Spark Mail is now available on Windows with a new UI, and a premium subscription

Ashwin
Oct 5, 2022
Updated • Oct 5, 2022
Email
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Spark Mail, a popular email client for macOS and iOS, is now available for Windows. The app's interface has been given an overhaul.

Spark Mail homescreen
Spark Mail for Windows and a redesigned interface

The new UI for Spark Mail adds a Homescreen, which displays a greeting with your name, a nice background wallpaper, a clock widget, and a couple of other options such as a Smart Search bar. More importantly, the homescreen implements a feature called "Email Focus Time" that you can define. When enabled, it serves as a reminder to not spend too much time on mails, to help improve your productivity.

 

Click on the Open Inbox button to access your mails. Things have changed here too, there is a Smart Inbox at the top of the screen, it lists important mails from all your accounts (not unlike Outlook's Focused Inbox), while other messages are displayed below it. It also groups mails as notifications and newsletters. You may mark an email as done by clicking the dot next to it.

You can search through your mails and perform various actions quickly from the Command Center, which can be accessed using Ctrl + K or Cmd + K. The mail client now supports OAuth for logging into mail services such as Gmail and Outlook.

The email client shows a banner when you receive a new mail, with options to accept or block mails from the sender. This behavior can be changed from the app's settings. Spark Mail can be set to display Priority Mails at the top of your other mails in the list, it shows 5 lines (mails) by default, but you may choose to view up to 10 mails.

Spark Mail new settings page

The Settings page in Spark Mail has also been redesigned, and includes options to configure the time to Send Later (schedule emails to be sent later), Reminders for mails that haven't received a response, and Snooze mails that you want to deal with later.  The additional options are interesting, but the new interface is a little too bright for my liking. The app is also available on Android and iOS, if you want to try it on your mobile phone.

Spark Mail has not been updated on the Mac App Store with the new design yet. You can download the new version from the company's website, and install/use it along with the old one.

Note: Spark Mail's macOS app is about 598 MB in size. The version from the app on the App Store is 288.2 MB, the difference in the size suggests that the new app is likely based on Electron.

I've used Spark Mail on my iPad a few years ago, before trying it on my Mac. Spark's free tier is sufficient for basic email usage, but most of its special features are locked behind a paywall.

Spark Mail Pro pricing

Spark Mail Pro costs $7.99 per month for individuals, while the annual subscription has been priced at $59.99 ($4.99/month). Previous subscribers are eligible for a 30% discount on annual subscriptions, which brings the price down to $41.99. You can view a comparison chart on the company's website, to learn about the differences between Spark's free vs premium features.

Spark Mail free vs pro features comparison

A one-time payment would obviously be better for users, but it could be tough for a company to sustain its business. That said, the prices for its services could have been better. While the Spark Pro plan is completely optional, I think that $8 a month and $60 for a yearly subscription is quite expensive for an email app.

In comparison, Microsoft 365's annual subscription costs $69.99, and it gives you the full Office suite experience with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access and the Outlook mail app.

Airmail for iOS and Mac did something similar a couple of years ago, when it locked some features behind a subscription. But its Pro plan costs $2.99 a month, and its annual plan has a $10 price tag. In retrospect, that seems very affordable compared to Spark Mail's Pro tier.

Spark Mail adds a "Sent with Spark" signature for free users

The last feature in the comparison chart mentions that the free version of Spark Mail cannot remove the "Sent with Spark" signature, the app adds this to every email that you send. You can remove the signature from the mail manually before sending it, but this can become tedious quickly, which makes it an aggressive marketing maneuver to push users towards its premium subscription. Such annoyances could also drive users away from the email client.

If you're looking for a free alternative to Spark, it's already there on your Apple device, I'm talking about the stock Mail app, which is free and likely has everything you need for managing your emails. Take a look at the features in macOS Ventura's Mail app, it includes Undo Send, Send it later, Reminders, etc. The new Mail app is superb, and the features also available on iOS 16. Gmail for iOS and Outlook are good alternatives as well, and you can try Thunderbird if you want an open source app on your Mac.

Summary
Spark Mail launches on Windows and introduces a premium subscription
Article Name
Spark Mail launches on Windows and introduces a premium subscription
Description
Spark Mail is now available on Windows. We take a look at the new features, and the premium subscription model.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. JMGG said on January 19, 2012 at 8:25 am
    Reply

    You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?

    1. BalaC said on January 19, 2012 at 9:42 am
      Reply

      I think its thunderbird

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
      Reply

      It is Mozilla Thunderbird.

  2. Salaam said on September 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm
    Reply

    Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.

  3. Claud said on December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am
    Reply

    If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.

    1. Lynda said on February 12, 2013 at 3:37 pm
      Reply

      THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!

    2. Chad said on November 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm
      Reply

      Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…

    3. Ivan X said on January 21, 2021 at 4:50 pm
      Reply

      Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.

  4. Andrew said on October 26, 2013 at 7:06 am
    Reply

    This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)

  5. Charles said on December 7, 2013 at 7:23 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.

  6. garth said on November 7, 2014 at 7:13 pm
    Reply

    You are a god – thank you!

  7. Faisal said on February 9, 2015 at 10:09 am
    Reply

    thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)

  8. Simon said on March 24, 2015 at 11:36 pm
    Reply

    Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers

  9. Olu said on April 14, 2015 at 1:35 pm
    Reply

    Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
    Thank you

  10. Coenig said on July 23, 2015 at 7:36 am
    Reply

    Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)

  11. Fali said on January 20, 2016 at 4:19 pm
    Reply

    Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.

    1. MIki said on January 10, 2019 at 11:54 am
      Reply

      I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!

  12. Christina said on January 20, 2016 at 6:14 pm
    Reply

    Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007

  13. Oz said on July 22, 2016 at 3:20 pm
    Reply

    Great tip! Thanks!

  14. Tracy said on September 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
    Reply

    Worked for me, too – thank you!!!

  15. shawn said on September 9, 2016 at 10:25 am
    Reply

    It’s Worked for me, too
    thank you very much!

  16. Jari said on October 31, 2016 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!

  17. Michel H said on November 30, 2016 at 11:08 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much. Solved!
    Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
    Thank you again. M

  18. Ziad Bitar said on January 9, 2017 at 2:00 am
    Reply

    This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.

    Thanks.

  19. Anonymous said on February 15, 2017 at 5:24 pm
    Reply

    Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.

  20. Rochelle said on March 6, 2017 at 11:59 am
    Reply

    Thank you, this worked !!!!

  21. anom1234 said on May 20, 2018 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!

  22. JC said on October 12, 2020 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!

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