------ As some of you may know, here at TheTechBoy we review products as is, and do not give a product a higher score because it is 'privacy-conscious.' ----
What is Skiff?
Skiff brands itself as a secure, open-source, and privacy-conscious alternative to Google Workspace. (Notice the graphic in Skiff's post, I'll wait) Skiff additionaly supports the Inter Planetary Filesystem. Learn more about this filesystem by clicking the link. I tested out the free version of Skiff which allows you to have 1GB of free Pages storage and 10 GB of email storage. On the free plan, you will receive the @Skiff.com email address. Skiff does have a paid tier. There is an 8-dollar-a-month plan (charged annually) or a 10-dollar-a-month plan. This plan allows users to upgrade their storage capacity to 100GB of Pages and email storage and better access to support. Skiff also has an ingenious method of points, where you will receive points for doing certain actions, and can contribute those points to a Skiff subscription.
How To Use Skiff?
After signing up for a Skiff account, and downloading the backup codes, and setting a recovery email, Skiff allows you to import files from Google Drive. Linking your files is extremely easy, as all you need to do is to link your Google account. Within seconds all of my Drive files ended up in Skiffs cloud. You can edit your Docs files or create new files in Pages. Pages is unfortunately not as easy or simple to use as Docs is, but it does have some interesting features such as a mode that formats equations and code in your document, and Pages also has an array of different templates. Regrettably, Pages does not feature any mobile applications, nor any alternative to Google's Sheets (Pages does support tables), Slides, or Forms.
Pages can publish (share) documents to the Web like Google Docs and offers different sharing settings. Skiff also features workspaces where you can collaborate with people on different documents. For example, you can have a football workspace and you can place documents about football in there, and you can have a Samsung workspace where you can have all your Samsung documents in there. The Documents from the football side will not come over to the Samsung side and vice versa. There is one caveat, you can upload images to Skiff's servers, and you cannot view them without downloading them You can also invite people to join the Workspace, but users have to have a Skiff account to join. Update: Skiff informed me that Pages does have a Mobile Application. 7/14/22 - Update: Skiff added a Drive service called Skiff Drive.
On the Email Front things are a bit better, but only barely. Skiff does offer a mobile application, however, Skiff has less features than the Gmail application. It us more comparable to Samsung Email. You can add labels to emails, but it does not switch all new emails from that address to a specific location. The Skiff mobile application is simply a smaller version of the Web App and offers all of the same features. I attempted to connect Skiff to the Mail client in Windows and nothing happened. I tried connecting it to Samsung Email to no avail. Skiff mail has a system-wide dark mode, two-factor authentication, and receiving email from Web3 wallet aliases. If you forgot your password, Skiff allows you to reset your password by emailing a reset code or contacting support.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, Skiff mail is a simple barebones email provider. Skiff attempts to become another 'privacy-conscious' email provider and does an okay job of it. The point-based system is ingenious, and the ways it can integrate with your Web3 account may deem useful for some users. However, there are probably more useful privacy-conscious email and cloud storage accounts that allow users to view other things than documents in its cloud. To sum it up, Skiff does a decent job of being an email client, but it has a long way to go to even compare to the productivity suites of Google, Microsoft, and even Libre Office online.
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