THE ALTERNATIVES

HEY is a complete email service built to be different on the server side of the equation, but there are a couple of apps and services which attempt a similar (if not quite as revolutionary) thing on the client side.

SPARK

SPARK email client has a feature called Smart Inbox which aims to categorise your incoming messages in a similar way to Hey It’ll divide them automatically into People, Newsletters, and Notifications. Only messages from real people appear at the top… There’s also an option to “snooze” emails, which sees them disappear from view until a time you specify. There’s also a robust search system.

Spark works with all the major email services (Gmail, Exchange, Yahoo!, icloud and Outlook), and is free at its most basic level. For £7.99-a-month you get more storage and a broader set of features (including priority support), although that tier is aimed more at business users than consumers.

NEWTON MAIL

OFFERING similar features to Spark (it tries to weed out email from your inbox that it doesn’t think you’ll find important), Newton offers a couple of features beyond that, which you may find useful.

It tries to keep track of conversations and will resurface threads that have fallen down the list if it thinks you have forgotten to reply or finish the conversation.

It’ll also offer read receipts if you really want to know if your intended recipient has opened your email (as long as they allow it), and there are options to snooze email, or schedule replies.

Newton Mail costs £49.99-a-year.