Mutt in shells and MailMate (https://freron.com/) if I'm using a GUI. It's the fastest email client that I've found, has super fast search, and is incredibly configurable and it's ONLY focused on email, nothing else. Its UX is perfect for me and is incredibly functional, but it's definitely not a "pretty" client.
I use Thunderbird - The only desktop client which has both Windows/Linux versions (with identical UIs), doesn't use Electron, and doesn't need you to make an online account for it. (I'm looking at you, MailSpring!) And the experience is... not that great for me. There doesn't seem to be a way to view email conversations cleanly, and the whole app seems a bit bloated. I really wish someone made a cross-platform email client that just simply works - I would gladly pay money for it.
The tagline "for busy professionals, like you." immediately made exit the page without thinking.
It could be the best product in the world but I'm not going to use a product that treats me with such a patronizing attitude.
And whatever genius decided to hide the pricing behind another page doesn't understand their market. The price is the first and only thing I care about if we're talking about paid desktop clients. Everything else is secondary. And they might as well put the big honking "$40 per license" pricing right there at the top instead of further down the fishing rod. Anyone who considers that a worthwhile deal is going to pay it anyway. It's not a bad deal for a lifetime license.
However many customers would probably like something more than a 30-day free trial without a lifetime commitment. Offering a $3/mo subscription would probably majorly boost sales.
I've used Postbox when I was young and using OS X, but now I'm only in Windows and Linux. And I've tried the Windows version recently, and it seemed as sluggish as any other Electron app.
Thanks, I've also noticed the two programs, but poor HTML support for both of those is kind of a bummer...
If I were just using email with developers I would not care about sending/receiving only text emails, but unfortunately the real world is a bit more complicated than that...
Yep, I've noticed the performance wasn't that great. It seems like there isn't a native email app in 2019 that supports HTML... Maybe is it because displaying HTML itself is pretty hard without a runtime like Electron or XULRunner?
I'm in the middle of switching from webmail to mu4e. I have a decent mutt setup that I never use, but I switched to Emacs this year and mu4e-conversation (https://gitlab.com/ambrevar/mu4e-conversation) looks like it may actually make a desktop client pleasant to use.
It's the buggiest app I've ever encountered. A few examples I've seen in the last few hours alone:
1. The new "dark mode" periodically sends emails with white background and white text. (Check out their support forum/Reddit and lots of people experience the issue. Users are asked to send it in and… nothing changes.) I've just disabled dark mode because of this.
2. There has been a bug which causes the app to erroneously display "Inbox Zero" despite being badged with new messages. This error has been in the app for 3-4 years.
3. Searching a large inbox throttles up CPUs. On my i9 MacBook Pro CPU usage goes to >250%.
4. It struggles with quotes/signatures. I send long emails which regularly get folded in bizarre places in the preview panel.
5. Periodically hitting forward/reply on an email will not include any of the text in the chain, when the original email is archived.
6. Saw this at the weekend but not today yet: the main window disappears sometimes and can only be brought back by quitting the app and reloading. Right clicking the dock icon and hitting "Show main window" does not work.
Honestly if any other email app was simply designed and had either mappable keys or by default mapped backspace to archive, I'd be using it.
Mutt, unless you have to interact with people who are incapable of using email a lot (there are limits to handling broken emails if you want things to be fast and secure).
MailMate on macOS even though I only use a fraction of its features.
eM Client on on Windows, because is it comparable with Thunderbird in managing my mails but also comes close to Outlook with its calendar and contacts management. Unlike Outlook, it support more open protocols like CalDAV and CardDAV out of the box.
AquaMail on Android, because of its customizability.
I don't use any web clients, because I prefer a unified experience across email providers but from those I tried, I prefer Fastmail's web clients. It somehow feels faster than all these native desktop apps and if I could use it as a generic IMAP/SMTP client like Roundcube, I would use it instead of native desktop apps.
I use gmail both for home and work. I'm not really an email power-user though. I do like the gmail keyboard commands - they're surprisingly Vim-like, and I would remember them better if I worked with email more.
Haven't found any email desktop applications that were enough better to get me to switch back.
Default macOS or iOS mail app with Fastmail as my mail provider. I never had any issues with it and it works well. Search works well enough and I don’t need a lot of fancy features as I just archive emails to get to inbox zero. Everything that’s still in my inbox is stuff I have to deal with so it’s part of my todo list.
The churn rate on third party iOS mail apps always seems way too high and I don’t want to get used to a new app every 2 years.
I'm still using Thunderbird on desktop (personal and professional Linux boxes and professional Windows laptop) and K-9 on smartphone (Android). I'm far from being fully satisfied with either of them, but at least they are better than anything else I've tried to date and more importantly they are slowly improving whereas others I've used (eg. Gmail for the browser and Gmail for Android) are quickly becoming worse (except for the last two updates of Gmail for the browser, I've to admit).
I've some hope in getting a nice setup with notmuch, mu4e or some other power-user oriented MUA at some point (being able to type my emails in Emacs is a real selling point for me), but so far I've been hesitant to lose the ability to read non-plain text emails right in my MUA.
I was in the same boat. I’ve used Thunderbird since it was first released but eventually found my way to a mu4e setup. I’m happy about the switch because I do so much in emacs already but Thunderbird was perfectly fine for me otherwise.
I want to shift to a CLI based email client. But my previous attempts in making that shift have been unsuccessful. I had spent a couple of hours in shifting to Gnus Emacs but because of my inability to configure it properly I had to move away from it.
Some common issues I faced while configuring it were --
1. Would always start downloading the mail metadata everytime I did =M-x gnus=. I am pretty sure there is some way to pull that into local filesystem once and just download the incremental metadata.
2. With the basic vanilla config, there was no support for notifications which is an essential factor in my workflow i.e. interrupt based working rather than polling.
I have heard there are other CLI based clients like Mutt, m4uemacs in Emacs which are a bit more practical for a beginner than a Gnus but I am yet to get those a shot.
I don't recommend CLI mail clients, try TUI or "full screen text mode" ones instead. If you really want CLI, I think the Unix mail program might be your only choice.
86 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadI prefer desktop clients because I have 6 email accounts and managing all of them in tabs is just a headache.
The tagline "for busy professionals, like you." immediately made exit the page without thinking.
It could be the best product in the world but I'm not going to use a product that treats me with such a patronizing attitude.
And whatever genius decided to hide the pricing behind another page doesn't understand their market. The price is the first and only thing I care about if we're talking about paid desktop clients. Everything else is secondary. And they might as well put the big honking "$40 per license" pricing right there at the top instead of further down the fishing rod. Anyone who considers that a worthwhile deal is going to pay it anyway. It's not a bad deal for a lifetime license.
However many customers would probably like something more than a 30-day free trial without a lifetime commitment. Offering a $3/mo subscription would probably majorly boost sales.
There's also Sylpheed (https://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/) and Claws Mail (https://www.claws-mail.org/).
If I were just using email with developers I would not care about sending/receiving only text emails, but unfortunately the real world is a bit more complicated than that...
At work we're a Google G-Suite shop, so Gmail web interface.
Only problems I had with it were when searching for mails and when I had a bug in dovecot.
There are some other up and coming open source solutions (FairEmail/SimpleEmail), bjt I don't like the interface
1. The new "dark mode" periodically sends emails with white background and white text. (Check out their support forum/Reddit and lots of people experience the issue. Users are asked to send it in and… nothing changes.) I've just disabled dark mode because of this.
2. There has been a bug which causes the app to erroneously display "Inbox Zero" despite being badged with new messages. This error has been in the app for 3-4 years.
3. Searching a large inbox throttles up CPUs. On my i9 MacBook Pro CPU usage goes to >250%.
4. It struggles with quotes/signatures. I send long emails which regularly get folded in bizarre places in the preview panel.
5. Periodically hitting forward/reply on an email will not include any of the text in the chain, when the original email is archived.
6. Saw this at the weekend but not today yet: the main window disappears sometimes and can only be brought back by quitting the app and reloading. Right clicking the dock icon and hitting "Show main window" does not work.
Honestly if any other email app was simply designed and had either mappable keys or by default mapped backspace to archive, I'd be using it.
eM Client on on Windows, because is it comparable with Thunderbird in managing my mails but also comes close to Outlook with its calendar and contacts management. Unlike Outlook, it support more open protocols like CalDAV and CardDAV out of the box.
AquaMail on Android, because of its customizability.
I don't use any web clients, because I prefer a unified experience across email providers but from those I tried, I prefer Fastmail's web clients. It somehow feels faster than all these native desktop apps and if I could use it as a generic IMAP/SMTP client like Roundcube, I would use it instead of native desktop apps.
Haven't found any email desktop applications that were enough better to get me to switch back.
The churn rate on third party iOS mail apps always seems way too high and I don’t want to get used to a new app every 2 years.
I've some hope in getting a nice setup with notmuch, mu4e or some other power-user oriented MUA at some point (being able to type my emails in Emacs is a real selling point for me), but so far I've been hesitant to lose the ability to read non-plain text emails right in my MUA.
I want to shift to a CLI based email client. But my previous attempts in making that shift have been unsuccessful. I had spent a couple of hours in shifting to Gnus Emacs but because of my inability to configure it properly I had to move away from it.
Some common issues I faced while configuring it were -- 1. Would always start downloading the mail metadata everytime I did =M-x gnus=. I am pretty sure there is some way to pull that into local filesystem once and just download the incremental metadata. 2. With the basic vanilla config, there was no support for notifications which is an essential factor in my workflow i.e. interrupt based working rather than polling.
I have heard there are other CLI based clients like Mutt, m4uemacs in Emacs which are a bit more practical for a beginner than a Gnus but I am yet to get those a shot.