iOS iPadOS Email apps which do not use a service to “intercept” emails

I used to use Spark email which I enjoyed, but I became aware that they were processing my emails on the way from the email servers I use which I do not want.

I’m looking for IOS apps which support iPadOS well on 12.9”, where the connection is directly between my app and the servers which hold my emails, with no-one and nothing processing it in between.

As I say, I like spark, so anything like that would be appreciated.

Apple Mail is ok, but I’m looking for something a little more.

Lots of discussions here about email clients (as opposed to services with apps). Like

I finally gave up and just used Mail.app for the iPad, but I thought – and I cannot find out if this is true – that if you did not use Spark’s notifications system, then your emails did not go through their servers.

What “more” are you interested in? Email is around 50 years old and a lot of the plumbing hasn’t changed much at all.

I prefer processing my email with server side rules so the client doesn’t have to do anything except display the messages and compose new ones. I have Gmail.app and Mail.app on my iPhone/iPads and use both. I prefer the way Apple Mail displays my messages, but Gmail has superior search and also provides 2FA for login on my Mac, etc.

Spark processes your messages on their server, Outlook stores your login credentials on their server, etc. When it comes to IOS clients it seems like most of the processing “magic” doesn’t happen on device. “yet”

Not according to the privacy policy, for example it says that they delete recent inbox messages from their servers after 4 hours.

I suppose the fact you need an account for them is the differentiator for me. If my email client is working directly with the email services I choose, there should be no need for a 3rd party logon.

That’s a good question.

I want something which looks decent, which allows me to quickly access flagged emails, that allows me to add multiple accounts and reliably indicates (not a notification) when I have new emails. I also need to be able to quickly process mail across accounts.

Spark was nice to use, mail just isn’t anywhere near as nice and with the iPad being my primary computer, I need something that makes me want to use it.

Outlook is another client I also like, but I don’t switch on notifications and the constant prompts asking me to do so really annoy me.

I read something similar on their blog a long time ago:

Spark will not send your account information to our servers if you decide to not use Push Notifications when adding your account for the first time. Please note that this will disable other server side features as well.

However, I don’t see it in the current privacy policy:cry:

In a related vein, in a 2015 blog post entitled “How we handle your account information in Spark” they wrote, “Some people raised a question about why do we store access tokens even if you have decided not to use Push Notifications. It’s a valid question and, in the next update of Spark, we will change this behaviour.”

Does it currently still storing the tokens even if you don’t use Push notifications - I don’t know. A quick search didn’t find them saying the policy changed.

I use Outlook and I don’t get these prompts. It might be because you have notification enabled in the app, but disabled in Settings. Try turning notifications off in the app and it might solve your problem @geoffaire

Thanks Chris, I’ll have a look at that, but I’m pretty sure I had them switched off in both.