Ask HN: Favorite Email Client?

13 points by bmnews ↗ HN
It seems that recently lots of new email clients have come to existence. I'd like to know what email client is prefered by "HN-ers".

20 comments

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I still use Thunderbird. Using IMAP with GMail to sort Gmail using message filters into directories. So when it sorts in Thunderbird it sorts on my Gmail account as well.

I use Thunderbird between different computers I do work on.

I haven't really tried anything new yet, and Thunderbird is getting old and Mozilla might not support it anymore because people use mobile devices or webmail to manage their email.

I like sorting email into folders by rules, key words, email address, domain names, so it is easier to find things.

Seconded. I do the same excepting the different computers part.
thunderbird and will be sorry to see it gone, though i am mostly using webmail and mobile. but, for that little that i need an actual email client, thunderbird works like a charm

    strings -a | more
Postfix saves all my email to a flat file and I read it with strings -a pipped to more.

If something is sent in a format other than plain text, I just delete it.

I stick with the gmail web interface while I'm on my PC, although I use Outlook (formerly Acompli) on the iPhone.

It's one less piece of software to update and/or cause issues, and the client is identical across all platforms.

I use a browser to read email. I use the FastMail web interface with the "minimal" mode. It takes some getting used to, but after using it for almost a year now, I see where it really shines. Only thing I wish it had was right click context menu over an item in the email list to perform actions on it without opening it.
Currently just use the default Mail.app
I'm digging Front [0] right now. The shared inboxes are great to manage the tons of emails my founders and I get each day, as is the ability to comment on emails without having a huge reply chain in the email history. It also has some nice integrations and is fairly priced.

[0]: https://frontapp.com/for-customer-support

Missive co-founder here (https://missiveapp.com). We built the app for a similar purpose: a way to share and comment around the heavy email load we get as a team.

Missive is designed to work with any email setup, not just shared inboxes. Our help@ and sales@ addresses just forward emails to our personal inboxes. This way each person keeps control of their own inbox, while being able to comment within threads and see who’s replying in realtime thanks to Missive.

Would love to have your thoughts. Feel free to ping me on Twitter @rafbm or rafael@missiveapp.com

I used to think mutt was the best client, but I was always annoyed that the configuration wasn't scriptable enough - the support is there to do "lots" but not "everything".

On that basis I wrote a console-based mail-client that is 100% scriptable via Lua, and now I can't imagine using anything else:

https://lumail.org/

https://github.com/lumail/lumail2/

After my switch to a Surface and Windows 10, I'm using Mailbird. Previously on OS X, Mailplane.
I've tried new shiny toys like N1 [0] but always came back to Thunderbird (familiarity I suppose).

It has everything I need + Enigmail support has become very reliable and simple.

On mobile (Android) I use the Gmail app with different accounts, only drawback is that it doesn't support PGP.

[0] : https://www.nylas.com/n1

At work: Outlook+Exchange. Really nice to be able to see others' calendars for checking schedules.

At work/mobile: Alimail is the preferred app. But it has a tendency to stop working. Anything urgent gets pushed by WeChat (and not via email).

At home: Evolution via IMAP. Well integrated in Gnome.

At home/online: Roundcube via IMAP. Gandi have it as a default webmail solution, and it is pretty fine.

I've mostly been happy with Postbox since I moved from Eudora. It's a commercial fork of Thunderbird with some extras.

http://postbox-inc.com

Alas I've been having problems with v4 (including frequent hanging related to their timeboxing "Time Spent Writing" timer), so I can't endorse it as much as I used to. I'm also frustrated that the address book doesn't include Google Contacts integration.

Email is critical to me, and I'd happily pay $50 - $100 / year for the perfect cross-platform email client. (Postbox is only $15, which is ridiculously cheap for the value I get from it.)