I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find an invite to Zoho Mail in my inbox. Zoho offers several high quality online office apps. Several months ago I was dismayed to find that Zoho Mail was in private beta, with a lack of information about the product. As usual, I was hyped. Could there finally be an online email solution better than Gmail?

I had tried Zenbe, a mail solution with a good interface and a feature called ZenPages to manage events. It came with a built in calender app and a wigitized sidebar. It rocked. But it also made me realize how ingenious gmail is when it comes to threaded messages. Does Zoho Mail do any better?

Zoho mail reminds me of Yahoo Mail, a spartan interface with folders and a list of options. Creating a new message opens a pop up window to type in. There is a nice ajaxified settings pane, but the rest of the app seems very plane. Zoho offers a free address @zoho.com. It took three minutes for a message from zoho mail to show up in my inbox. It took 30 seconds from Gmail to Zoho. Speed is the real issue with online email, and it’s hard to beat Google’s server farms.

Zoho Mail is a good email app. It’s simple, quick loading, and has a usable design. It’s only problem is lack of features. Gmail has chat, threaded messages, ever expanding storage, and the innovative label system, not to mention integration with other Google Apps. Zenbe has ZenPages, the calendar, and it’s sidebar. The only thing that Zoho Mail brings to the table is a way to manage your documents through your email.

Zoho may beat Google at document creation, but their email solution is lacking.