ActiveInbox - Review 2022

ActiveInbox is a plugin and a mobile app that turns your Gmail inbox into a to-practice list. With ActiveInbox, yous tin turn emails into tasks and write your own custom tasks. The service also includes a few other capabilities I've seen in other email banana services, such as delaying the sending of a bulletin until a time y'all set and marker letters for follow-up by a certain date. ActiveInbox is a smashing productivity app if you're inclined to use your email equally your to-do list, and the cost is reasonable.

Beware, however. It could atomic number 82 you to stare at your e-mail account more, when reducing email obsession is frequently people'southward real goal. For that, Editors' Option Sanebox is a better service. And if you lot want to compartmentalize your to-do list elsewhere, there are certainly plenty of apps for that.

Pricing and Plans

ActiveInbox has four tiers of service, all of which take the same capabilities and features. The departure is the number of electronic mail accounts each supports, and, at the business organization level, what kind of support yous get.

A Personal user account works with only 1 Gmail account and costs $49.92 annually. The advertised price is $4.16 per calendar month, but yous have to pay for a year upfront. The Professional option works on up to three Gmail accounts, and it costs $69.96 per year.

The Business tier of service requires a minimum of three accounts and starts at $149.76 per year. That'southward based on charging $4.sixteen per calendar month per business relationship, with a minimum of three accounts. As with all the other plans, you lot must pay annually. This programme adds a team admin console also as one-on-one back up for the team lead. Finally, in that location'southward an Enterprise option, and you'll have to contact the company for pricing. The Enterprise service includes custom security analysis and setup.

ActiveInbox's prices are quite reasonable when compared to SaneBox'south, although I'd argue you get more value with SaneBox than ActiveInbox. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the ii services do have some overlapping features. SaneBox has three tiers of service, and for all of them you can pay monthly, yearly, or for ii years at a shot, with a greater disbelieve the more y'all pay in advance.

SaneBox Snack, the beginning choice, costs $7 per month, $59 per twelvemonth, or $99 for 2 years. SaneBox Luncheon costs $12 per month, $99 per twelvemonth, or $169 for 2 years. SaneBox Dinner costs $36 per month, $299 per year, or $499 for two years. With SaneBox's options, you get more features the more you pay.

Should y'all decide to go on your to-practice list outside e-mail, the app I recommend is Todoist. Yous tin use Todoist for free with some limitations, or pay $28.99 per twelvemonth for a Premium subscription. For this toll, you can share some of your to-exercise lists with other people, such as members of your household or teammates. Your collaborators do non accept to hold a Premium subscription to participate.

Another app with to-do list capabilities that'due south great for both solo utilise and team use is Asana. As with Todoist, Asana has a free tier of service that comes with limitations. A nice perk of Asana is that you tin collaborate with a team of 15 people using a free account. A paid Asana Premium account costs $9.99 per person per month, billed annually.

Setup and Security

To get ActiveInbox, you lot can start with a two-week free trial by visiting the visitor's website and following the link to install the browser extension that enables it. Adjacent, yous go to Gmail and cosign the service. When I set up ActiveInbox, I had to disable some Google Labs settings to get the new app to piece of work. Fortunately, ActiveInbox displayed very clear and helpful prompts to help me resolve the problem.

The company that runs ActiveInbox does not get total access to your Gmail data and messages. As per the company's privacy argument, only a limited amount of data makes information technology to ActiveInbox'due south servers. Information technology includes notes, sub-tasks, email rankings (when you reorder messages) based on the message's numeric ID, your ActiveInbox preferences, and your email accost itself as the identifier. Most of the other functions just utilise an implementation of Gmail labels and thus are stored solely in Gmail. The visitor says it also collects some data regarding which features you employ as well equally interactions with its website to brand improvements.

Because information technology runs as a browser extension, you lot accept to enable ActiveInbox on all the computers from which yous access Gmail. SaneBox, on the other hand, works directly in Gmail. Once you set up it up, it works everywhere, including mobile email apps.

What Does ActiveInbox Do?

ActiveInbox changes the appearance of your Gmail. When running, it puts new buttons onto the interface and pushes your inbox way downwards the folio. Where your inbox formerly lived is a task-management console. All your letters are still in the inbox, only the whole window has shifted down.

Conceptually, the app allows you lot to showtime treating messages equally if they were tasks. While I adamantly oppose the concept of using an inbox as a to-do listing, who am I to say it doesn't piece of work for you? The new inbox doesn't exclusively contain emails, however. Information technology tin too contain tasks you write for yourself that are completely separate from messages, as well as subtasks that you have added to a message.

When y'all open a new email message, your Gmail interface gives you options to add subtasks and notes to it, mark information technology due on a certain twenty-four hours, and add a priority rating. Let'due south say I'grand on an email thread arranging a dinner with friends. I might add a subtask to call for a reservation in one case we've decided on a eating house. I could utilise the notes fields for summarizing what times everyone said worked best for them. I could likewise marker the email for further follow-up in two days, when I might want to confirm that everyone is still available. Maybe I need to add another subtask to confirm with the eating place the final party size the day before the meal. (Note that Doodle would actually exist the perfect tool for this particular scheduling job.)

Other features, such equally a delay-send option, let y'all write emails and schedule to send them later, at an appropriate time. Allow's say I've pestered a colleague all day long almost something, and I know I'm getting on her fretfulness. I have ane more matter I need to ask of her, but information technology'south 6:00 p.m., and it's not necessary that she reply until the side by side forenoon. I want to write the email now and schedule it to send tomorrow forenoon. That fashion, it's off my mind and I've finished the chore, merely the incoming bulletin won't agree her up from finishing her work today and getting out of the role.

Many features in ActiveInbox are the kinds of things yous tin find in Outlook, if yous employ Outlook Tasks, and some of them are also found in other tertiary-party e-mail services, such every bit Boomerang for Gmail, Nudgemail, and SaneBox. ActiveInbox's unique features are those related to its to-do list functionality.

Details

ActiveInbox's interface could use work. When you lot install the service, information technology creates a window for your tasks that doesn't always minimize. It's always the same size, even if you take merely one particular in your to-do list. And then fifty-fifty if the to-do list has nothing in it, the window is withal at that place, pushing your entire inbox out of view. I wish the damned thing were collapsible.

The service also creates new Gmail labels on your behalf (SaneBox does, likewise) that now testify upwards in the left rail. They include Waiting, Sending Later, and All (Including Finished). There'south nada incorrect with these labels, but they button my customized labels out of view the same mode the to-practice window pushes the inbox out of view.

1 visual item I appreciate is a calendar that appears when selecting a due date for a message that will become a to-do. I'm a fan of integrating calendars and email because it eliminates the need to open a agenda in a carve up tab. It would be better if information technology looked at my Google Calendar specifically and pulled up appointments on my calendar, though. That would be fifty-fifty more helpful than a generic calendar.

ActiveInbox is not collaborative, then if y'all're in the market for a to-do app that a whole squad tin use together, this own't it. It's really just designed for personal tasks. Todoist Premium and Asana are much better options for collaborating. They likewise offer some integration with electronic mail, so if you're really desperate to merge your electronic mail messages and tasks, you can to some extent with these apps. Only neither of them volition turn your inbox into a to-practice list the mode ActiveInbox does.

A Good Tool for Email To-Doers

As I said, I don't abet using an email inbox as a to-practise list, in part considering electronic mail creates stress and negative emotion, and research shows that it does then regardless of the volume of email. Therefore, I'd rather spend less time in electronic mail, shut my e-mail program when I need to get work done, and use a more-focused and less-distracting to-do list that's dedicated for that i job. Todoist remains my favorite, but I'one thousand also a fan of Asana in team settings. Both are PCMag Editors' Choices.

If using your inbox as a to-do list works for you, then ActiveInbox tin certainly give you more job-direction features. The price is off-white. It may accept a petty while to get used to the new interface, though, and hopefully the visitor will work on making the windows collapsible.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/productivity/16148/activeinbox

Posted by: rickjobill.blogspot.com

Share this post