Hi, my name is Thomas Boldt, and like many of you reading this I rely on email for the vast majority of my professional correspondence. As a freelancer and small business owner, I have to monitor a large number of different email accounts, and I know the struggle of trying to keep up with an inbox that relentlessly fills while still trying to do all my other work.
Why You Should Trust Me
Over the course of my career, I’ve tried many different methods of streamlining my correspondence, from time-based restrictions to all those useless “5 Ways to Control Your Email Inbox” articles. In my experience, no matter how carefully you limit the time you spend on email each day, things will get away from you if you don’t have an efficient solution that prioritizes productivity. Hopefully, these reviews will help you save time in the search for a better method of handling your inbox!
Do You Have 10,000+ Unread Emails?
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If you’ve ever struggled with managing your email, you’ve probably tried to find solutions. In the modern world, much of that searching happens online – but unfortunately, very few of the articles you’ll find actually provide any kind of useful advice. You’ll find all sorts of vague suggestions about ‘managing response expectations’ and ‘self-prioritization’ but rarely any concrete advice that can be actually applied to your situation. They mean well, of course, but that doesn’t necessarily make them useful.
A large part of the reason that these articles fail to help is that they are all focused on what you could call ‘soft changes’. They ask you to change your attitude, change your habits, and prioritize your work goals differently. While those aren’t inherently bad ideas, they overlook the fact that real change happens as part of a complete system – and at least half of that system is the way you actually interact with your email – in other words, your email client. You’ll never be able to get ahead of your inbox if you’re constantly fighting against a slow, outdated interface.
Of course, you can also follow my recommendation for the best email client for Windows 10 and still find yourself drowning in thousands of emails. The idea that a single new change will all the difference is seductive, but it’s also reductive. If you want to really master your inbox, you’ll need to combine all the best advice you can find and make it work for your individual situation.
Do You Really Need A New Email Client?
We all want to spend less time answering emails and more time getting things done, but not everyone will benefit from switching to a new email client.
If you work in a corporate environment, you may not even have a choice about how your email is handled, as some IT departments are very specific about how they run their email systems. While you might be able to send a request up through your supervisor to the IT department, the sheer complexity of deploying a new email client across a workplace often keeps people stuck using their old, inefficient systems.
Those of you who are self-employed or small business owners are more likely to see some real improvements, especially if you’re currently using a basic webmail interface like Gmail or Outlook.com. If you need to check your personal email as well as the info and support addresses for your business – all the while sorting and prioritizing everything across multiple browser windows – you’ll really start to save some time with a modern email client. If you’re stuck using something horrible like the webmail clients provided by most hosting companies, you could wind up saving whole days each year by switching to a better solution.
![]() How We Evaluated Each Email Client
If you think that email clients are more or less created equal, you’d be quite wrong. Part of the reason some people struggle to keep up with their inbox is that many email services still operate on the same basic level they have for the last decade, and their users keep on struggling, unaware that there is a better way. When I was evaluating the email clients I tested, here are the criteria I used to make my decisions.
Can it handle multiple accounts?
In the early days of email, most people only had one email account. In today’s world of constantly-evolving services and domains, many people have multiple accounts. Even if you’re only using one address for personal email and another for work, it’s much more efficient to receive them all in the same place. If you’re a power user with many different email accounts, you’ll start to really save time by collecting them all together.
Does it have good organizational tools?
This is one of the most important aspects of a good email client. Bringing together all your email in one place isn’t going to do you any good if you’re still buried in thousands of unimportant messages. Even your important messages need to be prioritized, and a good set of filters, tagging tools and task management options will make your life much easier.
Does it offer any security precautions?
The ability to have anyone in the world send you a message can be an incredibly useful thing, but it also comes with certain risks. Spam is bad enough, but some emails are even worse – they contain malicious attachments, dangerous links, and ‘phishing’ campaigns designed to get you to give up personal details that can be stolen and used by identity thieves. Much of this now gets filtered out at the server level, but it’s always a good idea to have some protections built into your email client.
Is it easy to configure?
An email client that handles messages from multiple addresses in one central place is much more efficient, but you’ll need to configure your new email client to properly check each of your accounts. Email providers often use different methods to configure their services, and it can be time-consuming and frustrating to configure each one manually. A good email client will make configuring your various accounts easy with helpful step-by-step instructions.
Is it easy to use?
If the very thought of opening your email client starts to give you a headache, you’ll never master your inbox. A good email client is designed with user experience as one of its top priorities, and that level of attention to detail makes all the difference when you’re up to your eyebrows in unread messages.
Is it customizable?
Everyone has their own personal style of working, and your email client should be customizable to reflect yours. When you spend a fair portion of your day immersed in your email client, it’s quite helpful to be able to make it work for you instead of against you. A good email client will offer you customization options while still offering a well-designed default interface.
Does it have a mobile companion app?
This one is a bit of a double-edged sword. One of the best things about email is also the worst – it can reach you anywhere, as long as you’re connected. If you’re a freelancer, this can be helpful, but many of us tend to find that we’re working much longer and later than we should be. There is such a thing as being TOO connected!
Regardless, it can be very useful to have access to your email when you’re on the go without your laptop. A good mobile companion app will be available for both iOS and Android, and allow you to write and respond to email quickly and easily.
The WinnerBest Choice: Mailbird
Mailbird has been in development since 2012, and the developers have spent a lot of that time polishing the program until it shines. Every stage of installing, configuring and using Mailbird was incredibly easy, and everything just worked smoothly. It’s a refreshing experience not to have to struggle with an email client!
The free version does limit your access to some of Mailbird’s more impressive features, and it enforces a small signature at the end of each email that says ‘Sent with Mailbird’. It comes with a short Pro trial of just 3 days, but subscribing to it is so affordable that it’s hard to justify sticking with the free version. The Pro version is available for just $1.50 per month, or $59 for a lifetime subscription if you don’t want to pay monthly.
To give it a good test, I linked Mailbird with my Gmail account and my personal domain email account, which is hosted by GoDaddy. I simply entered my name and email address, and Mailbird detected the appropriate configuration settings and asked for my password. A few keystrokes later and both were set up instantly.
The last time I had to set up an email client, it was a frustrating set of addresses, ports and other mysterious details. Mailbird didn’t ask me for any of that information – it just knew what to do.
There was a bit of a delay while it synced my messages, but my Gmail account has almost a decade’s worth of messages in it, so it’s no surprise that it took a while to download everything. To really put it to the test, I also added an ancient Hotmail account and a Yahoo mail account, and both were instantly added without any issues. These took longer to sync, but again, that’s due to the sheer volume of messages, not any fault of Mailbird.
I’m always hesitant to link applications to Facebook, but it’s nice to see that Mailbird promises never to post anything.
In terms of security, most of the filtering will be handled by your email server, but Mailbird does disable the loading of external images by default. This keeps external tracking images from detecting whether or not you’ve read an email, and minimizes the risk of spammers and hackers from including malware payloads in certain image types. If you’ve determined that a specific sender is safe, you can either show images in a single message or whitelist the sender to always display images by default.
In this case, the Behance network is run by Adobe, so it should be safe to display the images permanently from that sender.
One of Mailbird’s primary virtues is how simple it is. The interface is incredibly simple to use, as you would expect from a good email client, and there are handy tips that are easily accessible covering just about any task or question you might have.
Of course, the fact that Mailbird is simple to use on the surface doesn’t mean it is lacking in features. Most of the time, you’re presented with a clean and clear interface that lets you focus on the task at hand, namely taking control of your inbox. If you want to dig in deeper, however, there’s a great deal of customization that you can set up and never have to worry about again.
Colors and layout are just a few of the interface customization options, but if you dig deeper into the settings, you can choose how to use some of Mailbird’s more interesting features. One of my favorites is the ‘Snooze’ option, which lets you temporarily ignore an email until you’re ready to deal with it, allowing you a quick method of prioritizing your correspondence.
Another feature unique to Mailbird is the ability to integrate a number of other popular apps such as Google Docs, Google Calendar, Asana, Slack, Whatsapp, and more – the list is quite extensive.
The process for installing Mailbird companion apps was quick and easy, although I have to admit that being able to access Facebook while being in the middle of answering email isn’t exactly a productivity booster. It can be hidden in a single click, though, and hopefully will stop you from switching away from your inbox and getting distracted.
By comparison, Google Docs integration is a major help, and so is Evernote (although I’m in the process of transitioning to OneNote, a competing app from Microsoft which doesn’t seem to be available yet). Surprisingly, the app section is open source, so anyone with the right programming knowledge can visit the code repository on Github and create their own app integration.
The integrations listed in the Services tab don’t seem to offer much in the way of help as of yet, since most of the services are simply links to the provider websites. These run the gamut from web hosting to antivirus software, and it’s not immediately clear how (if at all) these would integrate with Mailbird, but this is the only part of the program that doesn’t feel perfectly polished. I assume that they’re going to be expanding this aspect soon as they connect with more service providers. Having a link to OneDrive and OneNote in here would be a real help, but Microsoft isn’t exactly known for playing nice with the competition.
While we’re on the brief subject of negative aspects, I noticed that the ‘New mail’ notification sound kept playing consistently during my testing. I’m not sure if this is because I simply still had unread messages from my ancient Hotmail account, or if there was some other bug, but I wound up having to disable audio notifications entirely to get it to stop.
Mailbird doesn’t have a mobile app as of the time of this writing, but the developers have announced that they are working on constantly with the hope of a Q1 2018 release for the Android platform. If it’s anything like their desktop client, it will make Mailbird your go-to email app no matter where you choose to answer your messages.
The Paid CompetitioneM Client
eM Client is another very well designed email client which is far more effective than most modern webmail interfaces. It supports most major email services, including Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, and iCloud. It’s available for free if you’re just using it for personal email, although you’re limited to only checking a maximum of two email accounts. If you want to use em Client for your business or you want to check more than two accounts, you’ll need to buy the current Pro version for $49.95. If you want to buy a version with lifetime updates, the price jumps to $99.95.
The screenshot here is after I deleted my accounts after testing, as it’s not fair to my clients to publicize our conversation details
The setup process was quite smooth, quickly and easily connecting with all the email accounts I tested. It did take a bit longer than I expected to synchronize all my messages, but I was still able to start working immediately. There were the standard hidden image security precautions, and excellent organizational tools for tackling your mountain of unread messages.
eM Client does integrate a number of helpful productivity apps including contacts manager, calendar and chat services, and each of the services can sync with various internet-based services such as Facebook and Google. There are no third-party app extensions which might limit your productivity, but there is something to be said for staying on-task while you’re handling your correspondence.
Overall, eM Client is an excellent alternative to Mailbird if you’re only checking a couple of personal email accounts, although it is far more expensive if you want to purchase the lifetime updates package.
PostBox
PostBox is one of the more affordable paid options available for managing your email, priced at just $40, with volume discounts available for those who want to deploy it across an entire business. There is a 30 day free trial available if you’re interested in testing it out before committing to the purchase.
The Postbox setup process is smooth and simple, although it does require the extra step of enabling of the IMAP protocol to work with a Gmail account. Fortunately, it gives you explicit instructions on how to enable it, which is a nice touch. It supports as many email accounts as you care to add, and it manages to sync tens of thousands of emails quite rapidly.
This type of setup is what I’m used to when configuring email clients, but Postbox was able to fill in all the relevant details automatically
One of Postbox’s real strengths is its organizational tools, which allow you to quickly tag and sort emails without having to set up filter rules first. The search features offer a wide range of options for helping you quickly find the message you’re looking for, although it does work better once it has the chance to index all your emails. If you’re importing a large number to start with, this will take some time, but unless you’re receiving thousands of emails a day it should be able to handle it smoothly moving forwards.
Unlike many of the other email clients I looked at, Postbox displays email images by default, although it’s possible that it’s using some sort of built-in whitelist the way Gmail does in order to decide whether or not an email sender is trustworthy.
Postbox has some basic customization options, including the ability to reorganize the toolbar and some basic layout adjustments, but that’s the extent of the customization abilities. It also doesn’t include any kind of app extensions or integrations such as a calendar, although it does contain a ‘Reminders’ feature that can be used like an agenda. If you’re looking for an all-in-one organizational tool, Postbox may not be complete enough for you.
The Bat!
If you’re more interested in security than in efficiency, The Bat! might be just what you’re looking for – and yes, the exclamation point is officially part of the name! It’s primary claim to fame is the ability to integrate email encryption directly into the program, supporting PGP, GnuPG and S/MIME encryption options. This makes it perfect for those who are working on extremely sensitive data, but it’s definitely not as user-friendly as any of the other email clients I looked at.
It has a fairly basic interface, and the process for setting up my Gmail account didn’t work properly the first time. Typically, Google’s two-factor authentication works instantly, but despite approving the sign-in on my phone, The Bat! didn’t realize I had done it at first. It also doesn’t integrate with my Google Calendar, but there are a few basic scheduling tools that you can use – although I prefer something more comprehensive.
Rather than including a mobile app for your smartphone, The Bat! does offer a ‘portable’ version of the app, which can be run from a USB key or similar device without having to install anything. If you find yourself needing to use a computer at an internet cafe or other public places to send encrypted emails, this is definitely your best option.
The Bat! isn’t likely to be the best solution for anyone except the most security-conscious users, but for journalists, financial analysts or anyone else who regularly needs to use encrypted communication, it may be just what you need. The professional version is available for $59.99, while the home user version is available for $26.95.
A Few Free OptionsMozilla Thunderbird
Thunderbird is one of the older open source email clients still in active development, first released in 2004. Originally bundled with Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, the two development projects were eventually separated as more and more people moved towards web-based email services and the demand declined. However, the developers are still working hard, Thunderbird is still one of the better free email clients for Windows 10.
Thunderbird uses a browser-style tab system to keep different tasks separate, although the interface feels out-of-date and clunky compared to some of the other clients
I used to use Thunderbird as my email client, back when it was first released, but I gradually moved away from it in favor of Gmail’s web-based interface. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it has also joined the modern era, and configuring my email accounts was quick and easy. It was definitely slower to sync than some of the other competitors, but it has good filtering and organizational tools, as well as instant messaging, calendars and contact management built-in.
The interface is a little out of date, even compared to Mozilla’s new direction for Firefox, but the tabbed interface makes it simpler to manage multiple tasks than some of the other email clients that I liked more. If you’re a person who loves to multitask while you work, be sure to check out Thunderbird. Of course, multitasking isn’t always the best way to conquer that unread message count!
Zimbra DesktopBest Free Email Client For Mac
Zimbra is part of an impressively large suite of applications designed for large enterprise deployments, which makes it a bit surprising that the program is free. During the installation process, though, I ran into a snag. Zimbra Desktop requires the latest version of the Java Runtime Environment, and I’ve been ignoring the update process for a while, so the installer was forced to quit. Eventually, I got things updated, but I ran into another problem almost immediately when it was time to connect my Gmail account.
Compared to the other email clients I tested, configuring my Gmail account to work with Zimbra required adjusting some settings that many users may not understand
Despite the instructions they provided, my Gmail account already had IMAP access enabled, but it still wasn’t able to connect. The error details were a long string of unintelligible error data, and nothing I could do would make it connect. When I tried adding one of my old Yahoo mail accounts, it worked smoothly, so I assume this is more likely to be a problem with Gmail’s two-factor authentication.
Zimbra’s interface is definitely out of date, and it doesn’t really give you much in the way of customization options. I found it generally slow to load, although it does include a decent array of tools above and beyond your basic email inbox, including calendars and scheduling options. Compared to some of the more modern options available, it doesn’t really stand out, and most users will be better off with something a bit more user-friendly.
Mail for Windows
If you have Windows 10, you’ve probably already got Mail for Windows installed. Setting up accounts is simple and easy, and it integrated with my Gmail and Google Calendar accounts without any issues at all. It provides quick access to calendaring and contacts, although it’s really just linking you quickly to the Calendar and Contacts apps that are built into Windows.
If you’re willing to embrace the default Microsoft apps for all of these features, then Mail might be a good choice for you – and you certainly can’t argue with the price. You can also be sure that it’s optimized for Windows 10, since it comes bundled with it by default.
On the downside, you’re also limited in terms of any additional features. There are no extensions to work with additional apps, but you could argue that its charm is in its simplicity. You won’t be getting distracted by anything, which hopefully will allow you to focus on getting through your daily messages!
A Final Word
Adjusting to a new email client takes time, so you may not become instantly more productive as soon as you switch. If you can’t find the right balance between managing correspondence and the rest of your work, the best email client in the world won’t be enough to stop your unread message count from climbing. But if you take the time to choose a client that’s best suited to your needs, you’ll find that you are able to take back control of your inbox while still meeting your other goals. Experiment with the different options that we’ve explored here, and you’ll be sure to find one that matches your particular working style!
The Mac’s default Mail application (also referred to as “Mail.app” or “Apple Mail”) has a somewhat checkered past.
While Mail.app provides a free, full-featured email client on every Mac and has even pioneered some innovative features over the years (like VIP and Handoff), it’s definitely not for everyone. It can be buggy, occasionally has issues playing nice with Gmail, and lacks some more advanced features that are present (and have been present for years) in other third-party email clients.
If you use plug-ins to extend Mail.app’s functionality, Apple has a history of making changes that cause developers to re-write their plugins, resulting in a broken email workflow while you wait for updates.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of excellent third-party email clients that aim to fix Mail.app’s shortcomings. In this article, we’ll take a look at several of the more popular options and introduce you to our favorite.
Criteria for the Best Email App
In selecting the best email app for macOS, we used the following criteria to select the winner:
We will be using Mavericks the latest version of the Mac operating system although the settings will be the same for any Mail Client on Windows, Mac, Linux and any mobile client. Mobile mail client for mac. This tutorial we will configure Apple Mail to use IMAP instead of the default POP. Image provided by For anyone that is unsure about the differences between IMAP and POP.
Get Your Email Under Control: Check out our free guide for getting your email inbox calm and under control. Download it here.
Our Favorite Email App: Spark
Spark is our favorite third-party email client for the Mac because it has a great combination of powerful features and a clean, well-designed user interface. It’s a great productivity tool for individual users, and also offers some innovative features for teams that need to collaborate on emails together.
Everywhere you look in Spark, there are features focused on making email better. The first thing you’ll notice is the Smart Inbox, which collects emails from all of your accounts and automatically organizes them into categories like Notifications, Newsletters, Personal, and Seen. This shows you the real emails from real people first so you can respond to the things that are important and save the rest for later.
Another unique feature in Spark is Quick Replies, which allows you to send short, templated responses. These are handy when you need to indicate that you’ve received or seen an email but don’t necessarily need to type out a lengthy reply. And if the message doesn’t require a response, you can use 4 different swipe gestures to mark it as read, archive it, pin it for later, or delete it entirely.
One of the things that Apple Mail gets right is the support for smart mailboxes. These allow you to create custom mailbox folders that automatically organize your email messages based on criteria like who it’s from, what’s in the subject line, or what day it was received. Once you set up and use smart folders in Apple Mail, it can be hard to switch to an email client that doesn’t support it. Fortunately, Spark has support for smart mailboxes but they are even easier to create thanks to the built-in smart search feature. Smart search appears all over the place in Spark, and functions a lot like Spotlight for your email client. All you have to do is start typing and Spark instantly shows you the available options.
Spark also has a built-in calendar view, which can be useful when replying to a message requesting a call or meeting at a specific time. But what makes this feature really useful is the way it’s implemented. There are other email apps that build in calendaring functionality, but it’s either self-contained or uses a weird syncing protocol (I’m looking at you, Outlook). Spark does it a little bit differently. If you use something like Google or iCloud and then create calendar events in Spark, they will instantly show up on all your calendars in all your apps (like Fantastical or BusyCal). The difference is subtle, but important — Spark is not trying to be your calendar, it’s just allowing you to access your calendar. There are some obvious limitations with this based on your account and service type. Such as, if you set up a standard IMAP account in Spark, the calendar view isn’t going to help you, but it is nice for the account types that support it.
In addition to Google and iCloud, Spark supports quite a few different email account types, including:
Spark also integrates directly with other productivity apps like Things, OmniFocus, and Bear, just to name a few. While the integrations provide much of the standard functionality available in other third-party email apps (like adding a due date for a task or choosing a notebook for reference material), the export window is customized to match the style of the service you are using. You can add personal info before you export, and some services allow you additional options like just copying the link to the message or exporting the message as a PDF.
There are tons of other features that make Spark a great choice as your personal email client. Some of our favorites are email templates (so you don’t have to create your message from scratch every time), the ability to send messages later, follow up reminders, snoozing email messages, and customizable keyboard shortcuts (you can just click a button to use the standard set from Gmail or even Apple Mail if you prefer). But Spark also includes features that make it a great solution as a team-based email tool.
At first glance, it may be difficult to see the value or need for team-based email, and that’s okay. If you never use Spark’s collaboration features, it’s still an incredible email client. But sometimes it can be handy to have a conversation about an email, like when sending a proposal to a potential customer, and Spark allows you to do this from within the email client itself.
Spark keeps all comments private, allowing your teammates to chime in before sending so you can create a better response. This is also a MUCH better method for keeping people “in the loop” than the traditional CC: or BCC: method which just leads to cluttered inboxes. You can also attach files to your comments so that all related client documents are kept together. You can even create a secure weblink from any message that can be accessed via a web browser, which is a great way to integrate Spark with other web-based tools like a CRM.
Spark also has an interesting pricing model built on its unique team-based collaborative features. If you use Spark for personal use, it’s completely free. The free version even allows you to get started with the team features, giving you up to 5GB of team file storage, 2 active collaborators (perfect if you work with an assistant), and up to 5 email templates. You can upgrade to the Premium plan for a larger team, which includes 10GB per team member of file storage, unlimited collaborators, unlimited email templates, and even advanced link sharing options. The Premium plan is $7.99/user per month (or $6.39/user per month if billed annually).
Download Spark on the Mac App Store for Free.
A VERY Close Second: Airmail
Airmail is marketed as being a “lightning-fast email client for Mac,” and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. It’s extremely quick and responsive and looks absolutely beautiful. Everything about Airmail is well-polished from a design perspective, and it just looks and feels like a native Mac application.
But, Airmail is more than just a pretty face — it’s also a very powerful email client with a lot of great features that Mail.app lacks, like support for composing messages in Markdown. The compose window in Airmail actually allows you to compose in Markdown or HTML by opening up a side-by-side interface where you type on the left and your formatted text is displayed on the right. This visual preview of your message can be really useful as you type your message to make sure you don’t miss anything that would result in broken links or strange-looking text.
When it comes to receiving messages, Airmail takes a task-based approach that may be an acquired taste if you’re coming from Mail.app. Each message in Airmail can be marked as To Do, Memo, or Done. Selecting one of these options will apply an identifier (similar to a tag) to the message and move it to the appropriate container inside of Airmail.
A To Do is (just like it sounds) something you need to do or take action on. For example, if your boss asked you to send an updated report, or your spouse emailed you to pick up something from the store on your way home, you might classify that as a To Do.
Once a task is completed, it is marked as Done, while a Memo is defined by Airmail’s support documentation as something that you need to memorize or store for later.
Of course, you don’t have to use these features. If the idea of managing tasks from your inbox doesn’t appeal to you, Airmail also integrates with many productivity applications like BusyCal, OmniFocus, and Things. Creating a calendar event or a task with a link to the original email message is easy: just right-click (control-click or two-finger tap) on the email, select Send To, and then select the application to which you want to send the email link.
Airmail integrates with quite a few applications and includes a Plugin Framework API that developers can use to integrate their apps with Airmail. There’s a ridiculously long list of productivity applications Airmail supports, including OmniFocus, Things, BusyCal, Evernote, DEVONthink, 2Do, Cardhop, Fantastical, Trello, Bear, Droplr, Todoist, Trello, Asana, and many more.
Airmail also includes several features that will be appreciated by power users, like AppleScript support and the ability to delay sending a message after hitting the Send button (giving you a chance to “undo” that angry email you sent and regretted a few seconds later). For Gmail users, Airmail supports Gmail keyboard shortcuts as well, and while the complete list is not supported, a surprising number of them are.
Airmail is great, but there are a couple of things that keep us from naming Airmail as our favorite third-party email client. One minor complaint we have with Airmail is the way that it handles your IMAP folders — it actually creates a few nested folders inside of an Airmail folder that it uses to handle email-based tasks. But the bigger issue is reliability. In our testing, we noticed Airmail will occasionally not send your message (and we weren’t the only ones). It appears this issue has been addressed in newer versions, but having a message fail to send when you think it has been sent is a big problem. It’s quite possible you won’t have any issues with this, but it’s something you need to be aware of.
That said, Airmail is still a great email app overall. If you were to choose Airmail simply for the beautiful coat of paint, what you’ll find underneath is a very versatile email client that will probably meet your email needs and then some. Airmail is also a one-time cost, so if Spark’s pricing model makes you a little bit nervous and you’d rather pay for your personal email client, Airmail is a great alternative.
Airmail is available in the Mac App Store for $9.99.
Get Your Email Under Control: Check out our free guide for getting your email inbox calm and under control. Download it here.
The Best Email App for Power Users: MailMate
If you’re looking for something more powerful than both Spark or Airmail, you might want to check out MailMate. Let me say at the beginning that MailMate is definitely not for everyone. The interface is a far cry from both Spark and Airmail, but if your goal is simply to crank through email as quickly and efficiently as possible, MailMate could be for you.
MailMate is a “keyboard-centric” mail client with a text-based approach to email. MailMate also supports more Gmail keyboard shortcuts than any other app except MailPlane, and you can even use your own custom keybindings if you want.
Because MailMate aims to be completely standards-compliant, it actually doesn’t even support formatted text. To add any basic formatting to your message (italics, bold, bullet lists, links), you must do it in Markdown. If you’re not used to writing in Markdown, it may take some getting used to. But, if you use Markdown frequently, then you’ll have no trouble picking up MailMate.
MailMate also offers several unique layout options, like a widescreen layout and special views to show thread arcs and email statistics. MailMate also has some of the most powerful search tools we’ve seen, rivaling Google’s web interface in terms of power and flexibility.
MailMate includes extensions (which it calls “bundles”) that allow integration with many different productivity applications, and the bundles that are shipped with MailMate go beyond the basic integrations that are found in most other third-party email clients. For example, MailMate is the only app that supports sending either a link to the original message or a copy of the message itself to OmniFocus (by using “Add” or “Add with Summary”).
These bundles are also built on the default message URL schemes instead of using proprietary formats like both Spark and Airmail do. Let me give you an example:
Quickbooks pro 6.0 for mac. Let’s say you receive an email that you need to do something for, but you don’t want to do it right now. With any of the email clients we’ve mentioned so far, you can send that message to your task manager and it will create a task out of the message and include a link back to the original message. When you are ready to take action, you can click that link and go straight to the message — no trying to find it in your email client, which is a huge time saver.
But, if you look closely at the link in both Spark and Airmail, they are proprietary links. The address will start with either spark:// or airmail:// respectively. This means when you click on the link, it will open directly in Spark or Airmail. Which is fine if you’re all in with one of those email clients, but if you’re on a Mac where you don’t have those apps installed, you can’t get to the message. If you send an email to your task manager in Spark or Airmail for iOS, you’ll have to use the Mac counterpart if you want to access the message later. MailMate uses the default message format (message://), which allows the message to open in any email client (and will use the one you set as the system default automatically). This isn’t a big deal, but if you are thinking of using different email clients on both your mobile and desktop devices, it’s something you should be aware of.
MailMate is one of the most expensive email clients we reviewed, and is available for $50 from the developer’s website (there is a 30-day trial available). At that price, MailMate is definitely not for everyone — in fact, it’s not for most people. The interface is very functional, but also pretty boring. If looks are important to you, you won’t like MailMate. But, if you’re looking for the most powerful and most standards-compliant email client available, you write in Markdown frequently, and the price tag doesn’t scare you away, you might want to check it out.
Other OptionsPostbox
Postbox was previously our runner up, and is still a great email client with several unique features that are well thought out. For example, instead of just having one unified inbox, Postbox allows you to have “account groups” that can separate or blend work and personal accounts — a very useful feature if you have a lot of email accounts you’re required to manage. Postbox also has a Focus Pane which allows you to quickly filter email to find what you’re looking for. For example, you could quickly find an email from a specific person received yesterday that has an attachment. Another great feature in Postbox is support for Pre-Made Responses. This is very similar to the “Canned Responses” feature in Google Labs (which is available in the Gmail web interface), but it doesn’t require that you have a Gmail account in order to use them and allows you to plug in tokens like first name or company.
Postbox also has a time tracker feature when responding to email so you can see how long you’ve spent composing your message, as well as a word count. When you’re ready to send your message, Postbox also has domain fencing that can prevent you from sending an email from the wrong account. And the Quick Bar is sort of like Spotlight for your email client, quickly allowing you to jump to any account, folder, or message using the keyboard. It also supports emojis, tagging, TouchBar support, and cloud file sharing (so you can attach large files to emails without cluttering up the recipient’s inbox). Postbox even has built-in anti-tracking, allowing you to block tracking pixels attached to some email messages.
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Postbox is also well-supported by the developers and receives consistent updates. Honestly, the main reason it’s not a runner up pick anymore is simply the emergence of Spark. Postbox is still a great email client, albeit a pricey one when compared to Spark or Airmail, and the interface is a little more cluttered because of all the features it supports.
Postbox is $40 and be purchased directly from the developer’s website. There’s a 30-day free trial and a 60-day money back guarantee, so you basically have 90 days to try it out and see if it’s for you. Because all sales are handled through their website, they also offer upgrade pricing for owners of previous versions.
Canary
One aspect of traditional email that can easily be overlooked is security. There are services that provide end-to-end encryption for the email messages you send and receive, but they can be a hassle to set up. Canary is an email app that handles it all for you by implementing the OpenPGP standard in a beautifully-designed email interface. You don’t have to think about it, and you can feel confident that only you and the person you’re communicating with can read what you send.
Canary also has some great features, like a focused inbox, natural language search, smart filters, and a built-in cleaner that allows you to automatically find and delete unwanted emails. There’s also read notifications, email templates, the ability to snooze emails until later, and a one-click unsubscribe feature so you don’t have to search for those unsubscribe links.
Unfortunately, Canary doesn’t play well with other productivity apps. It integrates with Dropbox and Google Drive which is nice for taming attachments, but it doesn’t offer direct integration with a task manager like Spark, Airmail, and MailMate do. But if simple security is important to you, check out Canary. It’s available for $19.99 on the Mac App Store, but is also included with a SetApp subscription.
PolymailPost Box Express
Polymail is designed to be an email app for teams. Like Spark, it allows teams to communicate in real time with mentions and inline comments, and with email sharing you can turn any message into a sharable web link for your team to collaborate on. Polymail also integrates directly with apps your team might already be using, like Slack and Salesforce.
What makes Polymail really interesting is the built-in automation and sequences features. By automating manual tasks like email follow-up and scheduling meetings, your team can focus on the work that matters most. Sequences allows you to send out multi-stage email campaigns right from the app, and even gives you detailed reporting showing who opened, clicked, unsubscribed, or replied to your messages.
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Unfortunately, Polymail is pretty expensive and not a great option for individuals. It starts at $10/user per month for the Basic Plan, and the Premium Plan (which includes the sequences) is $24/user per month. We don’t recommend Polymail for most people, but if you’re looking for a powerful team email client that integrates with Salesforce and Slack, you might want to give it a look (if you’re not scared off by the price).
Outlook
The Outlook approach to email is to integrate everything (calendar, tasks, email) into one ecosystem, which definitely isn’t for everyone and we personally don’t like it. It’s built from the ground up to support Microsoft Exchange, which combines everything into a somewhat proprietary format. So if you use Exchange-based email (popular in corporate settings), you might be stuck using Outlook as many third-party apps have limited support for the Exchange protocol.
Outlook is also only available as part of an Office 365 subscription, which is pretty expensive ($6.99/month or $69/year for Personal, $9.99/month or $99/year for Home). An Office 365 subscription also includes other Microsoft office products like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, so if you need or already use those apps it might be worth looking into. Interestingly, you can buy Office Home & Student 2019 for $149, but it doesn’t include Outlook. So if you use Microsoft Office already or rely on the Exchange email protocol, Outlook may not be a bad option. Otherwise, the hefty subscription simply isn’t worth it.
MailPlane
If you prefer the Gmail web interface, MailPlane is a great option since it basically runs the Gmail web app inside of an application wrapper. This allows you to use the complete library of Gmail-supported keyboard shortcuts as well as Gmail plugins (like Boomerang) and even gives you access to Google Inbox while still offering some native app advantages, like Evernote and OmniFocus integration (among others). At $29.95, it’s specifically targeted for Gmail users who love the Gmail web interface but want the advantages of a native Mac app.
UniBox
Unibox offers a people-centric approach to email, organizing your messages and conversations by person. The list of contacts on the left-hand side of the screen is sorted by date, but each person will appear in the list only once. Selecting a contact will reveal all your conversations with that person, similar to the Messages app. It’s a very different (and unique) approach to email, but is so non-traditional that it has a fairly steep learning curve. If organizing your messages by person sounds appealing to you, give UniBox ($20 on the Mac App Store, included with a SetApp subscription) a look.
Mail Pilot
Mail Pilot began as a Kickstarter campaign promising a a new (and better) email workflow. Mail Pilot treats your emails like tasks, which is an approach we don’t love. Yes, many messages will require you to take action, but when you have tasks in your email client and tasks in a task manager (like Things) it’s easy to lose track of what is where and what you need to be doing. Ideally, your productivity system should have a single source of truth for what needs to get done (and it isn’t your email client). That doesn’t mean it can’t work for you though, so if you like the idea of assigning due dates to your email and organizing them by multiple priority levels check out Mail Pilot.
Now, long ago we’d call Transmit an “FTP client”, but today, with Transmit 5, we connect to lots of different server types and cloud services. For example, Amazon S3 dramatically changed the way files are served on the internet, and Transmit is a great way to manage your Amazon S3 buckets. Jun 07, 2018 The dozens of characteristics that Transmit features convert it into a favorite FTP client for Mac users. Compatible with FTP, SFTP and TLS/SSL protocols, it offers faster access to iDisk accounts than Finder and allows you to edit a file from any application on the go, without having to download it to the hard drive. Transmit for Mac is a full service FTP client for the OS X platform. Transmit looks great, is easy to use, and should be a welcome program for anyone who has had difficulties transferring files. Transmit is an excellent FTP (file transfer protocol), SFTP, and iDisk/WebDAV client that allows you to upload, download, and delete files over the internet. With the most Mac-like interface available, Transmit makes FTP as simple, fun, and easy as it can possibly be. Transmit client for mac. Transmit FTP Client: One among the FTP client that is designed for the Mac OS is the Transmit FTP Client. It is a proprietary software developed by Panic. Transfer files from the client side to the FTP server with the Transmit FTP client.
As of this writing, Mail Pilot pricing is pretty confusing. Mail Pilot 2 was removed from sale by the developer over a year ago and at the same time version 3 was announced via Medium. The website indicates that there are 2 versions available for pre-order: Carbon Fiber which is a one time purchase of $19.99 (50% off for pre-order), and a Yacht Club membership which is $4.99/month but also includes a weird 4-month 50% pre-order discount. The subscription gives you a couple additional features plus access to a Slack community and promises of free mobile apps if they release them. Fortunately, there is a Public Preview edition you can download for free first.
Conclusion
There is no single third-party email client that is perfect for everyone, but we believe Spark is the best option for most people because of its powerful features and great design. If Spark’s pricing model makes you nervous, you prefer something a little more customizable, or need an integration with a productivity app that Spark doesn’t offer, check out Airmail. And if you’re looking for the most powerful, most flexible, most efficient, and most standards-compliant email client available (regardless of cost and looks), check out MailMate.
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Get Your Email Under Control: Check out our free guide for getting your email inbox calm and under control. Download it here.
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