Newton is the rare email app that works great on both Windows and Mac

There are plenty of good third-party Windows email apps out there, but not many of them work across all the platforms you might use. If you're the type of person who jumps between macOS and Windows, Newton (formerly CloudMagic) might be worth a look. Today, the company is bringing its app to Windows -- it should be available on the Windows Store now. With Newton already available on macOS, Android and iOS (not to mention the Apple Watch and Android Wear), it's now one of only a few email apps that works on basically any device.

I tried out Newton on Windows 10 over the last week, and the good news is that it offers a near-identical experience to the Mac app. For those who haven't given Newton a shot, it's similar to the departed Mailbox app -- it's starkly minimal and puts the focus on whatever message you happen to be reading or composing. There aren't multiple panes to distract you; you either see a list of your messages or whatever email you happen to be reading or writing.

There's a search bar up top, a sidebar that contains all your folders, and a few buttons to filter just unread messages or starred / flagged emails and that's about it. The app has plenty of keyboard shortcuts for archiving, snoozing or deleting email, so getting around the interface without a mouse is pretty easy. And the app supports all the popular email services including Office 365, Outlook, Gmail, Google Apps, iCloud, Exchange, Yahoo and plain old IMAP. Between the many services and devices you can use in Newton, it's pretty easy to find a combo that'll work for you.

I tried the Windows app with several different accounts and found that it worked quickly and without any problems in all cases. Changes I made on one device were synced quickly back to both the original email account (like Gmail on the web, for example) as well as my other devices running Newton (a MacBook Air and iPhone 6S).

The app feels uncomplicated and fast, but there's some sneaky power under the hood if you want to dig into the settings menu. There, you'll find a bunch of "supercharger" features that let you do things like snooze messages, add read receipts, schedule emails to be sent in the future, get reminders for messages you haven't replied to and more. You can also connect 10 other apps to extend Newton's features — you can send files or messages to things like Todoist, Newton, Trello, Wunderlist and so forth. Unfortunately, one of the better superchargers — the recently launched Tidy Inbox -- isn't available for Windows just yet. But the team behind Newton said it should arrive within a couple weeks.

As it was last time I tried Newton, the biggest problem with the service by far is its price. Newton still costs $49.99 per year to use all of its features. Anyone trying the Windows app will get a 14-day trial, but after that, some of the "power" features like push notifications, snooze, connecting apps and more will stop working. If you don't eventually subscribe, even more features will be removed, but it isn't clear exactly how that works. A Newton representative said that eventually the app will provide an "experience that's not recommended." (Ominous!)

So while the app won't immediately stop working, it won't really be a viable option for long after that trial is over. And Newton doesn't offer a per-month plan, so it's $50 all in one shot, a bitter pill you'll need to swallow every year. Although I'm happy to support quality developers like the team behind Newton, the price just doesn't quite feel in line with what similar apps cost. (The powerful Airmail is $5 for iOS and $10 for the Mac, for example. With that said, Airmail doesn't work on Windows.) If you're someone who uses multiple platforms regularly and demands a consistent experience across all of your devices — mobile /and/ desktop -- Newton is an excellent but very pricey option.

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