3rd-party mail clients

Why don't you want IMAP?

Why not use a web-based email service like Gmail, and view and compose your messages directly on the Google server though a web browser? You can also do this with Apple mail via iCloud.com. Other services offer the same. This way you can handle your email needs and not need an app that downloads them to the computer.

zephonic said:

I have four email accounts (url/pop3, google, yahoo, icloud) I need to access constantly.

I do not like to be logged in via a browser all the time, not to mention having to access all four of them via their separate web portals, so if there is a client application that can mimick iOS Mail's behavior, that would be great.

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It is a mystery exactly what you want that is missing in the email clients available on OS X. I currently have six active accounts setup in Mail. They include a mixture of POP3 and IMAP accounts including iCloud [which is IMAP]. I am scratching my head trying to determine what my iOS Mail client can do that my OS X Mail client cannot.

The only Mac email client I've found that might work for you - and use - is Airmail. The app is downright cheap - almost under-priced IMO, the developer is downright quick with updates and adding features, and the app just frickin' works.

Importantly, to you, is that I have not found any aggressive local caching like OS X Mail does. I have one user account I use Mail with two iCloud accounts, pare out the stuff I don't need into archived MBOX files, and the local cache is still almost 190 MB. I use Airmail for two Exchange accounts and four Gmail accounts, and there's no local cache that I can find - even within the app itself. Airmail also has several built-in themes, and it's really customizable.

As for Airmail and iCloud accounts, it's not all smooth sailing but with account set up only - Apple seems to be a bit odd with direct access to iCloud mail, but finding IMAP settings for any other email client aren't tough to find.

MisterMe said:

I am scratching my head trying to determine what my iOS Mail client can do that my OS X Mail client cannot.

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For some reason, OS X Mail downloads ALL your mail when accessing GMail via IMAP. That doesn't happen on iOS.

zephonic said:

Nothing. Like I said: OSX Mail downloads all your mail and if you have 4 accounts with several years of correspondence it adds up. iOS Mail doesn't do that, it downloads a few beats to display the header only, and if you want to read the actual email, it will retrieve it from the server temporarily, only loading it into RAM. If OSX Mail would let me modify its behavior in a similar way, I'd be fine.
I am fast running out of storage on my 256GB MBA. I just did a system restore, but already email and icloud account for almost 25GB of storage space. After one week.

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While it is not an e-mail client per se, MyPopBarrier may help you view your mail without actually downloading the mail. It is designed to allow the user to delete mail from the server, several accounts at once if you need that function.
http://throb.pagesperso-orange.fr/site/
Unfortunately, while the software works fine with English mail, it cannot display mail in Japanese correctly, only the header gets displayed, while the Japanese text gets garbled. I work in a Japanese/English environment and need to read both languages in my e-mail client. Apple's Mail works, as does Powermail for that, now if only the developer of MyPopBarrier could fix that in his app! Marking mail for deletion is rather pedantic too, forcing you to select mail 1 by 1 and then hitting the right arrow key to mark it. When you have selected several mail messages, they can all be purged from the server en-mass. Not sure that would work for you.....

In my opinion local cashing is amazing because my mails are backed up with Time Machine that way. In case iCloud goes down I'll still preserve all my mails.