Welcome! If this is your first time here, you may want to subscribe to get updates in your RSS feed reader. Thanks for visiting!
…and a partridge in a pear tree.
Zenbe is a relatively new Web-email client, competing directly with Gmail. Doing anything Google already does is a bold thing indeed, but Zenbe’s trying admirably.
There are a lot of things I like about Zenbe, including several things Google would do well to imitate. The beauty of Gmail, though, and the reason I use it, is that it does so many things relatively well that it’s hard to vote against. Zenbe does a few things well, and a few things poorly, to the point where I really want to use it, but just can’t bring myself to.
6 Things I Love About Zenbe
1. The Sidebar of Awesomeness. Right next to your email, there’s a sidebar. In that sidebar, you can see your Calendar, Tasks, Twitter, Facebook, Contacts, and others. One thing I don’t like about Gmail is you’re constantly opening and closing new windows, and with Zenbe it’s all in one place. Viewing your email, contacts, and calendar all in one place saves me time, mouse clicks, and sanity.
2. Lists. I am a serial list-maker. Groceries, books to read, awesome things to talk people’s ears off about- everything goes in a list. Zenbe’s a simple, easy, bare-bones place to keep all my lists. Zenbe Lists is a separate application from Zenbe the mail client (I’ll get to that), but between the great iPhone app and the easy use on the Web, it’s a really great tool.
3. Folders AND Tags. I like keeping folders in my email. I’m used to it, and somehow it 
just makes more sense than having tags. My favorite, though, is having both. I can put a message in my “Work” folder, and tag it @Reply. It’s how I’d choose to work, and only Zenbe offers the ability to use folders and tags- with Gmail, it’s just “Labels.”
4. Better Attachment Handling. In your Zenbe page, there’s a whole section devoted to “Files.” The files are attachments you get in emails, and you can deal with them any way you want. Search only attachments, sort them by file type, delete attachments without deleting email, tag files, etc. I love that you can deal with files separately from emails, and it makes Zenbe a legitimate possibility for use as an online storage tool for files and backups.
5. Integration with Twitter/Facebook/GChat. I spend a lot of time in Facebook, on GChat, and on Twitter. With Zenbe, all three of those are in the aforementioned “Sidebar of Awesomeness,” as I’ve termed it. I can check Facebook updates and change my status, Tweet to my friends and read tweets, and chat on GChat, all within the Zenbe page. As someone who wants to do as many things as possible, in as few places as possible, this is a huge benefit of Zenbe.
6. Conversation View/Individual View. Sometimes it makes sense to view conversations as conversations. There are responses, and grouping them all together helps to understand what’s going on- not to mention cleaning up your inbox. Sometimes, though, it can be hard to dig through Gmail’s conversations to find a specific email I’m looking for. With Zenbe, you can choose whether to view email conversations as conversations, or in a more traditional format, one email at a time.
5 Things I Hate About Zenbe
Before I start my rants, I’ll concede- Zenbe is still very much in beta. They’re improving, and hopefully over time will add all five of these features. As it stands right now, though, there are five major reasons I can’t bring myself to use Zenbe for my email.
1. Limited Storage. As I mentioned, I’d love to be able to use Zenbe as a file storage system, much like Google offers with GSpace. However, Zenbe only offers 4GB of storage in their system, which goes unbelievably fast. With Gmail, the storage is limited but always growing, and I’m fairly convinced at this point that I won’t catch up. With Zenbe, I’d be constantly afraid to run out of storage- I don’t want to have to deal with that.
2. No integration with Lists. This is the most ridiculous feature I can think of. Zenbe Lists, a great application with a great iPhone app, doesn’t- repeat: does not- integrate with Zenbe. There’s a space in Zenbe for “Lists”, but it neither works with the better lists app nor syncs to your iPhone. I’d probably make Zenbe work if I was able to use the two together, but they don’t. Until they do (which Zenbe promises, eventually…) I can’t use Zenbe. It’s still too many windows to have open, and isn’t better enough to make me leave Gmail.
3. No IMAP Support. I check my email in a number of different places- my iPod Touch, my cell phone, occasionally in a desktop application. Without IMAP, checking between all of them doesn’t work well- things don’t get marked and changed correctly, I have to repeat actions- it just doesn’t work. Without proper IMAP support, which Gmail has in spades, I can’t use Zenbe. No IMAP means only checking my email functionally in one place, and I’m not willing to do that.
4. It Doesn’t Play Nicely. This is similar to the last point. As best I can tell, there’s no iGoogle, Netvibes or gadget, no way to work with other applications online. It wants to be a standalone app, and does it pretty well, but for those of us (like me) who want to use it elsewhere, there’s very little opportunity given by Zenbe. Gmail, once again, does this really well- you can bring other things into Gmail, and see and check your Gmail with several other applications. With Zenbe, no such luck.
5. Integration Bugs. This is something that should be fixed shortly within the beta, but as of right now the Twitter and Facebook integration, which I want to love, simply doesn’t work a good bit of the time. I spent a good deal of time trying to fix the bugs, but it seems that Zenbe, Facebook and Twitter have a communication problem in their relationship. Until that’s fixed, a huge reason for using Zenbe at all is shot.
Zenbe is rapidly improving and fixing their product, and is making it better all the time. Once they do, I’m likely to be a Zenbe convert and evangelist. Until then, though, my experience with Zenbe was too mixed and issue-riddled to be worth converting to.
What do you use for email? Why? Let us know in the comments.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you so much for your review of Zenbe. We really appreciate all feedbacks during our beta, both good and bad one. I do want to point out one error in the review, we do support IMAP. That was introduced in early Oct. You can find the IMAP setup instructions here: http://www.zenbe.com/help/mail_pop-imap I use it with my iPhone everyday
I would also like to add we’ll in the process of integrating the Lists iphone app with the main Zenbe site. That’ll be coming soon. Lastly, if you can send us a private email with some config info about #5 the integration bug, we’ll try to track it down and fix it. I use both from inside Zenbe and I’ve only seen those errors once in a blue moon. I think twitter’s connection limit is very low. If you use any other twitter app, it is very possible our connection is refused.
Again thank you for the review. We’ll continue to work hard and improve the service.
Cheers.
hey dumba** gspace is not a google service
@Above- Fair point. All I meant is that when you use Gmail, GSpace is available- who makes it is less relevant. With Zenbe, there’s no such thing, which means the combination of GSpace and the large storage of Gmail can’t be replicated in Zenbe.