thoughts on zoho mail

ZOHO Mail is interesting and even promising. But darn it, it's just not to the point where I can give up using Gmail, much as I would really like to do so. Here is a short list of the features I need before I can make a cross over - for whatever it's worth.

Must Haves

1 - Robust email searching. I need to be able to search by word (implemented), by phrase (not), and boolean style (AND, NOT, OR and ideally NEAR). As stupid as Gmail is for not implementing sorting, they get away with it because their search is powerful enough to compensate to a large degree.

2 - Easier filtering - again - look at Gmail's model. They let me check emails from multiple senders and then in one more click let me set a filter containing all of their emails addresses with OR functions. A tremendous time saver if you're receiving lots of emails from lots of sources.

Side Note: since ZOHO Mail lets me set up OR functions for filters, why can't that functionality be exposed when I want to search?

3 - Back to filters - there's gotta be a way to set up a filter for mulitple criteria without having to toggle between the main email window to pick up the email address to be filtered and then the filter dialog.

Nice to haves
- I'd like to be able to hover over an email and be able to see and then grab that sender's email address.
- I'd like to be able to search within search results.
- I'd like saved searches. I suppose filters sort of does this, but it's not as elegant as having a saved search in the same navigation as folder and labels.
- I'd like to be able to toggle headers so that I that I can verify that a apparent sender is truly the real sender. Primarily, this would help with phishing.
- As I move from folder to folder, I'd like the sort order to be what it was when I was last in that folder.

Much as I would like to switch over to ZOHO Mail, now that I've tested it, I see that I cannot do so - not yet.

This leads to a request - which is really a business decision for you folks here: Give me a URL where I can see the change log for what you implement. If/when I see the above features implemented, I will gladly test ZOHO Mail again.

If any of the Must Haves are already implemented, and I missed them, by all means - let me know. I'd love to be mistaken in my evaluation.

- Bal