Gmail’s Mail Fetcher: Why You Shouldn’t Forward Messages into a Single Account?
June 10, 2008
So what’s up with e-mail forwarding? Most people have multiple e-mail accounts and find it a pain to access each one individually. Many email providers allow users to set their accounts to automatically forward all messages to a single universal email address. So why don’t more people do this?
I have found that most people shy away from email forwarding because they like to keep their inboxes separate. According to eMarketer, more than 94% of users in the U.S. (~160 million) utilize at least two e-mail accounts, and 65% of users (~128 million) employ three or more (3+) accounts. A principal reason users have multiple accounts is to stay organized. Personally, I have an account for business, an account for personal use, and an account for my newsletters (my “bacon” or “becn”). I like it that way. I know when I am in my business account, it’s all business. When I am in my personal account, it’s all fun. And my third account is for shopping, reading random newsletters, and killing time.
Gmail offers a forwarding service called Mail Fetcher. Mail Fetcher allows users to access up to 5 non-Gmail email accounts from within the Gmail interface. You can set Mail Fetcher to tag the messages by their source accounts through a color-coded labeling feature.
I am not sold on Mail Fetcher for various reasons. The first reason is that users are required to configure their POP3 server settings to utilize this solution; and most people do not know how to do this. Furthermore, some email services do not offer POP3 capability and others, like Yahoo and Hotmail/Live, charge for the privilege. Most importantly, however, I don’t like Mail Fetcher because it is not an effective organization tool. In my opinion, there is no substitute for the folder structure offered by email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird. Because you cannot filter or sort messages by their source account into separate folders, Mail Fetcher and other forwarding features simply add more clutter to your inbox. I have separate accounts for very specific reasons; my email needs to be organized and neither Mail Fetcher nor email forwarding is the solution. Sorry Google.
Yes I know. Its kind of ridiculous that I am responding to my own post, especially since no one else has left a comment. But a friend of mine sent me an email pointing out that this post argues against the NutshellMail business offering. (he was being nice by not posting the comment).
So I would like to clear up any confusion.
I am not a fan having messages from various accounts dumped into a single inbox (on an individual basis). It creates inbox clutter and lack of organization.
However, NutshellMail.com puts a spin of the concept of forwarding. Instead of having each message individually forwarded to your main inbox, NutshellMail will send you a single email that provides a snapshot of all your various messaging accounts. From the NutshellMail Update, you can then select specific messages to be forwarded into your main inbox. This enables users to keep accounts separate for organizational and productivity purposes, but still access any messages through a single primary inbox.
Hope that clears things up.