Inbox2

Inbox2 is a communication platform whose purpose is to help you bring together your email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail and Exchange) or any custom IMAP/POP3 accounts and social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Hyves, Yammer, Twitter) into one application.

Prior configuration options

The tool needs one account or social network to be configured in order to load the information in the main panel. You do no need to set up all your accounts at this stage, as you can do this later on from the Settings panel.
Setting up an email account means specifying the email address and password, while a network service can be accessed by entering the authentication parameters (username and password). Minimal user intervention is required in the tweaking process, as the program is able to automatically import data.
In addition, you may manually configure an IMAP or POP3 account by providing details about the username, password, account type and port.

User-friendly layout

The application reveals a well-organized suite of features and employs a multi-tabbed layout for helping you work on different projects at the same time.
The Home panel is the place where all your accounts are displayed, and you may filter the information by a particular account and switch between detailed or simple list view mode.
A real-time stream reveals the updates from your social networks. Plus, you can check out a list with all your contacts, messages, documents, status updates and profiles, all documents (they can be opened or saved on your computer), as well as a list with images.

Email message replies and other communication parameters

Inbox2 gives you the possibility to reply to your messages, save the current message as draft, add attachments, alter the text in terms of size, alignment, font and color, as well as select the background color.
Furthermore, you may archive or delete messages, view lists with unread and starred items, as well as add items in a ‘to-do,’ ‘waiting for’ and ‘read someday’ lists. Plus, you can insert custom labels and perform searches throughout your inbox.

General configuration settings

Inbox2 keeps a list with all your accounts and social networks, and lets you alter them. A profile can be created by adding details about the display name, signature, and default account. In addition, you can make the application your default email client and load all your messages (by default, the tool downloads 50 messages from all your accounts).
When it comes to tweaking the view mode, you may hide or show the preview pane, enable conversations, show profile balloons, and reveal real-time stream column.
What’s more, you can make the program automatically check for new messages and stream updates at a user-defined time, refresh the Twitter search at a custom interval, as well as look for new contacts. You can mark messages as read when viewing them in the preview pane, and show popup notification and play sound upon new messages.

Bottom line

All things considered, Inbox2 delivers a user-friendly environment and a handy suite of features for helping you gather all your email accounts and social networks in a single platform. On the downside, we have experienced several bugs while trying to set up the Twitter account and adding custom labels. The program needs extra time to start up and load your messages.