SaneBox vs Really Great Mail Rules

I have the opposite problem with Sanebox. New senders are almost always sent to SaneLater and I’m at a loss for how to fix it. Their support send me to simple articles on how to setup your inbox, unhelpful. It’ll likely be the reason I won’t renew.

I let my Sanebox subscription expire about 6 months ago. Since then I did a ruthless unsubscribe, lots of spam allocations, and my email process is as good if not better then when I was with Sanebox.

With that said, I believe that the lessons I learned while using Sanebox had a lasting positive impact on my email use. I owe them for that, and it was worthwhile being subscribed for the time I was with them.

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I did exactly the same thing. I paused my Sanebox subscription, unsubscribed from lots of junk, put some mail rules in (server side) and I am almost where I was with Sanebox (but without paying anybody).

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I think you’re supposed to just move them to the inbox. But yeah, this is the difference between having a default-whitelist and default-blacklist system.

I definitely do this, but I must for every new sender. I worry I miss some skimming SaneLater.

Do you know of a way to turn off default-blacklisting in Sanebox?

No, I just started the two week trial. I doubt I’ll pay, mostly because of the confusing pricing system.

It’s not that confusing: just pay a lot. :moneybag:

:grin:

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Oh, that makes it easier: No.

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I’ll play dumb, I was a Sanebox user for a few months and enjoyed it. Due to other circumstances I had to cancel my subscription. How does one setup or use mail rules? I’m using Gmail but occasionally glance at my email in the Mail app on my Mac. Should I use something like Airmail or something? I’m a bit overwhelmed with emails at the moment and find myself deleting 30 or more each day.

I use only the mac mail app. Yes, even for gmail and I never leave mail on the server so my Mac is the repository for all my mail both sent and received. Within that context I use go into the mail app preferences, rules and set them up there. I use SpamSieve to try to filter out spam but I do check it daily anyway, far too many real messages get flagged as spam for me and vice versa. Here’s a simple example. We order a lot of stuff on-line and I need to track when things come in. For kindle books I add them to my books to read list and remove the DRM form them in Calibre. Because fo that I have a folder in mail for orders that have not come in. Here is my rule to deal with kindle books as they come in.

40%20AM
Then periodically, usually once or twice a month I go through the Order Info folder and move completed/delivered orders to the orders rcvd folder and run my de-DRM checklist on the kindle books and add them to the text file of books owned.

Long time SpamSieve user. It takes care of a lot of the work on my hosted MacMini server. Use the stock Mail app for filtering. I have VIP’s set up and those stay in the Inbox, the rest goes into a Later folder. There are a couple of rules that have a different priority and those messages get filtered into a different folder I need for one of my jobs, at a glance. I only have around 6 rules setup and without Sandbox anymore, it just seems to work fine.

I don’t like Airmail or Spark for the desktop. for iOS, I have tried them all and keep going back to Apple Mail

Dennis

Presuming you are using IMAP (or the Gmail app or website), the best bet would be to set up any rules server-side. That way, they can be applied even if Mail isn’t open on the Mac.

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Interesting thread. I’ve been using Sanebox for a few years now - just renewed my subscription - but I’ve also been experimenting with “Really Great Mail Rules” to see how much they can replace Sanebox. I’ve created “mock Sanebox folders” based on rules with common newsletter senders. Then, if a new email goes into a regular Sanebox folder, I’m trying to be in the habit of either:

  • Moving the email to my inbox, if I want to tell Sanebox it’s important (I have a default-blacklist strategy to email)
  • Amending an existing rule to include the email, or
  • Creating a new rule to include the email (while being careful that I don’t create too many folders).

My goal at the moment is to see if I can make Sanebox obsolete for me by the end of my subscription (start of 2021).

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So spent the better part of an hour this morning, setting up @Later mailboxes in Mail.app on my Mac Mini “Server”, for all my Gmail accounts – as per the approach of @Steinmanal above.

With Mail.app open on the Mac Mini, seemed to be working. Logging in to my various Gmail accounts online, saw the mailboxes that were created, with the new corresponding labels.

Over on my MBP, fans spun up as Mail.app (with Mail Act-On/MailSuit installed), started downloading/moving the emails around, as per the rules set up on the Mini…

About 30 minutes later – see an email in my MBP Mail.app, that I want to add to the rules created over on the Mini. Open up Jump, and VPN back into the Mini, into Mail.app… And… nothing…

As in, all my recently created rules, are gone. Vanished into thin air…
:angry:

Must say, the above has given me some serious pause in working much more on this approach. Most likely as a result of some interference between GMail rules on their side, or possibly MailSuite rules in my MBPs Mail.app – but still, quite disappointing…

[Edit:]

Ok, some I’m a bit stubborn – and a sucker for punishment

Despite my earlier point about being nervous to spend much more time on this, what with rules disappearing, I figured I would give it one more try.

After setting up the rules again inside Mail.app on my Mac Mini – I went back a few minutes later, so see how they were behaving.

This time, when I clicked on the new rules (that were thankfully still there), a series of bizarre actions started taking place, as per the screenshots below

Firstly, as I systematically clicked on each new rule to “Edit” them, the name instantaneously changed in turn to Rule 8, Rule 9, Rule 10 etc., for each of them, as below.
Furthermore, I could no longer edit them, with the “Edit” button being greyed out.

Rules1

Quitting Mail.app, and then re-opening the Preferences/Rules folder, left me with this - as in, the original rules before I started trying all of the above – with my ‘new’ rules having disappeared a second time…

Rules2

I officially give up. For now. :wink:

I’m not a big fan of Thunderbird mail, but I have used it in the past to set up elaborate rules for one of the top executives of my previous employer. He was mobile only 95% of the time. I ran Thunderbird, logged into his account, on one of my utility macs to filter & sort his mail for him. He did not have any rules on his iphone or mac.

Thunderbird rules were always, IMO, more flexible and reliable than mail.app. You could let it run your rules and use mail.app for everything else. It’s free, might be worth a look.

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@BradG, really sorry to hear about this. For what it’s worth, I haven’t experienced this issue. I am able to create and modify mail rules on either of my Macs without any trouble. I have dozens of rules, but I keep them unchecked on my work Mac and checked on my home Mac.

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Did I mention I was stubborn? :sunglasses:

Thanks - been adding them back (again), but just doing it waaaayyyy slower, rule by rule. Aeems to be working. Maybe my adding too many too quickly was the issue.

Quick question though - would these rules sync across devices automatically? You mention having them active on the one, but not on the other?

Yep. The rules sync across Macs.

Hi Beck,

We’re sorry that our support did not do a good job in answering your question. :frowning:

To prevent new senders from being filtered to SaneLater or any other training sane folder, you can adjust this setting:

You’ll want to adjust this setting to “Allow Interruptions from strangers”. If we are not 100% sure that a contact is unimportant, we’ll leave it in your Inbox for you to decide.

You can find this setting on your folders page and on your advanced page of your SaneBox Dashboard.

We’ll also send you an email with this information.

If you have any further questions - we’re happy to help.

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How did this pan out for you, Brad? I’ve historically had trouble syncing rules and I recently discovered that MailSuite maintains its own set of rules in Dropbox separate from the Mail.app rules in iCloud. I found that I needed MailSuite installed on each of my Macs instead of just one.