They reset the ratings again this week. Now it’s rated 4.6 in the UK. All positive reviews look like from fake accounts. Similar picture in the US too.
Chinese app review clickfarms have been a thing for about as long as there have been app stores. (Even before that they would grind for ‘gold’ in MMORPGs.)
This CultOfMac article from 2015 talks about how much it costs to make it into the Top 10 lists.
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I knew this industry exists in China. It’s just that Airmail became so desperate lately.
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I’m not surprised. Buggy and unreliable, little in the way of serious functional development, and a customer base irritated by a badly handled switch to subscription (qv Setapp). Not to mention inroads from Spark.
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I actually revisited it last week after using Spark for a couple years, and I’m one of those 5 stars. Reliability seems to be way up. Otherwise I’ve always loved Airmail!
I don’t doubt the suspicion of the OP though. If I were Airmail I’d be doing everything I could to try to restore my reputation…
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I bought Airmail for iPhone 2.5 years ago, found it to be too buggy, but I return to it for a tryout maybe every nine months. Unfortunately I haven’t been wowed by it when doing that so each time I delete it then make note to try it out again in the future.
I get a LOT of email, but I don’t have sophisticated email needs. On iOS I’ve resorted to the Yahoo Mail app (surprisingly good) and Gmail app, with occasional forays to Apple’s Mail app. On Mac I tend to use webmail (also surprisingly useful), but if I’m specifically in my gmail/gsuite I’ll often use either Boxy or Kiwi mail apps.
(I think I’m going to be testing out Postbox soon - the update looks quite nice.)
Also liking Airmail (v4) here, on macOS and iPads. Seems pretty good and reliable – as opposed to Mail which wouldn’t get 1 star from me. The subscription is $9.99 – not back-breaking or bank-breaking. Yeah, they goofed up. It wasn’t a national crises though.
Paying attention to reviews on the App Stores is not a great way to make spending decisions. IMO.
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I would be not surprised by that. Unless Airmail makes some great new version I am not trying it again. I am happy with MailMate and Preside. I recently added SaneBox to my workflow based on this interesting article. My email does anything I want it to 
Currently I am only interested in the future development of Mail Pilot.
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Hah @ “Greenify.”
If only they’d spend that cash on smoothing out the experience…
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A thousand times this ! It could lead the market by leaps and bounds. And yet…
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