Polymail launches app to make email more productive

For those who practically live and die by email, being able to get things done is essential, but it has to work according to how you’re most comfortable. Polymail believes it has an option that gives you all your email, but also the productivity tools needed to get you through the day all in a single app. Today the company has launched to the public, allowing anyone to download its iOS and Mac apps and be more productive while on the go.

Founded by Brandon Foo, Brandon Shin, and Shahan Khan, Polymail gives business professionals features like email tracking, scheduled posts, and follow-up reminders to their inbox. Until today, Foo said that these tools were only accessible through browser add-ons with web-based email services like Gmail. “Polymail is the only app that makes all the most widely used email productivity tools available in one seamless interface on both mobile and desktop,” Foo explained.

But with a marketplace crowded with apps promising solutions for managing your inbox or at least external communications, is there room for one more, even this Y Combinator-backed company? Foo thinks so: “Email is still without doubt the primary and most ubiquitous form of external business communication. Right now, we’re focused on improving external communication in the workplace by making important email productivity tools … easily accessible to everyone whether they’re on desktop or mobile.”

Above: Polymail’s iOS app

Image Credit: Polymail

Polymail is a nicely designed email client app, complete with a sidebar that provides you detailed information about previous interactions you had with people and lists the attachments in an email thread — very helpful so you don’t have to scour through numerous messages just to find the right image, Word document, or PDF. As mentioned earlier, the app includes email tracking, read later, send later, and follow-up reminders. The app also has an undo send feature and can list profiles of your contacts.

Foo considers competitors to be Gmail, Outlook, Nylas, Front, and browser extensions Boomerang and Rapportive (acquired by LinkedIn) whose features are natively included in Polymail.

In the future, the company intends to integrate with enterprise applications such as customer relationship management tools, perhaps Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. “We see this huge gap between the inbox and the rest of the business applications companies use,” remarked Khan. “Email should extend fluidly into the rest of the business application stack to make the enterprise workflow as effortless as possible. Essentially, we want to do to external communication what Slack has done for internal communication.”

To say Polymail has its work cut out for it is an understatement, as many companies are already fixed on Outlook and Gmail. However, just like Slack saw rapid adoption in a groundswell movement, Polymail could see the same results if incumbent applications don’t pick up on the signs and adapt to changing user needs. Foo said that today his company has more than 16,000 daily active users, with over 12,000 unique domains actively being used on the service.

Polymail is currently free to use, but there are plans to establish a premium subscription offering that will provide more advanced productivity features, as well as integration of your calendar, contacts, third-party tools, and even team collaboration.