when you're at your computer, but when you're emailing from your iPhone or iPad, you'll want a dedicated app for the job. We've tested the most popular iOS email apps, and here we'll present the best in breed.

What Makes a Great iPhone and iPad Email App?

For starters, we're only looking at fully featured email clients, not apps designed to help you quickly sort mail or get to inbox zero. An email client is—like the Mail app already installed on your iPhone—an app that you can use to access your email account, regardless of what service you actually use. With one or two exceptions, we only considered apps that supported all the major email providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, iCloud Mail, and IMAP and POP accounts.

We also focused on standalone email apps for iPhone and iPad, rather than apps that are really just add-ons for a web or desktop app. We wanted email apps that could be the only way you accessed your email if you wanted. An Apple Watch companion app, however, was a bonus.

While pure spam isn't the problem it once was, lots of people are still bombarded with email from newsletters, online stores, and other technically-not-spam-but-still-annoying sources. With this in mind, we looked for apps that took this into consideration and had some way of addressing it, whether it be a dedicated inbox for important emails, a way to quickly unsubscribe from newsletters, or fine-grained notification controls.

Since we're focusing on the iPhone and iPad, which you're likely using for personal use rather than intense work, we rejected any primarily team-focused or collaborative email apps like Front. While these are useful for organizations, they're needlessly complicated for day-to-day emailing. They also tend to charge a monthly fee, and while there are paid apps on this list, we generally avoided apps that required an ongoing subscription.

Even with all these criteria, there are a huge number of options to consider. So we dug in deep, put them to the test, and determined which ones were more than just marketing hype.

The 9 Best Email Apps for iPhone and iPad

• Mail by Apple (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch) for a no-frills email app
• Outlook (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch) for a balance between simplicity and features
• Gmail (iPhone, iPad) for integration with other Google apps
• Airmail (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch) for customization
• Spark (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch) for the most powerful features
• Canary (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch) for security
• Unibox (iPhone, iPad) for humanizing your inbox
• MailTime Email Messenger (iPhone) for people who really hate email
• Edison (iPhone, iPad) for frequent travelers and shoppers

---

Mail by Apple (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch)

Best no-frills iPhone and iPad email app

Apple's Mail app has had a bit of a bad reputation over the years—that's why there's such a healthy ecosystem of alternative apps—but that criticism is now largely unwarranted. Yes, it's the most basic app on this list, but that's an advantage: It's a simple and easy-to-use email client. It handles your email—whether you use iCloud, AOL, Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, or any other POP or IMAP compatible service—without any fuss.

When you open the app, you'll see your email inbox with all your emails in reverse chronological order. To only see the unread emails, tap the handy filter icon in the bottom left corner. It's nothing fancy, but it works great.

The only area where Mail steps beyond just sending and receiving emails is with a VIP Inbox and thread notifications. If you're overwhelmed by the number of emails you receive, it's tempting to turn off all notifications. Unfortunately, that means you might miss something important. Contacts added to the VIP list have their own dedicated inbox that always pushes notifications. Similarly, you can enable notifications for responses to individual email threads if, for example, you're waiting for a reply from customer support and want to know as soon as you get it.

If you don't need an app that does much more than send and receive emails, then Apple Mail is one of the best.

Mail by Apple Price: Free.

Outlook (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch)

Best iPhone and iPad email app for a balance between simplicity and features

Microsoft's Outlook email app—surprising almost everyone—hits the best balance between usability and feature power. It supports all the major email services except POP3 accounts, so you don't have to use an Outlook or Hotmail account to make use of it.

The Outlook mobile app is a far cry from the desktop app. This isn't a bloated, enterprise product. It's a well designed, highly functional personal email app that adds in some basic file management (with OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box) and a calendar, so you can handle all the extras around email, like attaching files and scheduling events, in one place.

Outlook automatically splits your inbox into a Focused Inbox, for what it considers important mail, and an Other Inbox for everything else. That, combined with powerful search and the Contacts section that groups together all the emails a specific person has sent you, make it easy for you to keep a handle on important messages.

The left and right swipe gestures are customizable: You can set them up to archive, delete, reply, move, or schedule (Outlook's take on snooze) emails. The iPad app makes great use of the larger screen, displaying long emails cleanly and offering a clean week view for the calendar. There's even an Apple Watch app so you can check your email on the go.

Outlook Price: Free.

Gmail (iPhone, iPad)

Best iPhone and iPad email app for integration with other Google apps

The Gmail iOS app brings the familiar Gmail web app experience to your iPhone or iPad. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how you feel about Gmail.

While Gmail for iOS does support iCloud, Outlook, Yahoo, and IMAP, it's at its best when used with your Gmail account. The iOS app nicely integrates with Google's other services like Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Sheets. For example, you can preview any file shared through Google Drive or one of Google's apps. A single tap then either saves it to your own Google Drive, which you can access through the Attach option when you're writing a new email, or opens it in the Google Docs or Sheets app, so you can edit or update it. You can also respond to Google Calendar invites straight from the email, just by tapping on the Yes, No, or Maybe. With Zapier's Gmail integrations, you can even connect Gmail with 1,000+ other apps too.

Outside of these integrations, Gmail is still a competent email app. In terms of customization, you can choose the default view, which shows an icon for each sender and a preview of any attachments; or you can select Comfortable (which removes the previews) or Compact (which removes the icons as well, letting you see more emails at once). All your emails are sorted into three separate inboxes: Primary, Social, and Promotions. Search is, as you'd expect from Google, lightning fast. Emails can be snoozed, and if you accidentally send an email too soon—which is easy to do on a phone—you can tap Undo to rescind it.

Gmail Price: Free.

Airmail (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch)

Best iPhone and iPad email app for customization

Airmail is one of the best macOS email clients because of its powerful customization features—and the iOS app brings the same great experience to your iPhone and iPad. While it works well as a standalone iOS app, it's really at its best when you're also using the Mac app, since you can sync all your preferences between both the Mac and iOS clients.

Airmail's customization options are some of the best available. You have total control over notifications and can set it up so you only get alerted about emails from important contacts. You can customize the swipe gestures in the Settings menu to archive emails, delete them, move them to a dedicated to do list, add a reminder, snooze them, and much more.

Airmail also integrates with a lot of popular iOS productivity apps like Dropbox, OmniFocus, Bear Notes, and dozens more so you can quickly push emails and attachments to the apps you use to get stuff done. For example, you can set up a swipe gesture to send an email to your OmniFocus inbox if you prefer to use that as your to do system.

Other perks: Airmail lets you create templates for standard replies, add read notifications to any email you send so you'll know when the recipient opens it, or schedule emails to send at a certain time. You can even create your own custom actions that can do pretty much anything you'd like to your emails. For example, you can set up an action to reply with a set response, send the email to your to do app, add the sender to your VIP list, and archive their email, all with a single tap or swipe.

Airmail Price: $4.99.

Spark (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch)

Best feature-rich iPhone and iPad email app

Spark's tagline is "love your email again," and the app goes out of its way to make email quick, pleasant, and easy. It's a great app for anyone who relies on email for most communication.

Spark's Smart Inbox combines and categorizes all your emails from all your accounts. You can quickly scan your inbox for the stuff you need to deal with now, like emails from your close friends or boss, and skip what can wait until later, like newsletters announcing a two-week long sale. In keeping with the speed theme, Spark includes a quick reply feature, so you can send an emoji response in two taps, and templates to easily send longer stock responses.

To keep on top of your inbox, you can pin important emails (with a short swipe to the left by default) so they're in your face until you deal with them, or you can snooze emails so they reappear when you need them (tap the clock icon when you're reading an email). The Recently Read filter, available from the widgets in the bottom right corner, also makes it easy to jump back to any email you were just looking at—great for when you want to reference back to something without digging through your archives.

Like Airmail, Spark's swipes are fully customizable, and the app integrates with other popular services like Evernote, Trello, and Things. There's also a built-in calendar, undo send, read alerts, reminders, and lots more.

Spark includes team and collaborative email functionality, but unless you use it, it's just in the background and doesn't get in the way of the fast, fluid experience. The paid team options are what keep Spark free for most users.

Spark Price: Free; $7.99/user/month for the Premium team plan.

Canary (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch)

Best iPhone and iPad email app for security

If encrypted emails are your jam, then Canary is for you. It's the best iOS email app for automatically encrypting your emails. In fact, it's the only major app that does this, and it uses your existing email service rather than requiring you to sign up for something new.

Of course, whoever you're emailing will need an email service or client that can decrypt PGP; otherwise you'll have to send them an unencrypted email if you want them to be able to read it. What's nice about Canary—versus a secure email service—is that it works on top of your existing email account. You can start using encrypted emails without having to set up a new email address: It works with all the major email providers and protocols except POP.

While Canary's encryption is its flagship feature, it's still an excellent email client for dealing with regular emails. It has an AI-driven Smart Inbox that automatically learns which emails you consider important. It also offers the fancy features you've come to expect: customizable swipes, integration with Dropbox and other productivity apps, snooze, templates, automatic read notifications, and even a one-click unsubscribe so you don't need to hunt for links in the footers of marketing emails.

Canary Price: $9.99.

Unibox (iPhone, iPad)

Best iPhone and iPad email app for humanizing your inbox

Unibox throws out the standard email inbox conventions. When you open the app, you'll see all emails automatically grouped by sender, and then arranged by date. As soon as you tap on a name, you'll see the most recent message and all your previous conversations with that person; you can even see all the files and photos they've sent you by tapping on the paperclip in the bottom right corner. If you think of email in terms of who you're communicating with, it's perfect.

Aside from this novel take on email sorting, Unibox is relatively feature-light. You can customize what the swipe gestures do in the settings menu, but there's no snoozing, scheduling emails, or any of the features common in advanced email apps. You can't even use multiple accounts or custom signatures without paying for Unibox Pro ($4.99), and it doesn't support POP accounts.

Unibox Price: Free; $4.99 for Unibox Pro, which includes

MailTime Email Messenger (iPhone)

Best iPhone email app for people who really hate email

If you hate email and have no choice but to use it, try MailTime Email Messenger. It turns your email threads into conversations that look and act like iMessages—down to the colors: Your senders'/recipients' messages appear as gray bubbles, and yours appear as blue bubbles. It even works with group emails. One quirk: if the emails run too long, you'll need to tap View Full Message to see the whole text. It's worth the extra tap to keep the chats scannable.

MailTime doesn't try to force all emails to fit its blue-and-gray-bubbles chat look. Emails that aren't from real people, like newsletters and online shopping receipts, are kept in a separate inbox and displayed normally. It's only your email conversations that look like chats.

The free version of MailTime supports up to two different email accounts (all the major ones are supported), but if you want to use MailTime with more accounts, you'll need to upgrade to Pro.

MailTime Email Messenger Price: Free; $2.99 for MailTime Pro.

Edison (iPhone, iPad)

Best iPhone and iPad email app for frequent travelers and shoppers

Edison takes intelligent email sorting to the next level: subscriptions, purchase receipts, and even travel details and package shipping details are automatically identified and sorted into the correct groups, which you access from the sidebar.

You can then quickly glance at your favorite newsletters, unsubscribe from ones you no longer read with a single tap on the unsubscribe button, see upcoming trip details like boarding gates and departure times, and track your parcels, all without having to dig deep into your email archive. Edison will even use the information to send you smart notifications, letting you know when your flight's gate has changed or your package is out for delivery.

In addition to the assistant, Edison is a full-on modern email client: It supports all the major email services and offers undo send, customizable swipe gestures, snooze, and smart replies for when a short response is all that's needed. And my new favorite way to mark an email as read? Just swipe the little blue unread dot, and it vanishes.

Edison Price: Free.

---

The iOS email app universe is saturated with options—some excellent, some…not. But with all the choices, one is bound to fit how you use—or aspire to use—email. If you're not sure which one's right for you, try more than one. They're all free or cheap, and it can be fun to experiment with a few different styles for managing email on your phone or tablet.

source https://zapier.com/blog/best-email-app-for-iphone-ipad/