I've meant to take RoadSync (Dataviz implementation of ActiveSync - Microsoft Exchange based push email) for a spin since RoadSync 3.0 was released back in December.
RoadSync got an upgrade early April which prompted me to finally give it a try - I'm glad I did.
RoadSync sports an impressive feature set. Needless to say, the push email experience including automatic sync of addresses and calendar works great.
But what I like most are support for some features I have been missing from Mail For Exchange.
At this point I think it is important to note that while Mail For Exchange (Nokia's implementation of ActiveSync - Microsoft Exchange based push email) is a free download, RoadSync is not free but cost a mere $49 for one unlimited license. (RoadSync is available as a free 30 dial trial here)
Some of my favourite features of RoadSync are:
Support for "Text Zoom" - three different font sizes
I can't remember how many times I have received questions from readers about how to increase the font size. I don't know why this is not a feature part of the base operating system (it should be) but I'm glad it's implemented on RoadSync.
The font size can be set to small, medium or large.
Meeting Response
With RoadSync you can directly respond to Outlook meeting invitations from your device. Easy-peasy - the way it should be.
Mailbox Subfolders
This one is not that important for me. However, I know that for some of you this is very important.
RoadSync allows those of you with multiple mailbox subfolders residing on the Exchange Server to access those folders wirelessly.
It is easy to manage which mail folders to automatically synchronize.
E-mail messages can be moved from one folder to another, similarly to how folders and email is managed on the PC.
E-mail Flags
One of the benefits of mobile email is the ability to "process" email while otherwise not being productive. For an example, on a train, waiting in line etc.
Deleting irrelevant email and flagging email for later action is a great productivity enhancer while on the fly.
GAL Support, Look & Feel and Layout
RoadSync also supports Global Address Book lookup. It's not that important for me since I have 95% of my contacts stored locally on my device but if you work for a big company or don't have your contacts stored on your device it is an important feature.
I also like the layout of the menus and the look and feel of RoadSync. There are some differences between RoadSync and the standard mail application / Mail For Exchange giving RoadSync a slightly more polished look.
RoadSync is a great alternative to Mail For Exchange. It's hard to compare the two since one solution is free and the other solution is not.
As expected, RoadSync, being a premium alternative, provides more features. $49 buys you support for among other features; Mailbox Subfolders, GAL, Email Flags, Meeting Response, Font Size etc.
If you are looking for those "missing" features RoadSync is for you!
Awesome overview! I’ve been waiting for a good overview/comparison between Roadsync and Mail For Exchange. It used to be $99, but it looks like they lowered the price to a much better $50. Nice! I think I’ll be trying Roadsync soon. A follow-up posting on any bugs or annoyances would be great
Thanks Dez, so far I’m in a honey moon stage. The only slight annoyance is that when you open an email and start reading and scrolling through the text, the top portion of the screen (where the information about Sender and Subject resides) doesn’t go away. This top portion (not very big) stays put giving you slightly less room for rest of the text. It’s a minor thing but the only drawback I can think of at this point.
Cheers
Ed
Well I guess that can be seen as a good and bad thing. I know in very long emails I hate having to scroll all the way back up to find out who is CC’d on the message. I guess it should be an option to turn on/off. BTW, just wanted to say your site has always been the most influential nokia blog since I got my E62. Keep up the great work!
-Desi
I like the GAL option added to Road Sync, however you cannot see the phone number associated with the individual.
@Desi.
Thank you for the warm words. I appreciate it!
@Param
True, only name/mail address is visible. Does “normal” GAL lookup support phone number and other information?
All sounds very interesting, is there anything like this for mac users who dont use Outlook?
Does this support HTML emails? One thing I remember from an early beta of this was that it didnt have suport to display html emails.
Ed,
Yeah normal GAL lookup pulls up all the information, such as phone number, pager, etc. I hope newer version of M4E supports GAL lookup.
Is this just an e-mail server, or does it handle categories / contacts as well: what I really want to know is if it syncs categories in calendars and contacts, unlike what Nokia PC Suite allows.
@Param,
Thanks for the information. I also have high hopes for next version of M4E.
@D to the bizzo Says:
This version of RoadSync does not support HTML email.
[...] Well done to the E-series blog for trying out RoadSync and giving it a detailed write-up. In view of negative comments about Mail4Exchange, it's good to see a very fully featured alternative for users of Microsoft Exchange and fans of push email. [...]
I liked the user interface and really liked being able to zoom the text. Problem I had with it was the battery drain and memory footprint. It doesn’t really run in the sub-background like M4E and the activesync connection drained my battery about 2-3 times faster than M4E. Worse yet, even when I turned off activesync, it kept turning itself on in the background so I had to uninstall it.
The problem I had was that I couldn’t open up url’s in the email - it doesn’t highlight them. It’s the same with phone numbers.
I’m pretty sure you can do that with Mail4Exchange.
The subfolder support is great though.
I’ve been using RoadSync for several months on my e61, and it’s ok, but not that great. The support is atrocious (procedure driven, impersonal, slow). Moving emails to sub-folders fails most of the time with an error about not being able to proceed while a sync is in progress (sort it out guys!). I also now find that my phone locks up entirely since installing RS - I have to wait 10-20sec for the phone to respond to key presses again. It doesn’t support HTML emails. If you want to read the remainder of a partially downloaded message it goes through the ENTIRE sync process - so what is very quick on a PalmOS Treo is painfully slow with RoadSync. The product has great potential, but right now it’s a very basic app. $99 didn’t seem great value to me, $49 is a fair price. I hope they will listen to feedback and add many more features to widen the gap with M4E. For a strong email client I’d pay much more than $99 - for business users like myself the email client is a critical business tool.
Ollie,
Wow, none of that sounds good. I’m not sure I’d want to install something that would lock up or slow down my otherwise rock-solid E62. Since you’ve been using it for a few months already, how often do they release updates for the software? And if so, are they good about fixing bugs in each release?
Ollie,
Totally agree. I’ve used Roadsync with Exchange 2007 - its ok - but not great. I find it amazing that Nokia go round telling everyone how great the e-series is with email yet I’ve not found a decent business mail solution.
Compare it to WIndows Mobile 6 and S60 is dead in the water, even with these so called fantastic third-party solutions. I really do think that most people review these solutions in 5 minutes, see their email and shout how wonderful it is. Live with the solution a while longer however and you just begin to wonder what Roadsync are doing for their $49. I mean come on - wheres the innovation?
Roadsync: If you don’t sort out this product soon with M4E catching up I see no place left for you than the front of magazine cover discs!
We use Roadsync here for our E61’s as well. Though our management has Blackberries (the new 8800s, very nice toys) now. The reason we had to switch to BBs is that most of our execs have an insane amount of contacts (1500+) and with Roadsync it literally takes ages to sync them. One sync run takes about 3-4 minutes at least. Though if you have less than +- 1000 contacts you are good to go. Then I would recommend RoadSync in an instant. I suspect this sluggish behaviour whily syncing comes from the inferior ways the E61 handles its contacts. You can start to see slowdowns in the address book once you have alot of entries in there (regardless of having RoadSync installed or not). But I know I will give my Blackberry away after the pilot here is over and switch back to my E61. Just be cautious if you have a high amount of items in your contact folder.
[...] A review of RoadSync on the E-series. [...]
I’ve been running WM5 devices the past 2 years. But since Windows is Windows (reboots required to often and its more or less sluggish) I recently switched to E61i and M4E wouldnt sync subfolders as such I went to RoadSync to check.
True, it syncs subfolders, but for me as a Outlook PowerUser I have loads of subfolders & sub-subfolders all which have mail put in them by the server via rules. RoadSync does the job (I dont run push-email per se cause I really dont need it to run every second) so I sync every 15 mins on days and every hour on nights.
I discovered rather quickly that my rules weren’t working so I had make them “client only” because RoadSync wouldn’t show me which subfolders hade unread mail in them. I told this to Dataviz who actually listened (as much as to tell me to tell the developers).
I’m satisfied with RoadSync as it is. Some features requires Exchange 2007 which is a drawback - but it is the same on WM5/6-devices so.. HTML-mails, flagging of mail (to be synched to your server) is only supported by Ex. 2007.
Since my company runs Exc 2003 I have to wait. Nokia and/or Datavis will never be the same as running ActiveSync on a WM-device so deal with it. or get at WM-device
I have a swedish HTC Hermes (TyTN) for sale 
I have no choice - N95 does not work with M4E so I have to pay for Roadsync. Whilst it is a very good product, there are some problems I am having with it:
1) Sync issues - about half the time, the auto sync (once an hour) does not work. I have to manually do this at least twice a day
2) Access point issues - even though it says it is trying to sync, it does not open the GPRS or Wifi connection at all and just sits there. The only way to fix this is to reset the connection altogether at the config menu.
3) On OS9.2, the annoying thing is that the Roadsync is always resident in memory (making this spinning circle thingy that is very annoying on the icon or folder that it is situated. I wish they can hide the app so this does not happen.
Otherwise, I am loving the N95. I look after the SOE’s for my company and includes the Phone and PDAs as well. Its because of this reason (M4E not working on it) that I have to announce that N95 is not supported phone from us. If only Nokia stopped putting in “E” series filters into the M4E (eg 1.5) and continued to allow “N” to function, then it would be fantastic.
[...] E-Series » Blog Archive » RoadSync Rocks! Richtig coole Alternative zu der Orginal Push-Mail Lösung von Nokia… ob allerdings die 49 Dollar gerechtfertigt sind, sollte jeder selbst entscheiden.. (tags: e61 push mail solution nokia) [...]
I just installed RoadSync on my e61 after using mail for exchange for a long time. So far it seems to work okay but my e-mail key will not launch the roadSync app to write a new e-mail. Anyone else overcome this issue?
I’m still working with RoadSync and have discovered more issues. It seems that when there is a link in an e-mail that RoadSync does not let me use the link, if fact it is not really a link, just the text without the hyperlink. Another issue, it seems that I have to save an attachment before I can open it, at least with a word doc or spreadsheet. I am using Quick Office and with M4E I could just open the attachment after downloading it. What am I missing - is RoadSync this bad or are there setting I am missing. Also, I can almost watch the battery drain on the thing now. I don’t think RoadSync Rocks, if anything, it is a rock.
Just got the new Nokia E90 and as with previous S60 phones the Nokia exchange sync software do not work that well..
often hangs or just refuses to sync.
After many reinstalls etc.. i kicked it in the teeth and Installed Roadsync.
It works great on the E90 (fast processor) and always..
I like the product.. !!
I love the ability for Roadsync to sync folders, which is critical for me. However, scrolling and reading individual emails is painfully slow. Presently, I have both M4E and Roadsync installed, and reading the exact same email in either app is like night and day. I haven’t seen this mentioned yet, so I thought I would throw into the mix.
Can we move to the next or previous message while reading emails through RoadSync (just like the ordinary mail does)?
It’s really bothering me for back to the mail menu then click the next message.
I have tried both MfE and Roadsync. They each have their strong points. With Roadsync the best features are that it used the Profiles groups, so that is will automatically use the WLAN at home and UMTS on the road. Also I can open subfolders and I can set an email back to the unread status. MfE has a smaller footprint and when opening the MfE mailbox I can start the sync process directly. With Roadsync I have to start a manual sync from a completely different program location. This is the biggest problem so far for Roadsync. I cannot say anything yet about power drain. MfE seems to be more stable, Roadsync easily looses stability and continues to give sync errors, I even had to reinstall once. Roaming by use of profile groups and setting emails to read/unread make me to use Roadsync for now, but if MfE catches up…
Email I’ve just sent to DataViz Support, see what’s coming back … Sorry for the lots of text …
I was inspired.
”
Hi,
This is as such not a bug report more like a usability improvement suggestion report.
If this is not the appriopriate way of getting my message through, please forward to Product Development (and put me in copy please).
I switched over yesterday from MfE to RoadSync, based on some review. I was using MfE since it came out. It did have it’s good and bad points.
I must say initially I switched over to RoadSync because of the zoom text support and the (proclaimed) AP group support. Both are not exactly as I was hoping they would be. I didn’t do the trial, maybe I should have done that first. But anyway I bought the product because I believe sustained product improvement needs funding and input from it’s paying customers.
Anyway, now I’m on RoadSync and I think there could be improvements made to lots of areas to make it (a lot) better.
1. Access Point Groups are not working/supported as envisioned. There’s no switching between Wifi and 3G the moment I leave the home premises. It doesn’t even try to connect to anything else. I did verbose logging and even then I can’t see what RoadSync is trying to connect to, apart from the previously connected WiFi network. Why not loop over the list op access points in sequence, existing in the group, once a network connect failure has happened. Look at Fring, which has a very good Access Manager. It would be great to have that functionality (or a similar, via the build-in AP Group definition, working solution).
2. In case point 1 can’t be resolved because ‘too hard’ or ‘too much work’, can one have in the main Email list screen an option to reset the access point ? Or directly allow to select a new AP without the strange 2 step process ? Why does one first need to reset and then change ? If one resets the AP, then one normally also knows what the next one should be. Now it’s hidden several menus deep in the sync application.
3. Can you provide a “sync now” button in the main application screen, not just separately in the Sync program ? I hate switching over to that one just for executing a manual sync. I feel the main program should be the only one, not needing the Sync program every time one does something else than simply reading a mail.
4. Can the zoom function be extended to the mail overview/list screen ? That way more info could be fitted on one screen.
5. Once opening an email, it would be handy to have ‘fast navigation keys’, such as gmail, to scroll down/up line by line (sort of scroll lock function), independently of the cursor position. Now if you want to read the text on the bottom of an email, off-screen, you have to move the cursor several lines down before you can even start looking at the following lines. Also 2 extra shortcut keys for “next” and “previous” mail would be handy, saving time to browse mails. Working together with point 6. if invoked in that mode. Nice universal solution might be the keys ‘2′ and ‘8′ for scroll up and down, ‘4′ and ‘6′ for prev. and next mail.
6. on the main screen, an option to “scan unread mail” would be very handy to allow easily cross-folder new mail reading.
7. the mail reader doesn’t allow clicking of URLs to directly open a web browser. If you implement that maybe in a next version, please allow the selection of an alternative web browser such as Opera lite, not just default to the built in browser.
8. maybe provide an personalization option to allow NOT to ask for confirmation of deletion of mails/items. I personally receive lots of mails, it takes time to scan through all of them and if I press delete, I want to delete them, not to be asked again if I’m sure. Maybe people like the confirmation message, so to make it configurable would make sense.
9. a configurable option to have a ‘new mail arrived’ pop-up, allowing you to go straight to the new mail(s) would be handy as well. It save the time and the keyclicks drill to wherever the new and or unread mails are.
All of these things are only to make the application better and more usable. Ideally would be a more Blackberry type of experience but I think it will take some more releases of either competing product (RoadSync, MfE) to get close to that.
But RoadSync surely has the potential. It’s a paying product, I hope product development listens to it’s customers to improve the product and bring it to an entirely different level. People will be happy to pay a honest price for it.
Kind regards,
Geert Steyaert
“
Geert, thanks for the excellent feedback you provided to the folks at RoadSync. I too am a paying customer and have had the same issues that you write about. I talked with someone at RoadSync and expressed some of these same points several months back. The response was that they are “always” working on ways to improve the product and that I should watch for coming updates. That was in August, I’m still waiting. I went back to MFE mostly because of the ability to sync from the main options without having to go into the app from the menu screen. I also want to open links from the email and that is indeed a big short coming in RoadSync. Anyway, thanks again for the feedback to RoadSync, I agree with all of it but like most people, I am too lazy to undertake the effort.
I keep waiting for a true OTA Active Sync solution for Blackberries, without the need for a middleware server. Anyone have any idea who makes such an application? Personally I hate Blackberries, but sales men have drilled into our managment that BBs are the bomb. (Bah!) So I much support them. I hoped Roadsync would do this, but they have not yet moved that direction. If they did, they’d have the only solution available to a very open market.