Newsletter Reader by Meco 4+

I’ve tried numerous newsletter apps (Matter, Readwise Reader, Slick Inbox, Stoop Inbox) and web services (Mailscribe, Subscrib) and Meco is my favorite. It has the most seamless user interface workflow—from adding newsletters to moving on to the next ones to searching and filtering—and feels polished all around.

Like many people these days I try to stay away from Gmail and think twice before granting apps access to my email accounts. That's why I tried all the other apps mentioned above before Meco. I read the privacy policy and FAQ, and the developer seems uninterested in the shady business of selling customer data, which is great, but you never know these days.

So I ended up creating a new Gmail dedicated to Meco and newsletters. I'm glad I did. A new Gmail for Meco is a good idea even if you aren't concerned about privacy, because Meco creates many Gmail labels and filters for its functionality. One idea I have for the developer is to at least nest those labels under an umbrella label "Meco" so the UUID messiness can be hidden from view. I noticed that Meco-created labels are hidden by default, but it still creates a mess on the sidebar when the label list is expanded.

Other than that, I highly recommend this well-designed app. Kudos to the development team!

Download this app and never look back, it quite literally changed my life. I get notified as my newsletters come in and I’m able to stay on the cutting edge of my interests. Where as before I’d have my email cluttered and didn’t know what was coming in. They have dark mode love that and I love that I can swipe left and right to go forward or backward a story. Its so worth it.

I really liked the idea of this product, but in actuality it’s a frustrating setup. The site promises “connect all your gmail accounts” but there’s an undocumented limit of 3, which I ran into while receiving cryptic error messages (uh oh, something went wrong - try again or contact support).

After contacting support, and spending two days back-and-forth, I finally get an email this morning from the developer Sean suggesting that I switch my newsletters on the extra accounts to one of their inbound email addresses.

It’s incredibly promising, with a slick interface. But the issues during set up (constantly having to reconnect, multiple device failure, not realizing the max of three accounts, despite searching through FAQs, support docs, and web resources) left me unimpressed and looking for an alternate.