Weekend Open Forum: What type of email client do you prefer?

Matthew DeCarlo

Matthew DeCarlo

Posts: 5,271   +104
Staff

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

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/48942-weekend-open-forum-what-type-of-email-client-do-you-prefer.html

 
I haven't found email clients to be very useful, at least for me. Currently I don't use one on my desktop. I used outlook while in college but really using it only added one more step where something could go wrong an so I had more issues than it was worth.
 
I've been using Thunderbird for years... Meets all of my basic needs, had newsgroup access (which has all but died these days), and is generally very stable. I've switched to a gmail account for general purpose stuff, which I can check online, mobile, etc. I have Thunderbird grab the gmail messages, but leaves them on the server so I still have access to them through other sources, until I physically delete them through gmail's clients. Works pretty well for me being on the road constantly.

But I still also have the same ISP-based email address I've had for almost 20 years too (and it's pretty much 90% spam these days). Mostly legacy communications there, and family stuff, which is why I haven't had the heart to pull the plug on it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DelJo63
I just use a simple Firefox add-on to collect all my mail. It's good enough for me and I've never really needed anything more.
 
I hated Outlook until version 2010. Outlook 2010 serves my business needs very well, but still has lousy IMAP support. I use the GMail web interface for my personal email ... but also loathe the random latency fits.
 
A few years ago I used the Gmail web app, but loading it every time I received an email or wanted to write one drove me to use Sparrow, which is a light email client originally developed for Gmail accounts but it now supports POP as of version 1.6, previously it only supported IMAP.
 
I use a combination of web and desktop client. Everything goes through Gmail because it automates most of the spam problem, serves as cloud backup, has good search and gives me a simple way to unify three email accounts. On the other hand, for the day to day stuff, I still keep Outlook for fetching and writing email on my desktop, it feels faster, easier to multitask and I guess I'm simply used to it.
 
I prefer a fat client... and being that I live in an exchange environment I use Outlook. I get frustrated with Outlook, but it works for the most part. I use Evolution for my ISP related email though.
 
I just use Gmail. My school email is set to instantly forward to my gmail, so I don't have to worry about slow POP3 access, and my gmail is set up so it can send emails through the school's servers. I have a few other gmail accounts attached my my primary account as well, but I don't often need them. Also, I don't ever delete emails, and I don't want to store over 1gb of emails locally.
 
On my iMac I use Sparrow and I love it. Simply the best Gmail client. On my Linux box Thunderbird and on Win 7 Outlook 2010. Out of the 3 email clients, Sparrow is the fastest, cleanest UI and it does everything that email client should do. Outlook is quick as well as long as you don't have any AV plugins enabled and if configured as POP. IMAP still sucks. As for Thunderbird, as much as I love Open Source and freeware, simplicity and UI overhaul would do wonders for it. Mozilla definitely need to focus on usability. They are doing a great job with Firefox, but the influential design from other browsers is clearly visible.

Regards,
Ivan K.
 
Outlook (best used with exchange server not imap or pop3). You can't begin to appreciate what it does until you've worked in a corporate environment, along with hundreds of other users, with hundreds of emails a day (I work in IT). It's more than an email client, it's a complete personal information manager. I've got customized rulesets to filter email to specific folders and projects, custom archiving rulesets, and a few outlook third party addons to Saleforce/Webex, customized calendaring rulesets, customized offline automated responses, customized multiple signature and email templates.

It's other strength is also in viewing/setting up meetings with other outlook users. I never really appreciated Outlook until I tried all the other thin and fat clients and tried to use them as I used outlook. I ended up getting outlook in the end because my time is money.

When you have hundreds of emails per week, and hundreds of critical business decisions to make and coordinate with other departments, Outlook is the best.
 
I've been using websites for emails since forever, always found the email clients to be extremely pathetic and useless....but lately, I found outlook to be pretty decent, it gives me problems often but still its fine. then came the android ICS email client, love it :p it works awesome and is fully functional
 
"I found outlook to be pretty decent, it gives me problems often "

Out of curiosity, can you tell us what kind of "problems" you have often with Outlook? If it's IMAP I can understand, their implementation is not the best.
 
I pretty much just stick to three Gmail accounts when on a computer as have all my separate email accounts added inside these accounts. I use them through my Chrome web browser rather than using an email client on my computers.

That said I'm growing increasingly concerned about not having local copies of my emails though, especially since earlier in the year Gmail customers lost their accounts and emails. So I'm going to look into running Postbox or Thunderbird at some point to make backups of all my emails on my Gmail accounts with the local files stored on my RAID.

Away from the computer, my Nokia Lumia 710 handles all of them as separate tiles on my phone's home screen. Whilst I don't have the full functionality that a proper Gmail account would give me, I find the built in email system to work very well with Windows Phone OS.

Or at least my Lumia did handle them until I killed it last night. Not sure what I'm going to replace it with yet, might go for another Lumia 710, or maybe a Lumia 900. We'll see.
 
I use Outlook 2007 with Yahoo IMAP. I love all of Outlook's bells & whistles, I use them all the time. I've tried almost all of the other clients, including Postbox, and I always revert back to Outlook.
 
I have 2 email accounts.
My exchange account at work, and I use Hotmail as well because its Microsoft's baby and I know they will keep it running/supported.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

A
Google will introduce one-tap "Unsubscribe" in Gmail for Android
Replies
2
Views
202
Mr Majestyk
M
midian182
Google confirms it is definitely not killing off Gmail after hoax goes viral
Replies
4
Views
165
sdms96825
S
midian182
Google's new spam rules pushes mass email senders to include an unsubscribe button
Replies
0
Views
252
midian182
midian182

Latest posts

Back