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Weekend Open Forum: What type of email client do you prefer?
Although desktop clients used to be the sensible choice for heavy email users, robust services such as Google's have made Web solutions completely viable. Nonetheless, after relying on Gmail for about eight years, I recently switched to a local application (Postbox). The decision came partly because I just wanted a change, but I had legitimate issues with Google's mail offering, including its sluggish POP3 fetch times, lackluster offline support, random latency fits and the occasional -- albeit forgivable -- downtime.
I always avoided local clients because Outlook made a lousy impression. It wouldn't play nice with Gmail over IMAP and it had too many useless features (useless to me, anyway). Part of the benefit of a desktop client is having more options, but that just made Outlook feel cluttered. Postbox's interface is less busy, yet there are tons more features than your typical one-size-fits-all cloud service. Having my mail locally feels faster, I don't have to worry about my password cookies expiring and offline access is as good as it gets.
Postbox isn't perfect though. While it offers superior filtering options, Gmail is smarter about handling spam without your help. Even with various filters, I still get tons of spam through my TechSpot address. It was also easier to configure mail across multiple devices when I had everything feeding into one Gmail account. I only needed one set of credentials versus four. Fortunately, this isn't an issue as I tend to use the same couple machines every day, but it might be enough to drive me back to Gmail if I switched regularly.
It's ultimately a compromise between customizability and convenience. I think I've settled on the former for now, but I wouldn't hesitate to make Gmail my primary mail hub again if my situation changed. How about you? Do you use a desktop client or Web service (or both) to access your email and why?
Thumbnail via Lichtmeister/ShutterStock
User Comments: 57
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avoidz said:
Outlook 2003 has been the best for me for 10 years.
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The better question at this point is...
What client do you use for IMAP?
I've been using outlook now for a while and its pretty good, the only downside I've felt is that IMAP syncing is rather slow.
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Thunderbird
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I was forced to use Outlook Express when I worked at Office Max, and my distaste for it started there.
When I changed jobs 6yrs ago they were using Thunderbird when I got here, and we still are. It seems to handle everything we want to do with emails, and I love the Tagging system for marking the progress of an order so anyone in the building can quickly glance at said email and tell where it is in the order process.
For my personnel email I only have one Gmail account and just check it through the website. I do have Thunderbird setup with it on my laptop but usually don't use it :P.
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Gmail with the text-message authentication; I have to get into my email from too many different machines for there to be a point to using a desktop app. I do use the Checker Plus for Gmail chrome extension on my main desktop, and now using anything else drives me up the wall because no other extension/application is as fast with notifications, nor are those notifications as useful.
The thing that I REALLY don't understand is using the email address provided by your ISP. Why do people still do this? It's just one more rope around your neck preventing you from switching companies.
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Zimbra Open Source Server with Ajax web client
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I use Clyton. Has a great spam filter. No IMAP syncing though.
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