Kiwi for Gmail App Reviews

Its a decent app... but its still not quite there. It freezes frequently forcing me to quit and restart it, and the message count never updates. Also, it’s still missing features like the ability to search within a message. Its also a bit concerning that it hasnt been updated for so long in spite of the many bugs.

Kiwi for Gmail allows me to monitor all of my gmail accounts in one glance, without having to sign in separately for each one. Very nice.

Kiwi is intuitive and easy to use. I especially like being able to open another account with just one click.

Otherwise I would rate it 5 stars.

I purchased this app to avoid having Google Chrome open all the time and interferring with normal web browsing. Plus I can switch through my various accounts with ease. Problem though with the current version is that it isn’t compatible with inbox. Chrome had a recent browser update and this app is based on the older browser. I clicked on the go to inbox at the bottom right corner and got a blue screen with “Its been a while since your browser was last updated. Please upgrade to the latest version to continue using Inbox.” Now I can’t get out of this screen and back to the traditional Google Mail interface. Pretty much unusable at this point… Please update this so I can use it again! Note: I would give this 5 stars if this problem didn’t exist and would once it is resolved.

I recently switched to Kiwi for Gmail from Mailplane. Kiwi does everything that Mailplane can do and Kiwi is a bargain when you look at Mailplanes licensing structure and upgrade fees. I had been a Mailplane user since it came out. It too was a great one-trick pony but over the last couple of years either through Google or Mailplane the app began to develop annoying little nuances. Not earth shattering but enough it say, “Oh, here we go again.”, when you started Mailplane. Kiwi for Gmail has no such nuances and does the job… and it’s cheaper than Mailplane. So why only 4 stars? Actually, it is closer to 4.75 stars. I knocked a little off because the “account” banner across the top could be a little larger and easier to read. (Yeah, I’m old.) Bottom line: If you prefer a dedicated app for handling your Gmail account(s) Kiwi for Gmail is the one fo you.

If this program was stable, it would be fantastic! As is, randomly fails to display one account when it displays the other two, or worse, about half the time when printing a transparent window pops up with no content. Moving on to something else since this one’s unreliable.

This App was supposed to be more powerful the the Mail App on Macs, it’s not. It is nothing more than a browser email inside of an App. At least with Gmail, you have Boomerang, this doesn’t have it yet. I feel like I wasted $10 bucks. No biggy, just like this App, no biggy… Sorry - I don’t enjoy writing negative reviews, sob if I am wrong, please tell me what I am missing.

I have several gmail accounts and it gets old signing in and out of all of them in order to access my mail. So, this app is a significant improvement on my workflow. However, I am annoyed by the fact that one account or the other always seems to freeze requiring me to restart the app in order to get into it. If not for that, I’d rate it 5-stars. But, it loses a star for the hassle. I’m using Yosemite on a 2009 iMac 24"

This app is terrific, works when others fail.

This app is okay but has bugs that have made it a pain to use. The most prominent that I deal with multiple times each day is switching between accounts/windows and getting a gray screen. Refreshing the window doesn’t seem to have any effect. I have to minimize the app and re-open it for it to work again. It’s pretty annoying but not that big of a deal.

For some reason, the first email account I attach to Kiwi will always work no problem. But if I get a notification for my second email address, and I try to go to it via Kiwi, it will give me a blank screen, so I will have to quit the application and re-open it. Its very frustrating, and its definitely not worth the $10.

I’ve had specific feedback for the Zive team and they’ve been responsive to those questions. Getting there, and once all is addressed this will be perfect.

I’ve been using Mailplane for years. Kiwi is every bit as functional, and it provides a better “out of the browser” feel. Other than that, it is a high-fidelity presentation of the Gmail interface, except that you can use multiple Gmail accounts simultaneously. I have five accounts that I monitor, three of which I use heavily. Kiwi is up to the task. Kiwi has a few rough edges. First, printing of e-mail isn’t quit working at the level of Mailplane, but Mailplane was never real good at it either. Printing from a Google preview presentation for an attachment doesn’t work in either product. In Kiwi, formatting of some mail with with embedded images can get stuck. It isn’t a common issue. Inbox doesn’t work in Kiwi. In Mailplane, it worked before it was supported. This too will pass. In my short experience, Kiwi is on a fast release cycle as minor issues are addressed. This is great. But minor issues remain. For example, I’ve seen a message window not render formatted text entry correctly (e.g., underlined text disappeared from the screen). A refresh of the window fixed the problem (the message was correct), but the effect is wierd. Also minor. This would be a five-star product except for the occasional glitch. The glitches don’t hurt the functionality because Gmail itself protects your work, but these sort of things were sorted out in Mailplane a long time ago. Kiwi is faster, cleaner, and more integrated with MacOS compared to Mailplane. Both apps can only approach the speed and functionality of Gmail in Chrome, until there is nothing more to be done. Mailplane is mostly there. Kiwi is almost, and still improving.

The app is very good to work with. Accessing multiple accounts could not be easier. Only problem is the app freezes up quite frequently. Sometimes it requires a “force quit” to get out of it and reboot.

I have never been this organized. to have all my gmail accounts, many of which had faded into the oblivion of forgotten passwords, at my fingertips again, is amazing. love love love.

I’ve used other third party g-mail apps but this one works the best by far. I can easily switch between two accounts wich is what’s important to me. All the other g-mail features seem to work flawlessly.

The developers say this is not just an app shell around a web client. Maybe that’s true in the nuts and bolts, but from the user perspective and usage, it is. And understanding this limitation helps understand why some of the annoying things happen with it. For example, many of us have more than on Gmail account and use them in different Chrome windows, each Chrome window logged into a separate Google account. Like I have one for work, one for a company I help out, my personal one, and the one I don’t want my wife to know about. So on many of the Chrome apps, if you launch them, they can’t run inside this program (Calendar being a good exception) and hence will open in a new browser window. Problem is, it’s probably not the same Google account that you want it to open in. For example, I manage a Google Apps business account. If I choose “Manage this domain” then a new browser window opens with an error that says I must be logged into a Google Apps account. If you understand these limitations and are OK with them, then this is an awesome app. But for me it ended up getting so annoying that I ended up going to another email app. :-(

This is exactly the app that I’ve been wanting. I prefer to leave email fully hosted and usually run browsers in private/incognito mode, which makes continual logging in painful. This solves the dilemma for me. Well worth it.

I switched over to Kiwi from Mail directly because I was sick of the memory hog that Mail can become when you have a very large gmail instance (including even if you limit the number of emails Mail stores). I do love having the GMail interface available to me and working with the search to find older mail is great. However, I’m giving this 3 stars since I can’t use more than 2 keyboard shortcuts for the app. I’ve also had a few crash situations and a few new mail window failures to show up. Still worth the $9.99 price tag if you like it when your MBP’s fan doesn’t turn into airplane mode, but more keyboard shortcuts would be great and make me raise my rating significantly. They don’t have to be global shortcuts (like the current ones are) they could just be in-app focused shortcuts.