Comparison

Phone By Web.com vs Zirbe

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Phone By Web.com

Features
Read full description

Phone by Web.com provides you with a business phone service so you can separate your personal life from your business live. Call, text, and manage voicemails, using a number unique to your business.

About

Zirbe

This email client reimagines your inbox as a familiar chat interface, organizing threads by subject and messages as bubbles. It offers full email functionality, including attachments, drafts, and organization, while prioritizing privacy and offline access. The app connects directly to your IMAP/SMTP servers without any Zirbe servers.

Highlights
  • Chat-style email interface
  • Organized threads by subject
  • Offline access and instant inbox
  • Attachment support (photos, files, voice)
  • Full email client functionality
  • Privacy-focused, no Zirbe servers
  • Open-source code
Features
Read full description

Zirbe is an email app that looks and feels like a texting app while keeping real email underneath. A conversation in Zirbe is a mail thread, not a person: the subject is the title, the people on it are the members, and every message is a bubble in time order. The same person writing you about five different things becomes five conversations, which is how email actually works. Starting a new conversation means naming it, and that name is the subject. Underneath the chat is a full email client. Read and reply with bubbles, attach photos, files, or a recorded voice message, and open what you receive in a full preview to save or share it. Reach every folder, not just the inbox: archive, move, and organize, save and resume drafts, and send blind copies that stay blind. React to a message with a tapback that rides your own mail as a real reply, so another Zirbe user sees the badge and every other mail app sees a readable line. Search within a conversation, pin the threads that matter to the top, and block a sender to sweep their mail to Junk and keep it there. New mail arrives with a local notification and a badge, and a reply that fails to send waits as a tap-to-retry bubble instead of vanishing. Sender photos come from your own contacts, and typing a recipient suggests people from your address book. A meeting invitation shows up as a meeting: a card with the time, the title, who's organizing, and where, with a Join button when there's a Teams, Meet, Zoom, or Webex link, and Add to Calendar puts it in your calendar with Apple's own event editor. The invitation, its updates, a cancellation, and everyone's replies land in one conversation. Zirbe is private by construction, not by promise. It connects only to your own IMAP and SMTP servers over an encrypted connection. There is no Zirbe server, no account to create with us, no analytics, no telemetry, and no third-party SDK. Your mail is cached on your device so the inbox opens instantly and works offline; your password lives in the device Keychain and is never synced off the device. Remote images in HTML mail are blocked until you choose to load them, so opening a message never phones home. Because the whole app is open source, every one of these claims is something you can check for yourself. Zirbe works with any email provider that supports standard IMAP and SMTP with an app-specific password. Sign in with your address and an app password, and if your provider is a common one the server settings fill in for you. Zirbe is free and MIT-licensed. It is an independent app and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple. iMessage and Messages are trademarks of Apple Inc.

Screenshots

Phone By Web.com4 screens
Zirbe4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Phone By Web.com at every 3 days against Zirbe's every 6 weeks. Phone By Web.com also leads on iOS requirement (10.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Phone By Web.com ships an update every 3 days, Zirbe every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Phone By Web.com versus Zirbe: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPhone By Web.comZirbe
PriceFreeFree
Rating—5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Number of ratings—1 — better
Update frequencyEvery 3 days — betterEvery 6 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
Monetization—Free
DevicesiPhone, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS10.0 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size157 MB17 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperWebDotComExcelano LLC

In-app purchases

None

Phone By Web.com

No in-app purchases

None

Zirbe

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Phone By Web.com free?
Phone By Web.com is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Zirbe free?
Zirbe is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Phone By Web.com or Zirbe have ads?
Neither Phone By Web.com nor Zirbe shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Phone By Web.com or Zirbe?
Phone By Web.com ships an update every 3 days, and Zirbe every 6 weeks. Most recently, Phone By Web.com was updated on November 3, 2026 and Zirbe on October 31, 2026.

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