What users complain about in Spark Mail: AI Email Assistant

So many issues

I wanted to like this app so much. I have been back and forth with support for weeks and it’s like talking to a wall. Contacts do not populate when sending emails, not even in forwarded emails with one of the people in copy. The worse part is the notification badges. They would show 34 emails, when you open the app there’s like 3, without reading any of them once you exit the app there’s badge is gone completely. This is just using @icloud email, no subscription either, I wanted to test basic functionality before subscribing, this can’t even do that. The response from support is to check all email clients and make sure there are no unread emails… the only other client I have emails forwarded from is Gmail and that’s pretty ridiculous I would need to constantly check Gmail for unread mail. They asked if this happened in my home only due to firewall, antivirus etc., this happens everywhere, cellular service, other WiFi’s as well.

Support is Atrocious

Sadly, I’ve given the Spark team plenty of opportunities to respond to me (which they initially did on X) but they have since gone dark without any follow up on the ticket they said would create. This is not only unacceptable but ultimately disappointing. I pay for this service, have used them for nearly 10 years as my email client and even explained to them that if they weren’t going to get back to me, that I’d have to resort to leaving a negative review…well here I am. I have ALWAYS had issues with using my working App Specific Password (required by Apple) to connect my iCloud account when upgrading to a new phone. Every year. This year I finally reached out to ask why, as I have to create a new ASP and then log into EACH of my 4 devices every single time. Other apps have no issue with my ASP, only Spark. I would NOT recommend this app and suggest you take your email business elsewhere.

Freemium

I pay for a subscription and I’m pleased to see that some options in the mobile app aren’t “available to me." A lot of other bugs and annoyances anyway. Back to Gmail I go.

Decent - If you can afford it.

Unfortunately, all of the meaningful functionality is behind a paywall. I was really starting to like the app but cannot justify another expense when Apple does an okay job with their free app.

Update

PLEASE FIX THE app specific password error, it’s driving me crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everytime you guys update the app this stupid message comes up. I really like the Spark app... I’ve used it across all my devices for years. I refuse to switch to another email service. Glad to see avatars on this latest update. Keep up the good work.

Please fix

The latest update doesn’t work on my 18 pro max.

Terrible update!

Absolutely terrible update without options to customize appearance to simple design of received/pinned/deleted! Who in the world approved it?

Terrible

This app constantly fails to refresh and consistently has loading errors when opening emails. Updates never fix the issues.

Price keeps going up for features i (and others) don’t want

Love this app and all I want is the ability to prioritize senders and group emails. All this BS AI stuff and they think they can charge $100/year. I’d gladly pay $50/year for the features that I use but this is absurd. Best of luck to Readle.

Not the right app for me. Please no bundling ‘conversations’. At least give me the option.

Unable to eliminate ‘conversations’ and maintain separate emails for reading and replying. Further, their systems had regular difficulty downloading messages where competitive systems downloaded emails without issue at the same time. Spark is not my recommendation for email assistant. I wanted to like it but it doesn’t meet my needs or expectations. I don’t like emails automatically converted to a single ‘conversation’ where it is much more difficult to track and reply accordingly. Just my opinion.

Dictation

Bizarre - dictation when writing an email is extremely error prone. Strange as this does not happen on any other app, and definitely not on the ‘native’ Apple email app, It’s a shame. This is a very good app but seriously let down by its inability to use dictation - which means that everything takes much longer.

Few really annoying features

First is that you can’t block scammers without paying. Like make that make sense. Second is for some reason the way they have sent up. Every time I click on a document in the APPLE mail app it opens a new draft email in spark. I’ve complained to apple and they said it was how spark is formatted. It’s extremely frustrating.

Dangerous Scam personal info

Recently, I came to my attention that I sent an email from a name that I never went by. but was legally affiliated to me more than 15 years ago. The name came from my outlook.com address email, but the email was sent from Sparkmail when I send the emails from outlook.com, it has my name correct as it should and always has. I've only been using Spark for less than a year, so there's no way they could've known about that name I never would have given it to them as part of my information aside from the fury and the emotional damage that you have caused, somebody tell me how you felt it was appropriate or acceptable for you to dig into my past 15 years prior, find a name that I never went by and use that in a professional email correspondence. How dare you? You should be ashamed, and i should SUE

Good, but a couple issues

It definitely works better on my desktop computer than my iPhone. On my phone, for some emails, it only displays the email with the sender and subject, but often won’t display the contents of some until much later. The little blue circle just spins until it times out. Then if I try to open the email again maybe an hour later, the contents will finally be there. This mainly seems to happen with my main email account (yahoo). So if I need to read it quickly I have to use the yahoo email app. The other issue is that I have to go to the spam folder regularly to find emails I have marked as “not spam“ many times, but they keep being sent to spam anyway. Otherwise, I really like Spark especially the ability to block domains.

App is broken

I have been happily using this app for many years, clear back to the classic version. However, since iOS26, the app has become almost unusable. If it decides to fetch my emails from my gmail account, which it doesn’t on many days, when I try to open the emails I’m met with the dreaded spinning circle. If it doesn’t download the emails at all then I have to go to gmail and see them and they open fine. After spending several days and one entire day trying to fix the issue on my end I’ve given up. There’s no point in paying for another email app, especially if it’s not working. And I don’t believe the customer should have to go down 50 rabbit holes and it still doesn’t fix the problem. There are a lot of features I liked and that was why I was willing to pay for it. I might consider reinstalling it if I can be assured that it’s been fixed, if not…it’s been nice knowing you. Oh, and the ai stuff, that I could and have lived without for 76 years, I think that’s just unnecessary bloat and another reason to charge more money.

Used to be great

I’ve used this app for years but I’ve now discontinued use after constantly rising prices and a bug earlier this year which archived most messages in multiple mailboxes. I worked with support and they said it was a user issue when I pushed back they said they have no idea because we enabled debug logging after it happened. As a result I had 12,000 emails I either had to leave as archive or manually fix myself. The app is also filled with more AI stuff that isnt useful. It’s become increasingly bloated, slow and buggy as the years go by. Just canceled my subscription I’ve had for 5+ years and deleted the app.

Confused

I’ve given this app several chances over the last 5 years. It’s so complicated, I cannot find the email that was sent just a few minutes ago because it is so smart if filters my messages in some weird place that seems always take me time to find. I just want to find the email that was I received just minutes ago. I often have to leave this app and go login to the google web mail just to have a simpler interface where I can find the email that was just received.

Issue with waking up

I enjoy Spark as my main email app, but this latest update introduced an annoying “feature” where an open email scrolls to the top every time the app is brought into focus. For example, scroll to the middle or end of a long email, click on a link to an article on the web, then return to Spark. Your email viewer will automatically scroll to the top of the email, forcing you to scroll down to find the place where you left off. Very annoying!

👍🏾Mailbox replacement

Idk what yall did to break the app but now it’s show badge number just to be on zero it’s slow it’s moving weird. I never used apple mail in 12yrs but im think of switching 🤦🏾‍♂️

This app used to be great

Spark used to be the only mail app for all my mac and ios devices. it has gone so down hill. very slow updating, crashes often and just plain terrible. i paid for the extra features for quite a while. use the core mail app its way faster and better.

Stopped working after 6 years of using it.

Stopped working after 6 years of using it. It error out,”Account can't be added If you're using a Google Workspace account, contact your administrator to ensure IMAP is enabled.”

Doesn’t reliably fetch emails.

I really want to like and use this app! However, it stopped fetching email content reliably on all of my devices. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I went through troubleshooting with my email provider and then attempted to do the same with Spark. Unfortunately, they were unable to be of much help. So, I guess I am off to find a more reliable app for syncing multiple IMAP accounts on multiple devices. Two stars.

Going to have to try something else 👎

Please everyone read the negative reviews not the positive. There's no pop mail option. Frequent authentication errors with popular web services like Yahoo and Microsoft Outlook/Hotmail. Threaded view is unwelcome. There's inresolved Spark Android issues that remain. It used to fairly good but no longer. Maybe it's time for an app reset and re-engineer Spark by someone else.

Update broke app again!

The more you update this app, the more broken it becomes. Loading is slow, and push notification is broken. What are you even trying to do???

Way to ruin an app with your update

This used to be my all time favourite app but ever since they updated it, it's been consistently glitchy. Asks me to log on constantly even when you are writing in the process of writing an email. For some reason it can't remember what trash folder is configured so I keep deleting emails just for them to keep coming back! Your desktop app also got worse with the update. What are you guys doing. This has become all fustrating! Will be looking for a new app oh and NO ONE WANT THE FREAKING AI!!!!!

Very slow, features don’t work

Retrieving email is extremely slow with this app. They keep adding features, but the app keeps getting worse. Very slow.

Remove Conversation View!

I think the worst thing about the forced conversation view, in my inbox all I see is what I wrote back to my client! Super unhelpful if I have important emails, and all they show is my simple response in my inbox. PLEASE ALLOW MORE OPTIONS

Shame. Good but you can’t cancel threads

No use to me as an email client as you can’t turn off threads. It then makes it impossible to print documents in a thread. Can just print latest email or the whole complete thread. Unworkable. I need to print individual emails and invoices etc. quite often.

Used to be Amazing

Spark used to be amazing. It was simple, minimal and did everything what an email client should do. Nothing more, nothing less. With every update I see +ai ads. The final moment for me was when I tried to send a mail and they are advertising AI… Worst part is, I cannot even hide or close it. App has become slower and sometimes I have to click on buttons multiple times to do what it’s supposed to do and do see that the size of the app and the documents it store is increasing quite fast… why? You had an amazing product, now it’s no different than every other AI garbage out there. Going back to Mail. PS: You email client on MacO now takes ages to quit. There is a whole sync process that happens.

Removed iOS translation support

iOS’s native translation function was supported when I started using Spark again a few months ago. It has since stopped functioning. I’m not subscribing for a service I already have for the privilege of using it on your software platform. Deleted the app.

Logs out randomly often

A fine app that manages to sort through a lot of the junk but repeatedly logs out for no reason and sometimes doesn’t show any emails when logging back in. I’ve had to contact their help department numerous times.

Definite potential

Really trying to love this app. I’m specifically using it with Microsoft 365, which is undoubtedly part of the issue. There are some persistent bugs that make the UX frustrating at times, but so far tech support has been amazing with their help. I’ll keep plugging away at the bug reports and will update my review as things improve.

Buggy

The app becomes so much more buggy after the recent “AI update”. Just to name a few, I can’t paste in email address in a new email if there’s already an address. I can’t do control-option-v on a Mac client to copy without formatting. Attachments just randomly become invisible in incoming emails. Sadly, I’m jumping ship.

worst development

432MB App 1.82GB Documents!!!!! remove unnecessary libraries!!!!!! add button to remove caches use AI to help developers to add this feature

Early days yet but so far good let’s see.

I honestly don’t like Gmail, but I’m pretty much forced to use it for work. Personally, I’ve never found the Gmail interface particularly easy or enjoyable to use, so I’ve been looking for an app that makes managing email simpler. One of the biggest things for me is email signature formatting. I need it to look right and work consistently, and this app seems to handle that really well, which is a big plus. That said, I’m still very new to the app. Being repeatedly asked to sign up for additional features when I’ve only just started using it isn’t really for me. I also feel the trial period is too short to properly understand the app’s full potential and decide whether it’s something I’d actually pay for. I’m not someone who wants to subscribe to a lot of features upfront, especially when experience tells me I probably won’t use most of them. For now, I’ll continue using the app and see how it goes. The core experience and signature handling are promising — I just need more time with it before deciding whether it’s worth committing to.

Moving out

It has been so bad lately that I can’t handle this anymore, content not loading or takes forever and what is worse moving important emails to Spam I keep moving emails back to inbox to change settings need to pay , so that is a No from me

Worst email

This is the worst email app I’ve ever used. I’m using the free version and it has the potential to be a great app… but you can’t block emails unless you pay $10 + a month. That’s ok, I understand that. But you can’t block emails put mail in spam , that’s where this app sucks.. I’ve put tons of emails from the same sender in spam yet they pop up every day in my inbox box. Even after paying $10 a month for a couple months every one I blocked when paying now is coming back through again. I give this app two stars max…if every one I makes as spam when to spam or trash I’d give it a four star. As for now I. Looking for another email app because I’m sick of it not trashing spam and frickin news that I don’t want.

⭐️ ⭐️

Lately this app has had numerous update issues and is just plain slow. Stop pushing the AI assistant. I have it turned off in settings and it still shows up when using the app. Soon to be going back to Apple Mail.

$$$$$$ 772.00 CAD for an office suite????!!!

There is NO CHANCE I am paying almost $800 for an office suite. This is greedy and selfish and garbage.

not happy with Spark

Please note that this is the only email management app I've used, so i cant say how how it compares with other ones. I held off from updating to the newer version with AI or broader AI integration,And the only reasonI decided to upgrade it because the Spark app has been buggy in that it wasn't allowing scrolling to read full messages. ** I should actually have choice as to whether I want to allow this direction of AI autonomy, and wether i allow IT (pseudo intelligence/ LLM algorithms, which we all know, can and DOES lie and DOES hallucinate under the right conditions. and i DONT CARE IF THATS ONLY A SMALLER PERCENTILE occurrence compared to chat. its still there, and i say NO!!! NO IS NO TO SHOVING THINGS DOWN OUR THROATS TO US WHO VALUE CHOICE. NO!!!!!!!!). In theory things might work well right most of the time but I don't want to be on that other side of that percentile when it does happen. It has tick boxes but doesnt give me option to proceed without those terms of changing things. otherwise it wont allow me to use the app as before.I'm starting to wonder whether Apple is even worth it. Maybe I'll consider the DeGoogle route. modern tech is a Barron robber of peace. i minimise it as much as possible. ** there are other things i am not happy about due to circumstances but i understand this is a capitalist materialistic society forcing people to make money to survive and live and so i suppose fair is fair to developers. i will see what else there is. it worked better when i first installed 2 years ago. this year or past few months its just been having niggling quirks. ** so now i am locked out of the app. password. not recognised. says can send to my email, but i cant receive email through app. which leaves having to log in to hotmail which use to be somehow possible to read email some time ago but now its so complicated in working out HOW to just find where incoming emails are and i dont know is it my phones ios 16.7 or something else. i dont know that hotmail or spark are worth it by i am kind of in a difficulty with this. it sucks. i