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transphasic

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 6, 2012
262
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As an email app, Microsoft outlook is less than ideal, are there other options including free ones?
 
As an email app, Microsoft outlook is less than ideal, are there other options including free ones?
Most people using Outlook are doing it as part of a corporate environment, or otherwise need Outlook specific features. Can you identify if you're doing any of that stuff? i.e., do you need Outlook compatibility?
 
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  • If this matters: Spark doesn’t save all email to your device; just the most recent ones. You have to be online to read your email.

If Exchange access is required: eM Client (free for two accounts, $50 for more than two accounts and/or commercial use) works.

If Exchange access isn’t required then you have more choices.
  1. If you like a two line vertical list of email in a folder like Outlook, then there is Postbox ($40) as well as eM Client.
  2. If you want a wide horizontal list above the preview pane, you have many more choices: Thunderbird (free), MailMate ($50 Markdown styled plain text only).
 
@OP: What's wrong with outlook or the default mail client?

Only thing so far which I dislike about outlook is that sometimes search doesn't find all mails.
 
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The most obvious alternative would be the built-in macOS Mail client.

The second most obvious alternative would be Mozilla Thunderbird, a direct descendant of the mid-Nineties Netscape Communicator.
 
Thunderbird would have been a excellent option a few versions ago, but since Firefox needed to be upgraded and lost all of its XPCOM extensions, in time Thunderbird had to follow. Hence Thunderbird has lost its extensive extensions library. There just aren't too many developers upgrading their extensions for Thunderbird's new extension model.

The modern Thunderbird does have a few good improvements, though.
 
That depends on whether or not the OP needs Thunderbird extensions. I have periodically used Thunderbird (and its predecessors) since the Netscape days and I haven't used an extension in well over a decade.

Admittedly I am using it as an alternate mail client not my primary (which is the built-in macOS app) so my personal needs are very basic.

In any case it's still worth trying Thunderbird especially because it's FREE.
 
That depends on whether or not the OP needs Thunderbird extensions. I have periodically used Thunderbird (and its predecessors) since the Netscape days and I haven't used an extension in well over a decade.

Admittedly I am using it as an alternate mail client not my primary (which is the built-in macOS app) so my personal needs are very basic.

In any case it's still worth trying Thunderbird especially because it's FREE.
That's very true!
 
I can recommend Airmail. I've been using it for two years now and considering I tend to make life hard for email clients (over 100,000 emails across 7 different accounts, probably about 5 gigabytes worth of mails) it's been holding up fairly well.
 
@OP: What's wrong with outlook or the default mail client?

Only thing so far which I dislike about outlook is that sometimes search doesn't find all mails.
What's wrong with Outlook is that Microsoft has yet to join the 21th century and it doesn't support CalDAV or CardDAV.
 
Have you seen the new outlook? It’s horrible the design especially for anyone that uses conversation view and files emails consistently.

conversation view shows emails already filed and sent items but doesn’t make it easy to see that they don’t exist in the “inbox” folder.
If you see how it’s handled on the Windows OS side (yes I know Mac versions of outlook have always lagged features) it’s handled with files messages shows in italics vs the same format as messages in the “inbox”.
Right now the option to use the old outlook is available but have to imagine MS will force the new outlook once Big Sur adoption starts Thursday
 
I can recommend Airmail. I've been using it for two years now and considering I tend to make life hard for email clients (over 100,000 emails across 7 different accounts, probably about 5 gigabytes worth of mails) it's been holding up fairly well.
Curious... I've been using Airmail also... but recently SEARCH has been completely failing me. (I'm browsing this forum/thread to see what people think of other solutions.)
 
The most obvious alternative would be the built-in macOS Mail client.

The second most obvious alternative would be Mozilla Thunderbird, a direct descendant of the mid-Nineties Netscape Communicator.
I've always used the macOS Mail application for my own personal e-mail needs and have never found it necessary to consider others.

I use Outlook at work and have remote access to that account when I need to for work needs.

I do not mix the two - home and work - and do not feel that is recommendable.

The macOS Mail is probably not as good as other programs but it works for me. I have multiple personal e-mail accounts that I use for different purposes, some but not all are gmail accounts, and it handles them just fine.
 
I recently switched to Postbox mail. I also looked at Spark and Canary mail, but Postbox just clicked the best with me. Postbox is not the cheapest (currently $39 for a lifetime license), but is has a lot of functionality and feels the most polished.

For example, in Spark it is not possible to easily increase the font of an incoming mail (which surprised me, this is even possible in Apple mail). In Canary, you can increase the font, but the window which contains the mail stays the same size, so that text becomes hidden. In Postbox, when font is increased, the size of the window also becomes bigger.
 
I recently switched to Postbox mail. I also looked at Spark and Canary mail, but Postbox just clicked the best with me. Postbox is not the cheapest (currently $39 for a lifetime license), but is has a lot of functionality and feels the most polished.

For example, in Spark it is not possible to easily increase the font of an incoming mail (which surprised me, this is even possible in Apple mail). In Canary, you can increase the font, but the window which contains the mail stays the same size, so that text becomes hidden. In Postbox, when font is increased, the size of the window also becomes bigger.
What about the iOS side of your equation? Postbox doesn't offer iOS the last time I checked, which was several years ago.
 
What about the iOS side of your equation? Postbox doesn't offer iOS the last time I checked, which was several years ago.
Correct, Postbox doesn’t have an iOS version. I am using Apple mail on iOS. For me, this is fine because I am using my iMac for mail at least 80% of the time.
 
outLook and or the built-in macOS Mail client do not contribute to animinity.

I am looking for a a cross platform pay as you go email providor and email client:
-At least moderate security for my persoal use.
-i would not need a huge email space.
-do a email forward through a domain name

any suggestions
 
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