Five Best Email Clients. Jason Fitzpatrick. 1/24/10 12:00pm. Postbox is stand-alone email client for Windows and Mac operating systems. How to Get Gmail's Best Features If You're Holding.
If you’d told me I would be writing about the best email app for the Mac in 2018 when I was in college, I’d have thought you were crazy. For as far as technology has come in the last twenty years, e-mail is still essential to our workflows. We’ve got pocket computers on our wrists and smartphones with 4GB of RAM, but e-mail is still required to live and work in the internet era. If you’d asked me in 2002, I would have assumed something else would replace it. I got my first email account in the mid–90s (When it was still $2.95 per hour for AOL). I stuck with AOL until I got an @comcast.net account when my parent’s first got high-speed internet. I switched to around 2002 (it was eventually acquired by AOL).
I switched to Gmail in 2004 when it first launched, and then I finally switched to.Mac in 2005 when I got my first Mac (. I stuck with it during, and finally arrived at. One of the things about my use of email that is most surprising is that I’ve gone in the reverse with how technology has moved. In the early days of e-mail usage, I preferred using web-based mail, but as time went on, I preferred app based email. Part of that is that I am bringing in multiple accounts into one app (personal iCloud and multiple G-Suite accounts), but another aspect is that I prefer native apps. I think a lot of it has to do with iOS where native apps are the default.
On the desktop, we’re moving everything to the web. As much as I love iOS, If you told me that I had to pick between macOS and iOS, I’d choose macOS.
When it comes to my “heavy lifting” type work, I can get it done much faster than on my Mac. Like I said earlier, I am pulling in multiple email accounts into one app, so using webmail isn’t something I want to do. I want one app to use instead of four web apps. So if you are reading this article, and are screaming about how much better Gmail’s web interface is – know that I am not looking at web-based solutions at all. So I want to answer the question, what’s the best email app for the Mac? Apple Mail Apple is always going to be at a disadvantage in some ways when building apps because they have to develop for the masses. They are developing apps for the power user while also the computer novice.
In a lot of ways, Apple Mail doesn’t seem to be a lot different than it did when I first used it under. From 40,000 feet, Apple Mail does precisely what you’d ask of it.
You add your mailboxes, and it builds a traditional looking mail app (with a universal inbox), it supports all the primary services (iCloud, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Exchange, etc.), and generally works well. My biggest issue with Apple Mail is that it doesn’t do anything to drive the concept of email forward. It primarily works the same as it did a few years ago. It’s only added a few new features like (a feature where you can send large attachments using iCloud),. On the flip side, if you want the traditional Apple experience, you’ll love this app. I use it day-to-day, but I know it’s mostly lagged behind a lot of the other apps concerning new features. If you do want to extend Apple Mail further, be sure to check out plugins like.
The downside is that these run locally, so if your Mac is offline – nothing will happen to your email that requires these plugins. Overall, it’s a fine app, but I am hopeful Apple begins to add new features to help people re-think email.
Outlook When I did my review of, I praised Outlook. If you want to find an app that feels like Apple Mail+, Outlook is it. It includes a smart inbox (sort between important emails and non-important ones). It contains customizable swipes (delete, archive, etc.).
You can also schedule messages to show back up in your inbox. This feature is useful if you want to make an email disappear until you are back at work, etc.
Unfortunately, Outlook on the Mac hasn’t been given the same treatment. It feels like a completely different app. Microsoft has they are overhauling it to make it more like the iOS apps, but we’ve not seen that yet. It still feels like a Mac version of Outlook for Windows. If you are a business user using Exchange 365, you’ll probably love it. Everyone else should look elsewhere.
It’s not that there is anything fundamentally wrong with Outlook, it’s just that, like Apple Mail, it feels stagnant. It’s the same tried and true app that they had years ago with a prettier design. If it can act more like the iOS version, I could definitely consider it a strong contender for the best email app for the Mac.
Spark Spark is one of the newcomers to the third-party email app market, but it has had constant enhancements since it was released. Their tagline is “Love your email again,” and it certainly does a great job of helping you take control of your inbox. It supports all the usual accounts like iCloud, Google, Yahoo, Exchange, Outlook, and IMAP. The great thing about Spark for Mac is that it brings over a lot of great features from the iOS version. The app includes a smart inbox to help organize your email into buckets like newsletters, pinned, new, seen, etc. It also includes the ability to snooze emails, send later, email follow-up reminders, smart notifications, and tons of integrations with third-party apps (Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, etc.). The send later feature is one I’d love to see come to Apple Mail.
I want to be able to process my inbox on the weekends, but not clutter other people’s inboxes up while they aren’t at work. It also includes a built-in calendar that supports iCloud, Gmail, etc. Spark also has team plans that answers that question for me. By signing your organization up, you can collaborate on emails together, talk about replies privately (without having to forward things back and forth), and create permanent links to email messages (helpful for linking in a CRM, etc.).
A basic version of Spark for Teams is free, but they have paid versions (monthly per-user fee) with extra file storage, enhanced link sharing, and team roles and control. This add-on turns Spark into a platform as much as it does an email app. When Spark initially launched, I questioned how it could remain in operation with no business model, but I now clearly understand how it plans to grow. If you’re interested in a teams plan, but Spark doesn’t work for you, is a similar product. Spark is on the Mac App Store. AirMail Airmail has been around for many years, and it’s one of the most common third-party mail apps that I see mentioned on the Internet. Airmail supports all the major email accounts like iCloud, Exchange, Outlook, Google, Yahoo, IMAP, etc.
Airmail features an extensive list of apps you can integrate. The list includes Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, Trello, Asana, Omnifocus, Google Tasks, Evernote, Todoist, Drafts, Deliveries, Things, and many more. Airmail supports snoozing an email to another date/time as Spark does. You can create a PDF from an email, mute/block senders, or create a to-do (Airmail offers a lightweight to-do list built in). The action list of items you can take on a message is too long to list. With Airmail, almost everything is customizable. If you want an email app with a lot of knobs to tinker with, Airmail is going to fit in with your workflows.
One feature that Airmail offers that I’ve not seen any other macOS email app offer is a Google Apps/G-Suite Directory look up. This feature allows you to look up email addresses in your global G-Suite directory that you don’t have in your contacts list. My main complaint with AirMail is that lacks the polish of Apple Mail and Spark. It’s a great app, but it’s never been able to win me over for day-to-day usage. It’s definitely near the top, but it’s not the best email app for the Mac. AirMail is on the Mac App Store. Post Box Post Box is one of the apps I hadn’t heard of before I started doing my research on this topic.
At first glance, it is nice looking, and it looks a lot like a prettier Apple Mail. It claims to be an email app for power users, but I fail to see what it’s doing that Spark or AirMail aren’t doing. It does have many third-party integrations, but so do many of the other apps.
It also lacks essential features like Snooze and Send Later. It’s most unique feature is.
This feature allows you to combine multiple accounts (example: all of your personal accounts) into one unified inbox that keeps your work separate. You can buy Post Box for, and there is a 30-day free trial available. MailMate MailMate is most known for its extensive keyboard control, Markdown email composition, and advanced search conditions. It’s not the prettiest app, and it doesn’t have the most overall features. It really could be called the.
I find it hard to recommend for novice users or for someone who wants features that Spark and AirMail are known for, but if MailMate interests you, it’s probably the only app that will satisfy you. It has a unique set of features that aren’t for everyone, but it will interest a specific user group. I wouldn’t be able to say it’s the best email app for the Mac, though. MailMate is, and there is a free trial available.
What’s the best email app for the Mac? Before I get to the reason you read this article, I do want to mention one other app.
If you have a few Gmail accounts, and you are happy with the Gmail interface, check out. It’s a native macOS app for Gmail (supports G-Suite as well). If you want the best email app for macOS, and you want more features than Apple Mail, I would have to recommend. It has a great design, a broad feature set, and a clear business model. If you hate your email, Spark claims you’ll “Love your email again” with their apps.
If you already love the Mac version, be sure to check out the.
Email is an old technology that is very similar to how it started out. And yet recently we’ve seen some big changes that have really shaken up the way many people use email and deal with email. Recently, this matter has been agitated further by a popular email client (Mailbox) that was a acquired by a big company declaring that it shut down. So we thought it would be good to update this email post for the New Year and see how the state of email has changed. Personally, I too have undergone a “conversation” over my use of email and email client leading to me using a different combination of applications across the board. Like the last time, this review will not tell you the best email app for everyone, but instead, will have a selection of email apps that should work well for how different people deal with email. Of course, If you use a different email client than is listed below, you are welcome to leave a comment and tell us why you use it.
Overview of Apps Many mail applications run on multiple platforms and with that in mind I’ve tried to create a layout that is as logical as possible without repeating myself. If I miss an application then please leave a comment and I’d love to know why you have chosen your app.
We all have different reasons and that can be useful for others to read. Gmail (Web, Mobile) Gmail has become a very popular email service and for a few good reasons, the use of the tag system, the good mobile apps, and the widespread free accounts make it a very popular choice for many people. Gmail also supports extensions to add extra functions that users have added on to the service over the years. Inbox takes standard Gmail and adds some extra features that you either love or hate.
These include snoozing email, smart mailboxes grouping of themes like purchases, newsletters, promos etc and adding tasks from within mail. There are mobile apps as well as a web client that you can use. Boxy (Mac) is a way to run multiple email accounts within an inbox with the native Mac interface. If you like Inbox, but want a native Mac desktop client with keyboard shortcuts and multiple accounts, Boxy could be for you. Outlook (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android) Microsoft recently went on a spree of mobile application acquiring. Two of these apps were Accompli (a great third party email client) and Sunrise (a fantastic third party calendar application).
Shortly afterwards Accompli became Outlook, bringing the great features of Accompli (swipe gestures, email snoozing, built in calendar), but now under official Microsoft branding. Now the Sunrise team are also part of Outlook, meaning one of the best calendars (with task integration and a special keyboard to organize events) is going to become better integrated. There are also the classic desktop clients from Microsoft on both Windows and Mac. However, it is worth noting that features like email snoozing do not yet sync from your mobile to desktop (unlike a tool like the now gone Mailbox). The desktop client will support exchange fantastically, has integrated tasks and calendar as well and comes along with Office 365 (so you have your other Microsoft products to).
Inky (ALL THE THINGS) supports Exchange, Google apps and IMAP severs (covering most basses). Inky also works on the major desktop and mobile clients with Windows, Mac, Android and iOS support. Inky uses it’s own severs to interface with your mail and allow you to do some pretty clever stuff across your devices. These include smart filtering (like Google inbox, but you can customize them more), high powered search and organizing by importance. However, to run these features, there is a $5 a month subscription. It makes sense, they are running their own servers to provide these features and they need some method to cover those running cost.
Airmail 2.5 (Mac, iOS) is a Mac app with a new review coming soon. It has a great look and design with some powerful features underneath. These include markdown editing, adding to your favorite task management tool, keyboard shortcuts and more. However, the aspect about airmail that really makes it stand out is the “task” approach the app takes to email. Each email lets you mark it as:. to do.
memo. done With folders relevant to each one. This lets you either save an email to complete later (to do), save the information in an email for reference (memo), or say that you have taken action to an email (done). Mail.app (iOS and Mac) Mail.app is the default email client built into Mac and iOS devices. On iOS it is the default and unlike android devices which let you switch defaults, iOS doesn’t currently do this (and may well never offer this). As such, if you click on an email address, it will open in Mail.app (in my mind that’s a good enough reason to consider mail.app as you’ll have to use it sometime!) Mail.app is probably “good enough” for many people, it offers gestures for quick archiving, deleting and moving emails.
It also ties in with other iOS features such as VIP contacts for notifications and with the new “Siri” functions can do some smart actions like saving flight details or adding calendar events and making emails searchable via spotlight search. However, Mail.app can be very temperamental with Gmail (especially on the Mac). I’ve seen Mail.app work fine with my Gmail account while others vented their anger and, more recently, I’ve seen Mail.app start to act very strangely with not syncing deletions, not downloading emails for long periods of time, and so on. Use with caution on the Mac. MyMail (iOS, Android) is a mobile email client that features some nice touches to improve your experience on your device.
These include. specifying when to push email (limit it to certain times).
filtering into different topics (with different notification settings). privacy settings on notifications (remove the sender name or subject). adding avatars of each email sender. swipe based gestures MyMail also supports a range of email protocols so yours will almost certainly be supported. Spark (iPhone, iPad app in development) came out soon after we published last years roundup of email clients and it quickly caught my eye. Although it is currently only for the iPhone, it has so very nice features that make it really pleasant to use.
Furthermore, unlike many previously mentioned apps, this app doesn’t require any special servers and so doesn’t peak at your private data. We have but there are a couple of very good reasons we didn’t include Linux options on the list (although technically android runs on Linux so we have included Linux) the first is that we know that statistics on who visits the site and what opperating system they use. We also look at the changes over year and what is growing and declining. Linux is under 1% of our traffic and shrunk this year. The second reason is that non of us use Linux as our main opperating system for day to day work (although many of us do use Linux for tasks and jobs) as such we wouldn’t want to offer our Linux recommendations when we aren’t intimately familiar with them.
If you (or anyone else) would like to write a post recommending Linux mail clients, I know Eric would be happy to publish it and pay for it. Hey Dan, I spent some time thinking about this as I couldn’t think of an abvious answer straight away. I suspect Outlook might be your best option and I haven’t heard of anyone suffering duplicated contacts with the latest IOS version. An alternative might be CloudMagic but I don’t know what the calendar support is like there. Finally, you could route all your mail clients through Gmail, not a great solution but a bit of a way round.
I hope that helps. Sorry I can’t help more, Not many people are developing on every platform and when they do, it’s usually just for their email service. Hi Chris I use Gmail, Gmail apps, Live, Yahoo, and iCloud. That’s my way of saying I don’t like deleting email accounts and keep them all. ? My ideal app doesn’t have to be specifically for Chromebooks. But its surprising how there are hardly any web app clients accessible through the browser, that consolidate email accounts to a single platform in a secure and clean UI.
The same app being available on Android would be a super bonus. But for now, I’d be happy to use a webapp. Thanks for your prompt response. Yikes, that’s tough. You could redirect your different email accounts via Gmail and then handle everything from one inbox. I know I’d hate that as I like to keep work and person separate (plus some accounts need quicker responses than others) but maybe you’d like that. Plus Gmail seems to be the main provider for Chromebooks at the moment.
I haven’t given up the search but I’m surprised there aren’t more chromebook email client providers! If you find something I’m sure the readers here would love to know! The quick response is largely due to having some time off my day job at the moment!. Hi, Chris, I’m a graphic designer, so I email lots of graphic files both as attachments (PDFs or JPGs) — but also embedded JPGs. Apple Mail gave me lots of problems in that respect, lately. Couple years ago I switched to Postbox, which has an interface very much like Mail.
Problem is, it’s BUGGY I sent a long email to a client this evening. Then his secretary asked me to send her the same email. When I went to my “Sent” folder it showed only the top 1/4 of my original email I practically lost 3/4 of my original email MY QUESTION IS: what’s the most AppleMail-looking OS-X email client you’d suggest I get? Being a retired “clergyman” myself, this article was interesting.
I wanted to mention the fact that on 15th June this year (2017), Apple introduced the two step “app specific” verification. Since then, I have been annoyed (to say the least) at the imposition this has placed on MAC users. If you are young, have plenty of time, and are very “techy” this might not bother you, but for me it was a pain in the neck. Email accounts that I just used on a daily basis, and had several of them for different reasons – all just stopped working and asking me to enter my password – even if it had been given a “remember password” status.
G., I have used Postbox for quite a few years, but it has now become virtually useless. You can’t get on with the job without having to change, check, and rediscover your “remembered” passwords. Thunderbird is quite wonderful – except when it comes to local folders. I have been trying to move emails to various tidily produced local folders, but then after having more or less emptied various inboxes and the like, I discover that the ones I have moves keep coming back into the inboxes of the various email accounts.
Having done extensive web searches for a well behaved alternative, I have not come up with a decent alternative to Thunderbird. Apple Mail.app is plagued with the same new two stage app specific problem, as is Airmail 3 (if you don’t de-click the “use iCloud” option when setting up a new email account. As far as security is concerned, Sophos antivirus for MAC just about deals with every intrusion so far. I have 4 1TB – 5 GB external hard drives, and have set up Sophos to include all the partitions on all drives. So, I don’t need the awful two stage monster. However, as yet the refining of the search process for a Thunderbird replacement hasn’t come to anything yet. Any help appreciated!