I am amazed that GMail is the product of the search engine company. GMail filter leave much to be desired. Here are 10 reasons (and a bonus) for starters.

With GMail filters you cannot:

  • name filters
  • filter on any folders, only incoming emails can be filtered
  • exclude terms from From, To of Subject field.
  • filter on cc or bcc which are pretty standard fields
  • filter on any non-standard header fields
  • filter based on attachments (presence) or their size, even GMail Search boasts of "Has Attachment" capability
  • filter based on multiple criteria like say has x in subject or y in subject
  • create complex queries of any form
  • auto-reply based on filter match
  • mark as spam based on filter match

In MS Outlook, for example, you can select custom actions like running a program of your choice. Imagine doing that in GMail!

Any desktop email client will be much stronger than GMail in terms of filter functionality.

GMail filters are very simplistic and with minimal functionality. Frankly I expected better from Google.