AwayFind (for iPhone)

Pros Creates a new inbox with only emails you want to see. Alerts you of incoming emails based on domain, specific address, and within a time frame if you set one. Inexpensive.

Cons In testing, sent mail was delivered from default iPhone Mail email address, not AwayFind address. Little explanation of "Topics I'm following" feature. Piddly alert-tone selection. Bottom Line The AwayFind iPhone app can help you regain some work-life balance dignity by ensuring you will be alerted to important messages and not letting you get distracted by others. It's a brilliant and reasonably priced service, though one major snag in the iPhone app can wreak havoc on your email.

By Jill Duffy Do you go on vacation and spend half the time checking business email, worried you might miss an important message? Or have you ever longed to delete your mobile email apps because the influx of work-related messages is sucking all the fun out of your life seven days a week, but you "can't" because the business could literally go under if you miss a crucial message? Subscription service AwayFind (freemium; subscriptions from $4.99 a month) takes care of all those "what-if" scenarios by sending alerts to your iPhone any time an important contact or message tries to reach you, while letting you silence all your other email.

The AwayFind iPhone app (free to download) puts just such notifications onto your phone in whatever badge or alert fashion you choose. It also creates an inbox of sorts that holds only these important messages. Used in conjunction with the full Web version, the iPhone app can help busy professionals—and anyone else at the brink of collapsing under email—get back an ounce of their sanity. But rather disastrously, while testing the app, I hit a major snag that very nearly wreaked havoc on my email accounts, explained in detail later in this review. The problem I encountered could be avoided if you see it coming, but I certainly didn't.

AwayFind does replicate some of the same functions that the VIP Inbox on iPhone and iPad covers, but it does a lot more, too. It isn't as unilaterally applicable as SaneBox ($6 per month), which essentially weeds out unsolicited emails from your inbox. But for its more specific purpose, AwayFind does an outstanding job of keeping you up-to-date on only what's important in your email for a fair price, but I was disheartened to have hit an insurmountable problem with the app—and never see any fine print (or better, very large warning signs) indicating the problem might occur.

What Does the AwayFind iPhone App Do?
If you download the free AwayFind app for iPhone, you'll first have to sign into an email account to give AwayFind access to your messages. Gmail/Google apps accounts, Exchange accounts, and major free Webmail accounts (such as Yahoo! Mail and so forth) are supported. Custom domains can be, too, if you sign up for a Pro or Unlimited subscription (see Pricing on the next page).

AwayFind recommends you turn off all other email notifications on your iPhone. Likewise, it will remind you that you need to enable its alerts for the app to do its job.

After reading a welcome note that contains additional details about the app, you can dive right into the four alert settings and start customizing them.

The first alert is called "Waiting for *NOW*." Here, you'll type in specific email addresses and domain names of people or organizations, and then enable a time frame (up to 23 hours and 59 minutes), which tells AwayFind to alert you if any of those contacts send you an email during the active time. One neat aspect of this feature is you can go into it and adjust it—turn it off, set the time for longer, etc.—at any time, even while the clock is ticking.

The next alert is for important people. Any email address you enter here becomes a VIP of sorts. AwayFind will always alert you of incoming messages from these people.

The third alert is "Topics I'm following," and there's little explanation in the app about what this alert does. Thankfully, the full website offers this: "Add a word or exact phrase to watch for in incoming emails (subject only)." In other words, it's a keyword alert for subject lines. A more descriptive title in the iPhone app would have been useful.

The fourth and final alert in the AwayFind iPhone app is for "People I'm Meeting Today," a feature that only works if you also connect AwayFind to your calendar. When you enable this setting, AwayFind targets all the email addresses of people with whom you have appointments scheduled and alerts you if they email you on that day.

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