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Push was one of the biggest OS 3.0 features that was touted so much. But, honestly there are only a few apps that do it well and that I use regularly. One of them is the recently reviewed iPhone Twitter app – SimplyTweet.

PushMail is a new push-enabled iPhone app that brings new email notifications via Push to your iPhone.

I use Gmail as my primary, secondary and tertiary emails but it doesn’t have Push functions. So, when I read about this new app that could bring Push notifications for my Gmail accounts, I was excited.

First, let’s see how to get it working on your iPhone and then see how it actually accomplishes it.

How to setup PushMail?

• Install PushMail App ($4.99 in App Store)
• Launch the PushMail app and register an account with DoPushMail.com
• Go to your Email account and forward all emails to your <username>@dopushmail.com
• Receive Push notifications for new emails. I received this Push notification within seconds of seeing it in my Gmail Inbox.

How does PushMail work?

I know when I said ‘forward all emails to dopushmail.com‘, you probably went, you want me to do what?  I know I did! Josh at Just Another iPhone Blog asked the same question and the app developer – Simon Patarin explained how PushMail works with total security for your emails

“Believe me, I share your concerns and I have architectured this app as securely as possible:
- you do not have to give away your mail account credentials: it is you who forward the mails for which you would like to receive a notification
- the contents of the e-mail and the addresses are never stored to persistent storage: they only live in memory for the time needed to build the notification payload, after which they discarded
- the passwords used for your dopushmail account is never sent nor stored in clear, only a secure hash is transmitted
- the mails you forward to the dopushmail server are sent in clear, but that’s exactly what they did to reach your own mail provider in the first place, so that does not change the overall security of the system
- finally, you can set up specific rules (at least in Gmail, or with procmail on Unix systems) to exclude from notification any sensitive email (from your bank, etc)”

Basically, our emails are not stored in dopushmail.com servers when we forward our emails to them. They just get parsed in memory and gets destroyed as soon as a notification is built and sent.

If you are still not convinced, thanks to an email like Gmail, you can create filters for non-sensitive emails that you would like to receive Push notifications for and just forward those. Plus, with filters you can avoid getting notifications for dozens of emails that you receive but don’t care to know as soon as they receive.

Plus, with PushMail in place for my important (timewise) emails I can set my native mail app to check email every hour instead of every 15 mins saving battery life.

My $0.02

PushMail definitely fills in the void the regular email services like Gmail, Yahoo leaves us with no push notification facility for the iPhones. But, your email provider should provide you a way to forward your emails. Gmail-filters like setup is the best since you can pick and choose which emails you’d like to get Push notifications for.

PushMail doesn’t store your emails which is a great thing but this means you have to launch the native Mail app to read your emails. It would be great if the Push Notification added a ‘Close’ and ‘View Mail’ buttons that launched the native Mail app.

Would you like to see any more features in it? Or have a better idea of how to enable Push for the free email services. Talk to us.

Update: GPush is another iPhone app that supports Gmail Push notifications. Check it out.

Status: Recommended

Availability: App Store (iTunes link)

Price: $4.99

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: how to, iPhone App Reviews, paid apps, productivity, push, reviews