[This is the part where I disclose that this is a paid review for Edison Mail. I should also disclose that I’m very stubborn and only do reviews for products I would recommend to a friend. These are my honest thoughts.]
Some people just walk around with 900+ unread emails in their inbox because they can’t find the time or effort to read or delete them. It’s so lazy, right?
It’s me. I’m some people.
933 emails, to be exact.
I’m a Gmail girl, and even though I know Google has ways to sort email and keep my inbox somewhat organized, it just hasn’t worked very well for me. Obviously.
But about 20 minutes ago, I installed a free app called Edison Mail onto the ol’ laptop and now I’m down to zero unread emails. ZERO. On top of that, all my critical emails are now kept separate from all the other stuff I get.
Now, emails containing travel itineraries, shipping updates (probably shoe-related), and messages from my favorite bloggers are held up on a pedestal where I can see them. At the same time, the riff-raff is relegated to a separate folder where those emails can be promptly ignored.
What Does Edison Mail Do?
For starters, Edison Mail lets you consolidate your email accounts into one inbox. So if you primarily use a Gmail account but you’re still hanging on to that Yahoo email address from the early 2000s (no judgment here), you can dump them both into this app so that you only have to check one inbox.
You can also unsubscribe from those annoying messages you keep getting from overzealous brands that flood you with one email after another with one tap. Seriously—I tried it. Bye-bye, daily DSW emails. Don’t get me wrong, I adore DSW, but even a shoe lover like me is not shopping for new sandals every single day.
One of the coolest things you can do with Edison Mail, however, is automatically sort your emails by type. The app comes with an “assistant” feature that scans incoming emails to categorize them as travel, packages, bills/receipts, and entertainment. This way, your Amazon package update isn’t mingling with your water bill.
The assistant also tracks your online purchases and watches for a price drop on any item from a store that takes part in price matching. If it finds a price drop, Edison Mail will send you a pre-filled email draft to request a refund for the difference — all you need to do is press send.
Kind of makes you wonder how much money you’ve been wasting by overpaying for products all this time, doesn’t it?
How Does Edison Mail Work?
Edison Mail is an app, so the first step is to download it from Apple’s App Store or Google Play on your desktop or mobile device. Then, sign in to your email accounts through the app, answer a few questions, and you’re done.
As you can see, the appearance is really clean. Edison Mail automatically sorts your existing emails into one of two sections: Focused and Other.
The “Focused” section is where your most important mail goes, like receipts and personal emails.
The “Other” category holds messages coming from mailing lists and other sources the software thinks are less valuable to you.
Is their prediction always right? No. For example, a confirmation message from my photographer about an upcoming family photo shoot ended up in the Other column. Whoops.
Fortunately, it’s super easy to move emails from one category to the other. And, from here on out, the app knows to place emails from my photog into my Focused inbox.
What About Privacy?
Some users complain that Edison Mail is intrusive—that it reads your emails. “Isn’t that an invasion of privacy?” some wonder.
But the company says it only scans e-commerce emails, aggregating the data it collects on its users, and removing personal data so that everything is anonymous. Then, Edison Mail’s sister company, Edison Trends, sells the information to companies for market research. That’s how the app stays free to use.
At first, the thought of Edison selling my data made me recoil. But then I remembered that my iPhone has my fingerprint and a literal map of my face. Not to mention that Siri has probably been listening in on my conversations ever since I activated my first iPhone in 2010.
And if you have Amazon’s Alexa device in your house, well… you don’t have any privacy either.
Not to sound paranoid, but unless you’re living off the grid in some tinfoil-encased shack, nothing is truly hidden anymore. And since you’re reading this—on the internet—I’m going to assume you’re not living like a pioneer.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that instead of being creeped out by Edison Mail’s use of my data, I should be commending them for being transparent about it. The disclosures are right there, on their main webpage, in print big enough for your grandmother to read.
The Bottom Line
If you have trouble keeping your inbox organized, or you do a lot of online shopping, I think Edison Mail would be a perfect solution. I had been putting off the task of sifting through my emails for many months.
If I had known how easy it would be, I would have installed this app a long time ago!
If you’re ready to take the plunge, hop over to the App Store or Google Play.
What do you think? Comment here (yes, we actually read these)!