We used Mailroom for a number of months, because it seemed like a simple solution for group mail. Biiiiiiig mistake: features were underdeveloped, mail went missing, replies went to the wrong people, and worse than that, they updated yesterday with a new AJAX version that literally refuses to send any mail at all.

I genuinely think web applications are the future, particularly when technologies like Apollo come along - but something like Mailroom is mission critical, and a paid product. They appear to have been treating it like a free beta, and as a result many of their customers will have lost business; we certainly have.

Many thanks to the developers of this great project.

- Serge

Curt and Shanti both wrote something, but I wanted to answer a few of the questions also:

1. We currently do not have an address book import function, but its on the list of things to do. However, Mailroom does automatically build an address book from all the emails you receive. When you click on a person’s name, you can see all the messages that person has ever sent you.

2. All email threads are assigned to someone in Mailroom. When you first log in, you see only those emails that are assigned to you and need your attention. If you never choose to look at messages assigned to someone else, this is just like working in your own account. But you probably won’t do that. If someone is out sick or gets buried in email (like we are right now after so many new signups) you can just click over to THEIR messages and help them out.

3. They way you make sure people get what they need is simple: you assign incoming emails to different people and Mailroom should start to follow along and do it for you. It actually looks at the content of the messages to decide how to do this. We are still working on this feature, and we plan to make it even better in the future.

4. As Shanti said, we don’t integrate with Salesforce right now, but we will look into that. We have another product coming later this year that is really going to help out in this area.

5. Mailroom has been pretty fast, but we’ve had a lot of traffic today…we are always working on ways to make it even faster though!

Thanks again everyone for trying Mailroom and leaving your thoughts!

-Charles (and Curt, and Shanti)

1. import address book facility from other mail clients/Exchange?
2. doesn’t having a single account lead to confusion unless it is very clear internally who’s meant to be doing what?
3. can you set up filters so that say: sales/support ’see’ what they need to rather than having to sift through everything?
4. any plans for fwding to mobile?

The idea behind Sprout is that there will eventually be a suite of apps, not just Mailroom. Of course, we’ve gotta get the first product right, first!

Rick

Thanks for the thoughtful take on Mailroom, including the succinct summation of the value props for small business. As for getting the word out, we’re gearing up, among other things, to launch a multi-author blog that will specifically address the use of web-based applications by small businesses. Web-apps are all over the place but its hard to find expert comment on its use by the 25 million-plus businesses in the U.S. under 10 employees. (We recently discovered that co.s with under 50 employees have most of the same issues, actually.)

Curt

I’m glad to read about Mailroom. It’s an appealing idea. Are they specifically for sales and support? I see some of the plans allow access to other POP3 accounts.

This is interesting because I’m trying to find a centralized solution with a great interface (like Outlook) so I can access and send my yahoo email and small buz domain email all from one place. Do you know any services that do that?

~ Greg

-Hari

No beta tag either. Awesome.

Apologies :). I should have noted the author at the top.

Exactly, and this word out must be through the right channels. The more I think about it, the more I like it

cheers
Gaurav

This is definitely a product that should go far. It serves a clear need, and a need that pains a lot of SME’s. I haven’t checked it out on their site yet but from your description, this looks like something every small (and growing) business would love to have, specially if the mailroom team is dedicated to upgrading the features.

-gaurav-