The Most Loved Email, Messaging and Social Media Apps by Country

Humans have been communicating with one another just fine for a long, long time. So when new technology comes along to update the way we communicate, it needs to be frictionless, affordable and appealing to become ‘normal.’ 

Over the past three decades, some tech brands have become more adept than others at identifying and or creating a market for such paradigm-changing ideas. But which communication apps currently hit that sweet spot of functionality and desirability? 

Mailsuite analyzed the 5-star user rating breakdowns for nearly 1,500 top communications and social media apps on Google Play Store to rank the email, messaging and social media apps users rate the highest in every country — and the ones that are falling short.

Key findings

• Microsoft Outlook is the highest-rated email app in 46 countries, including Mexico, Ireland, Denmark, Italy, South Africa and the Philippines. In the U.S., Yahoo Mail took the lead as America’s most loved email app.

• Gmail is the email app with the lowest user ratings in 36 countries — the list includes the United States, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Brazil, Ireland, Spain and Poland.

• Facebook rose to the top as the most hated social media app in 39 countries, including the UK, Australia, Canada, France and India.

• Google Messages is the most-loved messaging app in 22 countries, including Australia, Canada and the UK.

• TikTok, the most loved social media app in 30 countries, including the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

• Google Messages is the most loved IM app in 22 countries, including United States and the India.

• Discord is the most hated IM app in 32 countries.

The Highest (And Lowest) Rated Email Apps in Every Country

Microsoft Outlook is the top-rated email app in 46 countries. Outlook first appeared as part of Office 97, with Microsoft later buying the Acompli email app in 2014 and transforming it into the Outlook mobile app the following January.

The U.S., Australia and Japan are among nine countries that like Yahoo Mail the best.

The dominance of Gmail was a key motivation for Yahoo Mail’s development through the 2000s. Today, Google’s product eclipses Yahoo Mail with 10 billion downloads to Yahoo’s 100 million+. However, Gmail is the world’s most hated email app in 36 countries. Its only main competitor to that title is AOL Mail, which has the lowest reviews in 22 countries.

Places that rate Gmail lower than any other mail app include the U.S., Brazil and Ireland.

With around 20% of the world’s population using Gmail (around 1.8 billion users), its massive user base could naturally lead to more negative reviews. However, it remains a popular choice as it is free to use, has an aggressive and accurate spam filter and boasts thousands of easily installable integrations that can help you boost your productivity and customise the app in whatever way you see fit.

The Highest (And Lowest) Rated Messaging Apps in Every Country

Indeed, Google has struggled to get its IM game together, producing more than 12 new messaging services over the 15 years from 2006–2021. However, Telegram is today the most loved messaging app in 17 countries, including United Kingdom and Portugal. This makes it second only to Signal Google Messages, the top-rated IM app in 22 countries, including United States and the India.

Discord is the most hated IM app in 32 countries, fewer only than the combined countries of Messenger (25) and WhatsApp Business (14). (Note that Plus Messenger is not a Meta service but an ‘unofficial’ Telegram client with over 40 million downloads.)

The Discord app is the most hated app in the U.S. and Canada, among others. Discord gave the app a major overhaul at the end of 2023, with their product manager, Francesco Polizzi, admitting that “[o]ver time, the amount of stuff that Discord can do has grown exponentially. And yet, the mobile app was forced to just shove it all in a tiny version of the desktop app.” However, user criticism was vocal: “shoutout to the tabletop shop employee who saw my Discord staff hoodie, powerwalked up, and immediately brought up the mobile app,” wrote one company blogger.

The Highest (And Lowest) Rated Social Media Apps in Every Country

In 2010, Instagram breathed new life into the social media phenomenon that had barely matured at that point. As the first iOS social media app and first mobile-only platform, Instagram climbed on the shoulders of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr, all of which had been launched or made available to the general public over the previous five years. Instagram built a userbase of 10 million users in its first year and overtook TikTok to become the app with the world’s most downloads for 2023, but it still failed to win the ‘most loved social media app’ in any country according to our metrics.

The plaudits go to TikTok, the most loved social media app in 30 countries, including the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Instagram are the most hated app in Algeria, Oman, and Jordan, while the app’s Meta stablemates, Facebook and Facebook Lite, are the most hated apps across 30 countries. Meta newcomer Threads is most hated in Greece and Hong Kong.

But the most hated social media app of all is, perhaps appropriately, the “front page of the internet”: Reddit. The content-sharing site was a straggler to the app realm, undergoing a major renovation to become usable on mobile browsers in 2010 and finally buying up third-party Reddit reader Alien Blue in 2014 and rebranding it as the official Reddit mobile app. Reddit updated the app’s conversation navigation and loading times in April 2024, following widespread criticism that the app was slow and unintuitive to use.

Design for Life

Apps have become an integral part of daily life in much of the world — it’s impossible or inexpedient to keep up with office work, personal banking or remote communication without them. But it’s all too easy for developers to take this dependency for granted; while the best apps are lovingly maintained with the user in mind, others are left wanting for updates or become overcomplicated to preempt competitor products.