Zoho Takes Zoho Mail Public, Offline, Mobile

PLEASANTON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Zoho today announced Zoho Mail, the company’s web-based email service, has emerged from private beta and is now publicly available. Zoho also announced offline access and mobile device support for Zoho Mail.

“For an application like Mail, offline and mobile support are key. We wanted to offer these features right out of the gate.”

“Zoho Mail is an important application for Zoho as it plays a pivotal role in the evolution of our productivity, collaboration and business applications,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist. “For an application like Mail, offline and mobile support are key. We wanted to offer these features right out of the gate.”

Zoho Mail Debuts

Zoho Mail plays a pivotal role in the Zoho suite, hence the application's extended period as a private beta release. While users are encouraged to explore all of the features of the freely-available Zoho Mail, highlights include:

Hierarchical folders and labels. Users have a choice of which technique — hierarchical folders or labels — they would like to manage their email.
Serial and conversational email listings. Zoho Mail gives users the option of displaying their email in either serial (e.g., Outlook) or conversational lists (e.g., Gmail). In conversational mode, responses are listed hierarchically to display who responded to whom.
Unlimited Storage. Zoho Mail provides limitless storage capacity for businesses and consumers.
Zoho Chat. For users who live in their email application, Zoho Mail integrates the same version of Zoho Chat found in Zoho Business, Zoho Docs, and other Zoho applications.
Zoho productivity suite. Users can open their word processing documents, spreadsheets, and other email attachments with the appropriate, integrated Zoho applications.
Zoho Business. Zoho Mail is also integrated into Zoho Business.

For an extended list of Zoho Mail features, please visit http://writer.zoho.com/corporate/mailzoho.com/raju/Zoho-Mail-Features.

Zoho Mail Offline

Zoho relies on Google Gears to make Zoho Mail available offline, so users need Gears installed locally to enable offline functionality using Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari web browsers. When users click the “setup offline” link, they will be prompted to install Gears if it is not detected on the local machine.

During initial set up, Zoho Mail Offline downloads up to 250 email messages along with the user’s folder structure to give users the same interface and experience whether they are working offline or online. After initial configuration, users can download up to 5,000 emails, including attachments, into their inbox, sent, and other folders.

Users who don’t want to maintain local copies of their Zoho Mail emails can completely remove their offline storage from their local machine at any time. Users also have the option of placing a Zoho Mail icon on their desktop, so Zoho Mail can be launched like any other local application.

Users can read and write email in offline mode. When users send email while offline, the email is saved in the outbox. Once Zoho Mail returns to online mode, these emails are sent out automatically.

Zoho Mail automatically switches between online and offline mode based on the availability of a network connection. Users do not need to take any action. However, when the available network connection is slow or unreliable, users can choose to enter offline mode by clicking the “work offline” link or the Zoho Mail desktop icon.

Zoho Mail Mobile

Zoho Mail now offers online, mobile access via support for the Apple iPhone. Zoho has optimized the Zoho Mail interface for the iPhone’s Safari browser, delivering the complete Zoho Mail feature set while the iPhone has a cellular or WiFi network connection.

For more information on Zoho, please visit www.zoho.com. To get breaking Zoho news, please visit and subscribe to the RSS feed at http://blogs.zoho.com/.

About Zoho and AdventNet

Zoho is creating the most comprehensive suite of affordable, online collaborative productivity applications and business applications for today's knowledge workers. To date, Zoho has launched 19 different applications and more are in the works. Zoho has received numerous awards including a 2008 PC World 25 Most Innovative Products Award for Zoho Notebook, and “Best Enterprise Start-up” at The 2007 Crunchies. Nearly 250 developers work on the Zoho suite. For more information on Zoho, please visit www.zoho.com and blogs.zoho.com.

Zoho is a division of AdventNet, in business since 1996 providing innovative software products and serving more than 40,000 customers worldwide. For more information on AdventNet, please visit www.adventnet.com.