I worked for a similarly sized firm a few years ago and we also moved from Exchange to Gmail, partly because we had had a few severe outages with Exchange for various reasons. From a technical perspective, the migration went pretty smoothly. But there were at least a couple non-technical people on the business side who always hated the new system, partly because Gmail didn't have the hierarchical folder system they were used to. (And I don't think Gmail had sublabels at the time.)
I feel you, nested labels is the easy answer to this. However, the better answer is teaching people about archiving and search.
People used to folder their emails because searching was terrible. Gmail's search is pretty good, so the best workflow in my opinion is to archive email once you're done with it, and search if you need something specific. I do use labels too, especially auto-labels, but I've found search to be more useful.
Still, some people are reluctant to change, and just want to do things the way they've always done it. So that's why nested labels exist.
Are you sure that isn't due to duplicates in Apple Mail? If I'm remembering right, things with labels (including "Inbox") will have copies in All Mail as well as each of their label "folders."
IMAP and POP use hierarchical folders and don't understand that a tax email might be marked as both "Government" and "Finances", or whatever your filing system happens to be.
I'm sure that could be an issue as well, but it's not causing the problem in my case.
I've found 1-2 emails in mail from a particular sender, where gmail was unable to find any results, even with their exact address.
I've likewise found perhaps 7/10 of a set of emails in gmail, and found the remaining 3 in mail (while confirming they had unique information not listed in gmail).
Actually, it has. You can nest labels. With the extra benefit a message can be in more than one folder if it pertains to two different subjects. Very powerful.
"...a message can be in more than one folder if it pertains to two different subjects"
That's not a benefit. It complicates things. Folders are simpler - one location, one parent, one place to go and find it. Average users can understand folders. Heck, expert users can use folders immediately without having to figure anything else out.
If nested tags are better than straight hierarchies for storing and finding things...where are all of the nested tag file systems? In a nested tag file system - would I have to go all the way to a settings dialog to create a new label like in Gmail?
Also, look at this guy's post about how "Gmail sucks when you have lots of mail" - and his response to someone recommending nested tags (Apparently, you can't just drag an email to nested tag.) - https://plus.google.com/105059362788808645801/posts/3amd9ZMi... All the web-app loving hipsters jump on his case for not "knowing the tool". I love it. How about just give us a tool that works like we expect? Who wants to invest time figuring out a new email client that has very questionable benefits?
