Recommend me an email client. Please and thank you.

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thrillhouse

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  • #1
    I've recently migrated to Windows 11, and it's going OK so far...except for the email client.

    I'm using Outlook (Classic) for my work email client and it works fine for that purpose. I know I could add other accounts to it, but I prefer to keep my work stuff separated from my personal stuff. So...I need some email client recommendations.

    I don't like the default client at all, AND I've been getting that message to migrate to outlook, so that's out.

    I've tried Thunderbird. It's decidedly MEH. I like that it's keeping a local copy of my emails, but it seems to come with a pretty substantial performance hit. Plus, it's ugly as all hell. I really don't like the interface, or the way it opens/displays search results, and I hate the default Reply windows. I'd really like to find something else.

    Wants:
    keeps local copy of my email
    easy to use interface
    good performance with relatively large database
    not Thunderbird

    Nice to haves:
    open source

    Any recommendations?
     
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    Paladin

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  • #3
    Thunderbird. For many years. I don't need email to do much more than just collect my messages and let me reply/send. It works well and is reliable. The interface is not pretty but it works and is familiar.

    If you like Outlook but want to keep things separate, just run a second user account on your PC or even a VM so things are separate.
     
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    Andrewcw

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  • #4
    thrillhouse said:
    not Thunderbird


    Any recommendations?
    Click to expand...
    Thunderbird? I mean I get why you don't want to comingle Outlook. But most of the world of Desktop Email clients went the way of the monthly fee web app way or died off completely. It's not like anyone's running to write a new email client from scratch and not get paid for the trouble on desktop. The focus has been on mobile apps.
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #5
    "Please recommend an email client that isn't Thunderbird."
    "I recommend Thunderbird. Or use the most inconvenient methods possible so that you can use Outlook still."

    Honestly, I wish I could still run Outlook Express. For home mail, nothing has ever been an improvement. All anything else has done is add clutter, cruft and bloat.
     
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  • #6
    thrillhouse said:
    I know I could add other accounts to it, but I prefer to keep my work stuff separated from my personal stuff. So...I need some email client recommendations.
    Click to expand...

    Me too, which is why my personal email isn't on my work computer.

    I use Outlook on my work PC with my work email account. I use Outlook on my personal PC with a bunch of personal email accounts.
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #7
    Semi On said:
    Me too, which is why my personal email isn't on my work computer.

    I use Outlook on my work PC with my work email account. I use Outlook on my personal PC with a bunch of personal email accounts.
    Click to expand...
    While generally recommended, some people do work from home using their own PCs, and may not have a work PC/laptop or can't afford to buy a whole separate setup to isolate for work use or don't have the space for it (and don't know about KVMs). I had my work email for my last job on my own PC even though I carried a company laptop, and did a lot of my work on my desktop at times I was doing work from home because it was more convenient and the job did not have requirements about keeping company stuff off of home computers (probably should have).
     
    cogwheel

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  • #8
    Paladin said:
    Thunderbird. For many years. I don't need email to do much more than just collect my messages and let me reply/send. It works well and is reliable. The interface is not pretty but it works and is familiar.
    Click to expand...
    For long term use, Thunderbird has two issues:
    • Thunderbird is on life support at best, since email clients just aren't a major thing for most people due to the prevalence of webmail.
    • Thunderbird has an absolute maximum folder size of 4GB, so you need to manage and rebuild/compact the databases. Either you need to delete email to keep the folder under 4GB (disk size, including attachments and inline stuff, after base64 inflation), or you need to slice your email archive up into multiple folders.
     
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  • #9
    Lord Evermore said:
    While generally recommended, some people do work from home using their own PCs, and may not have a work PC/laptop or can't afford to buy a whole separate setup to isolate for work use or don't have the space for it (and don't know about KVMs). I had my work email for my last job on my own PC even though I carried a company laptop, and did a lot of my work on my desktop at times I was doing work from home because it was more convenient and the job did not have requirements about keeping company stuff off of home computers (probably should have).
    Click to expand...

    Fair. In that case, I'd at least want separate log-in accounts, both using Outlook, as @Paladin recommended.
     
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    thrillhouse

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  • #10
    Semi On said:
    Me too, which is why my personal email isn't on my work computer.

    I use Outlook on my work PC with my work email account. I use Outlook on my personal PC with a bunch of personal email accounts.
    Click to expand...

    The email client recommendation is for my personal PC. I have my work laptop here, but honestly, it's just terrible. It's a "workstation" laptop and the fans run whenever it's powered on. It's like typing on a hair dryer.

    I don't access anything personal on my work equipment.
     
    Paladin

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  • #13
    cogwheel said:
    For long term use, Thunderbird has two issues:
    • Thunderbird is on life support at best, since email clients just aren't a major thing for most people due to the prevalence of webmail.
    • Thunderbird has an absolute maximum folder size of 4GB, so you need to manage and rebuild/compact the databases. Either you need to delete email to keep the folder under 4GB (disk size, including attachments and inline stuff, after base64 inflation), or you need to slice your email archive up into multiple folders.
    Click to expand...
    That's odd since I have 4.8 GB in my profile folder currently, and I have definitely seen people with way more than that. My boss has somewhere around 18 GB in one of his Thunderbird accounts, 9GB in another, and a couple other that I didn't bother to look at last time I helped him migrate his data to a new PC. It seems to work fine.

    Regardless, I archive out old mail past about 4 years into a backup storage drive rotation so I probably don't go much past 4GB in general. Accounting for the compression, and encoding and stuff, it is definitely more than 4GB of raw data.

    Mozilla themselves say that the 4GB limit was removed once they migrated to a 64bit version of the application unless you are on very old 32 bit versions of windows (due to the FAT file system). Now you can have virtually unlimited storage and each single message is apparently limited to 4GB (and up to 4 billion messages per folder).

    In any case, it works fine for even what I consider highly excessive amounts of saved messages. :)

    As for it being on life support... I suppose? I mean, every traditional windows application sort of is since the trend in general is to move to webapps or subscription services. I can only imagine that if they do ever completely stop development on it at Mozilla, it will be left to the open source community to continue work on it. I don't really see it happening though. They have more frequent releases now than ever.
     
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    Paladin

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  • #14
    Lord Evermore said:
    "Please recommend an email client that isn't Thunderbird."
    "I recommend Thunderbird. Or use the most inconvenient methods possible so that you can use Outlook still."

    Honestly, I wish I could still run Outlook Express. For home mail, nothing has ever been an improvement. All anything else has done is add clutter, cruft and bloat.
    Click to expand...
    ;)

    Check the subject of the thread. Here, I'll save you scrolling up. "What do you use for your email client?"

    I answered the question asked, I was not recommending it as a panacea though it does seem the obvious solution since the main complaint is that Thunderbird is 'meh' and not very pretty.
    The common alternatives are eM Client and MailSpring, both of which kind of just look like Thunderbird for the large part. Thunderbird is highly customizable as well, themes and settings, plus 'hacks' like userstyles etc.

    There are also Mailbird, and Postbox which I have never used but they look pretty similar as well. Basically a bit more 'smooth' or 'modern' which usually means they have fewer features or fewer exposed features, or they hide functionality behind 'helpful' automation that makes it harder to actually do what you want a lot of the time. I think all 4 have either subscriptions or bulk one time payments for full functionality (which, to be fair, includes features that Thunderbird does not have by default, ie. AI filtering and reply stuff or whatever).

    Outlook is also a very reasonable option and can be kept entirely separate by running it on a second Windows account (switching accounts is trivial and nearly instant on modern machines) or you can run it on a virtual machine, which is a bit overkill but... that is what was asked basically.
     
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  • #15
    Paladin said:
    That's odd since I have 4.8 GB in my profile folder currently, and I have definitely seen people with way more than that. My boss has somewhere around 18 GB in one of his Thunderbird accounts, 9GB in another, and a couple other that I didn't bother to look at last time I helped him migrate his data to a new PC. It seems to work fine.

    Regardless, I archive out old mail past about 4 years into a backup storage drive rotation so I probably don't go much past 4GB in general. Accounting for the compression, and encoding and stuff, it is definitely more than 4GB of raw data.

    Mozilla themselves say that the 4GB limit was removed once they migrated to a 64bit version of the application unless you are on very old 32 bit versions of windows (due to the FAT file system). Now you can have virtually unlimited storage and each single message is apparently limited to 4GB (and up to 4 billion messages per folder).

    In any case, it works fine for even what I consider highly excessive amounts of saved messages. :)
    Click to expand...
    It's per email folder (e.g. "Inbox") in Thunderbird, not per profile or per email account in that profile. Each folder is stored as a separate database, and is limited to 4GB. This is even on 64bit Thunderbird on Win10 64bit, or at least was as of a couple years ago.

    As far as highly excessive, that's fair. I ran into this on my work email, where I got and sent a fair amount of large-ish (over 1MB) attachments (or used to, I use OneDrive instead of attachments these days), and those attachments are stored in the matching Thunderbird database, inflated by the base64 encoding. My boss had it much worse, to the point that we'd have to slice off a portion of his old email from the Inbox and move it to a separate archive folder multiple times per year. Between wanting to keep it searchable and needing to keep it for 10 years, it got annoying to manage.
     
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    thrillhouse

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  • #16
    Paladin said:
    ;)

    Check the subject of the thread. Here, I'll save you scrolling up. "What do you use for your email client?"

    I answered the question asked, I was not recommending it as a panacea though it does seem the obvious solution since the main complaint is that Thunderbird is 'meh' and not very pretty.
    The common alternatives are eM Client and MailSpring, both of which kind of just look like Thunderbird for the large part. Thunderbird is highly customizable as well, themes and settings, plus 'hacks' like userstyles etc.

    There are also Mailbird, and Postbox which I have never used but they look pretty similar as well. Basically a bit more 'smooth' or 'modern' which usually means they have fewer features or fewer exposed features, or they hide functionality behind 'helpful' automation that makes it harder to actually do what you want a lot of the time. I think all 4 have either subscriptions or bulk one time payments for full functionality (which, to be fair, includes features that Thunderbird does not have by default, ie. AI filtering and reply stuff or whatever).

    Outlook is also a very reasonable option and can be kept entirely separate by running it on a second Windows account (switching accounts is trivial and nearly instant on modern machines) or you can run it on a virtual machine, which is a bit overkill but... that is what was asked basically.
    Click to expand...
    I'd sooner shoot myself in the face with a bazooka than switch accounts all day to check my email.

    I'm giving emClient a whirl. The interface is much better than Thunderbird.

    Also, come on man. I'm clearly looking for recommendations here regardless of the thread title. But I edited it so the pedants in the crowd can unbunch their drawers.
     
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  • #17
    It's all good. My initial response was going to be 'how is this not a poll' based on your thread title but figured the rest of your post was actually asking for recommendations as much as a vote of preference. Your complaints of not liking the look of Thunderbird in general (understandable, it's not pretty... just functional), the 'way it opens/displays search results' (not sure what this means but probably the whole date, graphing, and other complications... yeah, it's not great but it works well enough for most needs), and the 'default reply windows', which I don't follow other than maybe because it opens them in a window instead of tab?

    Ultimately I think what you're asking for are options that people trust and which provide a more attractive design than Thunderbird, right?

    Hopefully emClient works well for you. Between the 4 I posted, they are fairly similar in appearance at first glance at least. I would say they are all a bit prettier than Thunderbird with the default skin so that seems good for your desires.
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #19
    cogwheel said:
    For long term use, Thunderbird has two issues:
    • Thunderbird is on life support at best, since email clients just aren't a major thing for most people due to the prevalence of webmail.
    • Thunderbird has an absolute maximum folder size of 4GB, so you need to manage and rebuild/compact the databases. Either you need to delete email to keep the folder under 4GB (disk size, including attachments and inline stuff, after base64 inflation), or you need to slice your email archive up into multiple folders.
    Click to expand...
    The 4GB folder limit (which applied to the default MBOX format only) was eliminated as of Thunderbird 51 (2017) according to Mozilla's Limits - Thunderbird page (it's on 115 now). The limit was removed for IMAP folders way back in version 3.1. The maximum size of an individual message is still 4GB, which, c'mon. What mail system would allow that? Larger folder sizes can be slower, but that usually applies on most applications.

    It's very unfortunate that everything has moved to online/cloud mail systems. Corporate held out for as long as possible but Office 365 and G-Suite began the push for them and now Microsoft is even making it hard to just have a local mail client with Outlook. I use Thunderbird with POP for my personal mail, even on my phone. My desktop PC is my definitive copy of my mail. My phone is just a convenience and web access is very rare.

    I have mail in Thunderbird going back to 1997 (broken import from previous clients so it's not complete) and I've got less than 1GB total, because I actually delete garbage.
     
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    mlewis

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  • #23
    Paladin said:
    ;)

    Check the subject of the thread. Here, I'll save you scrolling up. "What do you use for your email client?"

    I answered the question asked, I was not recommending it as a panacea though it does seem the obvious solution since the main complaint is that Thunderbird is 'meh' and not very pretty.
    The common alternatives are eM Client and MailSpring, both of which kind of just look like Thunderbird for the large part. Thunderbird is highly customizable as well, themes and settings, plus 'hacks' like userstyles etc.
    Click to expand...
    eM Client doesn't look anything like Thunderbird. I use both of them so can easily compare.
     
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    hestermofet

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  • #25
    Paladin said:
    ;)

    Check the subject of the thread. Here, I'll save you scrolling up. "What do you use for your email client?"

    I answered the question asked, I was not recommending it as a panacea though it does seem the obvious solution since the main complaint is that Thunderbird is 'meh' and not very pretty.
    Click to expand...
    That's a very valid complaint. I'm not using something so ugly, especially if I'm looking at it at least 30 times a day.

    I've switched to emClient. I'll pay for it if I have to, because webmail doesn't work for me. I was really happy with the old Windows Mail app. It still works, but I get automatically switched all the time to Outlook and it's annoying as fuck. And I know one day I won't be able to install it again, so it's time to switch. I pay Google money so I don't get ads in Gmail, I'm not putting up with Microsoft's ads in Outlook. I'm sure Outlook would have been fine otherwise.
     
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    hestermofet

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  • #27
    Semi On said:
    So both of these clients will be on your personal machine? I don’t think I’ve ever worked anywhere that would allow that.
    Click to expand...
    I work in cybersecurity for an org with 60K employees. Work gave me a phone but I just put their SIM in my own phone along with my eSIM. Everyone above me is ok with that. BYOD is like everywhere now except basically gov and mil.
     
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  • #28
    hestermofet said:
    I work in cybersecurity for an org with 60K employees. Work gave me a phone but I just put their SIM in my own phone along with my eSIM. Everyone above me is ok with that. BYOD is like everywhere now except basically gov and mil.
    Click to expand...

    Yeah, that’s been my experience on phones, just not computers unless you load the companies DM software on your personal machine.
     
    Paladin

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  • #30
    hestermofet said:
    Yeah I don't even know how you could think that seriously unless you're just choosing to be dismissive to make a larger point.
    Click to expand...
    Sorry if I was not clear, I just meant that they are very similar in broad appearance and functionality.

    emc_img_screenshot_main_desktop_mobile.png


    thunderbird.png

    Obviously they are not identical and preference for GUI design is both objective and subjective, but for the large part, they are very similar as is nearly every mainstream email program to some degree.

    I don't blame you for liking the look of eMclient more. I agree that it is more pretty. I don't think Thunderbird is ugly though and I like its more minimalistic design. It is designed largely around function and familiarity for long time users. I wasn't being dismissive, but I was making the larger point that Thunderbird is fine for a lot of people and the differences in appearance are relatively minor. It's totally up to any person's preference to choose what they like, no problem with that.
     
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    Lord Evermore

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  • #31
    koala said:
    I assume a command-line tool to synchronize your mail locally is a no go? Because I feel a good chunk of the "advanced" users who want their mail locally are moving in that direction.
    Click to expand...
    You still need a client to read it normally... notmuch might be very useful for one specific thing, but it's not an email client. I don't think most people, even advanced users, are only looking to have a bare text copy of their email stored locally simply to have it, or only so they can search it.
     
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    koala

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  • #32
    Yes, notmuch is a component. https://notmuchmail.org/frontends/ there are a couple of mail clients that use notmuch as its foundation, which search, read, and compose mail.

    (Or you can use any of the gazillion other email clients out there, once you have synced your email.)

    (Which, of course, I'm not recommending as a first choice in dealing with email. But if you have outgrown webmail, this is where much of the action is.)
     
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  • #34
    Lord Evermore said:
    Gazillion? This entire thread is about how there are very few local email clients available anymore.
    Click to expand...


    Just going with thunderbird and forks:
    Thunderbird
    Betterbird
    Mailbird
    Postbox
    Mail from seamonkey
    Epyrus.

    Then we can go with spark, edison, hiri, spike , postbox, the bat, eM client, outlook, canary, shortwave, twobird, inky, mailspring, claws, slypheed, loop, wino, blue, canary, flow, touchmail, the email client built into vivaldi, and that's not even remotely all of them. Hell, there's even multiple CLI ones and two different ones that run in emacs

    Just because you don't know of them doesn't mean they don't exist.

    ​



    ​

     
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    thrillhouse

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  • #37
    Semi On said:
    Yeah, that’s been my experience on phones, just not computers unless you load the companies DM software on your personal machine.
    Click to expand...
    I'm not accessing any internal resources, just webmail/teams. It's allowed. Not really much different from logging into Office365's website and accessing it there.

    @Paladin How much work did it take to get Thunderbird looking like that? That's not at all what it looked like on my Windows 11 box. It was much more...industrial, almost like an old Access front end.

    I've been testing out eM Client, and aside from some initial sluggishness, it's pretty solid. Thanks for the rec!
     
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  • #38
    Paladin said:
    Well there is a big difference between listing ones that exist and actually endorsing them. As has been seen, recommendations are subject to scrutiny around here. :ROFLMAO:
    Click to expand...

    Exactly.

    thrillhouse said:
    I'm not accessing any internal resources, just webmail/teams. It's allowed. Not really much different from logging into Office365's website and accessing it there.

    @Paladin How much work did it take to get Thunderbird looking like that? That's not at all what it looked like on my Windows 11 box. It was much more...industrial, almost like an old Access front end.

    I've been testing out eM Client, and aside from some initial sluggishness, it's pretty solid. Thanks for the rec!
    Click to expand...
    You need thunderbird build 115 or better (aka the most current version of this post) and to turn on the "cards" view .

    That's what really ruins thunderbird for me. I could handle the rest of it, but that cards view just sucks. It only gives you the title and a fraction of the first sentence. Everyone else gives you the title and a few sentences, so you get a better idea of what the e-mail is about.

    Here's Edison mail for example:

    edision.jpg

    It's much clearer what the e-mails are about. The thunderbird version just looks like a cheap hack job.
     
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  • #39
    thrillhouse said:
    I'm not accessing any internal resources, just webmail/teams. It's allowed. Not really much different from logging into Office365's website and accessing it there.

    @Paladin How much work did it take to get Thunderbird looking like that? That's not at all what it looked like on my Windows 11 box. It was much more...industrial, almost like an old Access front end.

    I've been testing out eM Client, and aside from some initial sluggishness, it's pretty solid. Thanks for the rec!
    Click to expand...
    That's the screenshot from the Thunderbird marketing for the recent redesign. It came right from their website. Mine doesn't look like that because I have themes installed to make it dark with amber highlights.
     
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