Best Email client

[FYA]

Hi all,

any recommendations on which would be the best email client to use with OSX. It's for a business, about 100 emails per day.

Entourage 2004 ?

Thunderbird ?

Mail ? (Tiger)

Thank you.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Unless there's some problems with Mail, I don't see why there's a need for others.

Of course if you have to access an Exchange server then you have to use Entourage.

Thunderbird is great, on Windows and Linux, but I don't see what it offers on Macs that Mail doesn't already cover...

 

[DXoverDY]

There's also Mailsmith

i use Mail.app and get about 100+ mails a day if you include spam. heck i'm using Mail.app 2.0 and i'm having no real problems so far. if i did you'd be sure i'd have the bugs reported.. only reported about 15 tiny bugs in Tiger since Monday couple are actually resolved now yay for 10.4.1

 

[nichos]

Of course if you have to access an Exchange server then you have to use Entourage.

Not so, Apple's mail.app integrates wonderful with exchange, gets all the folders and everything. I'd say go with mail.app

 

[FYA]

Mail.app

thanks for the quick replies

I haven't had a chance to play with Mail 2, Tiger doesn't arrive in Greece until next week!

Does Mail 2 compose in HTML ?

thanks again

Sean.

 

[DXoverDY]

thanks for the quick replies

I haven't had a chance to play with Mail 2, Tiger doesn't arrive in Greece until next week!

Does Mail 2 compose in HTML ?

thanks again

Sean.

yes.. mail 2 does html mail or plain text mail. you can switch between rich text and plain text via menus or icons you can place in the menu.

my only beef with Mail 2 is that while it does work with exchange (school uses it) it puts all the folders in the main area on the left pane. I'd rather have one folder that contains ALL of that information in it so i can collapse it and hide it when i don't want to look at all that extra stuff.

 

[Cid_Matrix]

Was using Entourage, now using Mail.app (Tiger)

I was using Entourage with Panther to connect to our Exchange server here in the office. However, since my Tiger upgrade, I've been using Mail and I've been pretty happy with it. New mail messages are composed using Plain Text or Rich Text Formatting. However, there is an option that will allow you to reply/forward using the same format of the original message. If you turn on this option, you will be able to reply using HTML. At least that has been my observation.

My only "issue" is that I can't see the GAL, but, once I configure the LDAP settings correctly, it should be a work around. Also, I've found that I cannot synchronize my address book with my Exchange Address book anymore. I read somewhere that this functionality has been moved to the ".MAC" section of iSync, but, I don't have a ".MAC" account, so, I guess I can't do it.

CID

 

[hodgjy]

my only beef with Mail 2 is that while it does work with exchange (school uses it) it puts all the folders in the main area on the left pane. I'd rather have one folder that contains ALL of that information in it so i can collapse it and hide it when i don't want to look at all that extra stuff.

I completely agree. I have a bunch of folders I would like to hide as well.

Anyway to hide them, without hiding the while mailbox sidebar?

 

[mkrishnan]

yes.. mail 2 does html mail or plain text mail. you can switch between rich text and plain text via menus or icons you can place in the menu.

Unless I'm really missing something, (1) Rich Text and HTML mail are NOT the same thing, and (2) like Mail 1.x, Mail 2 can read but CANNOT WRITE HTML mail.

But it's a nice, nice program. And now it handles calendar invitations from a variety of systems very nicely when used in conjunction with iCal!

 

[mkrishnan]

I completely agree. I have a bunch of folders I would like to hide as well.

Do these folders need to be where they are, or can you create a top-level folder, move them all inside as subfolders, and then collapse the top-level? This is what I do so that I don't have to see my whole IMAP directory (cabinet, calendars, etc).

 

[hodgjy]

Do these folders need to be where they are, or can you create a top-level folder, move them all inside as subfolders, and then collapse the top-level? This is what I do so that I don't have to see my whole IMAP directory (cabinet, calendars, etc).

From what I understand, those folders have to be there because our mail server offers several web client support programs, so we can check our mail from remote locations. I tried moving them around, and when I do, the web clients freak out. The only thing I can do is just close the sidebar for now, unless someone knows how to only hide selected folders.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Not so, Apple's mail.app integrates wonderful with exchange, gets all the folders and everything. I'd say go with mail.app

Then there really are no problems... and Mail has no real contest...

I've not used Entourage myself, but there are many mentions of it on these forums, and people always state Exchange Servers (at work) as the only reason they use it, so this should be good news for all those poor ba... æh... people...

 

[bousozoku]

Unless there's some problems with Mail, I don't see why there's a need for others.

Of course if you have to access an Exchange server then you have to use Entourage.

Thunderbird is great, on Windows and Linux, but I don't see what it offers on Macs that Mail doesn't already cover...

Thunderbird offers multiple platforms as well as a larger number of users to find problems and a possible clearer vision of the world, not having the Apple-centric goggles that Apple's developers wear.

Obviously, my vote is for Thunderbird.

 

[hodgjy]

Thunderbird offers multiple platforms as well as a larger number of users to find problems and a possible clearer vision of the world, not having the Apple-centric goggles that Apple's developers wear.

Obviously, my vote is for Thunderbird.

I'd use Thunderbird if it had Spotlight support. I've used in the past and found it decent.

 

[ibookconvert]

I think I'm using Mail 2.0 for now, mainly for the simplicity of the interface, the spotlight support and the awesome handling of photo attachments.

Spotlight is the big one though, being able to do an instant search without even having to open mail, and find any message I want is valuable (to me anyway)

--Matt

 

[madget]

Has the “leave mail on server” option changed in Mail 2.0?

The one reason why I use Entourage is because I can pick and choose which messages I want to delete from the server. (I use this method as a way to leave some messages online once downloaded to my home computer until I access them with my ibook at the office – then I can manually delete them from the server within Entourage. I could never figure out how to do it with Panther mail.)

 

[ericschmerick]

Mail just doesn't work for me, unless I'm missing something. It's frustrating because I really _want_ to use Mail, but there is a key missing "feature".

I use a laptop, and work at a company that has blocked port 25 (SMTP) to prevent spam. Therefore, when I'm at work I have to use the internal mail server to send any email. When I'm outside of work, I have to use my ISP server to send email. In entourage, I simply create a dummy "outgoing only" account (with no server listed in the incoming field), and then I select the appropriate account when sending.

In Mail, you cannot setup an account with no outgoing server. I thought maybe I could just setup dummy incoming accounts (I even went to the trouble of setting up actual mailboxes on my sever, so I wouldn't get an error each time), and then select the appropriate dummy account for sending. When I have several accounts setup, however, with the same "reply to" email address, it seems like only the FIRST ONE shows up in the "send to" account drop down box in the mail message. I cannot seem to get mail to allow me to choose one of the dummy accounts. It's very odd.

The net result is, I use Entourage, which works beautifully but doesn't offer address book integration.

Anyone else care understand this and have a solution?

Thanks,
Eric
http://www.marthastreetstudio.com/

 

[bousozoku]

I'd use Thunderbird if it had Spotlight support. I've used in the past and found it decent.

That would be nice as would support for the Mac OS X Address Book application, although I can hear someone complaining about that lacking an integrated user experience--at least, it should use the same information.

Another thing I didn't mention is the support among ISPs. You're more likely to find instructions on Thunderbird than you would be able to find them on Apple's mail client.

 

[mkrishnan]

Has the “leave mail on server” option changed in Mail 2.0?

No, I don't think it has changed much. The only way I know of, to do what you described, is to create offline folders where you save the ones you don't want to keep on the server (that then get deleted from the server by virtue of being removed from the inbox).