
Ask HN: What email client do you use? - tush726
I&#x27;ve been wondering what&#x27;s the best application for email productivity. Browser v Desktop Clients v Mutt
======
lasagnaphil
I use Thunderbird - The only desktop client which has both Windows/Linux
versions (with identical UIs), doesn't use Electron, and doesn't need you to
make an online account for it. (I'm looking at you, MailSpring!) And the
experience is... not that great for me. There doesn't seem to be a way to view
email conversations cleanly, and the whole app seems a bit bloated. I really
wish someone made a cross-platform email client that just simply works - I
would gladly pay money for it.

~~~
johnchristopher
Have you tried Postbox [https://www.postbox-inc.com/](https://www.postbox-
inc.com/) ? It's based on Thunderbird, funded and staffed by former members of
Mozilla.

~~~
salasrod
Postbox does not have a Linux version. That kills it for me.

------
Arkanosis
I'm still using Thunderbird on desktop (personal and professional Linux boxes
and professional Windows laptop) and K-9 on smartphone (Android). I'm far from
being fully satisfied with either of them, but at least they are better than
anything else I've tried to date _and_ more importantly they are slowly
improving whereas others I've used (eg. Gmail for the browser and Gmail for
Android) are quickly becoming worse (except for the last two updates of Gmail
for the browser, I've to admit).

I've some hope in getting a nice setup with notmuch, mu4e or some other power-
user oriented MUA at some point (being able to type my emails in Emacs is a
real selling point for me), but so far I've been hesitant to lose the ability
to read non-plain text emails right in my MUA.

~~~
decasteve
I was in the same boat. I’ve used Thunderbird since it was first released but
eventually found my way to a mu4e setup. I’m happy about the switch because I
do so much in emacs already but Thunderbird was perfectly fine for me
otherwise.

------
ishansharma
I use default Mail.app for macOS. I tried the fancy clients like Spark etc but
settled on Mail finally.

I prefer desktop clients because I have 6 email accounts and managing all of
them in tabs is just a headache.

------
jdk
Mutt in shells and MailMate ([https://freron.com/](https://freron.com/)) if
I'm using a GUI. It's the fastest email client that I've found, has super fast
search, and is incredibly configurable and it's ONLY focused on email, nothing
else. Its UX is perfect for me and is incredibly functional, but it's
definitely not a "pretty" client.

------
yepguy
I'm in the middle of switching from webmail to mu4e. I have a decent mutt
setup that I never use, but I switched to Emacs this year and
mu4e-conversation
([https://gitlab.com/ambrevar/mu4e-conversation](https://gitlab.com/ambrevar/mu4e-conversation))
looks like it may actually make a desktop client pleasant to use.

------
fourier_mode
Thunderbird for now.

I want to shift to a CLI based email client. But my previous attempts in
making that shift have been unsuccessful. I had spent a couple of hours in
shifting to Gnus Emacs but because of my inability to configure it properly I
had to move away from it.

Some common issues I faced while configuring it were -- 1\. Would always start
downloading the mail metadata everytime I did =M-x gnus=. I am pretty sure
there is some way to pull that into local filesystem once and just download
the incremental metadata. 2\. With the basic vanilla config, there was no
support for notifications which is an essential factor in my workflow i.e.
interrupt based working rather than polling.

I have heard there are other CLI based clients like Mutt, m4uemacs in Emacs
which are a bit more practical for a beginner than a Gnus but I am yet to get
those a shot.

~~~
omaranto
I don't recommend CLI mail clients, try TUI or "full screen text mode" ones
instead. If you really want CLI, I think the Unix mail program might be your
only choice.

------
hs86
MailMate on macOS even though I only use a fraction of its features.

eM Client on on Windows, because is it comparable with Thunderbird in managing
my mails but also comes close to Outlook with its calendar and contacts
management. Unlike Outlook, it support more open protocols like CalDAV and
CardDAV out of the box.

AquaMail on Android, because of its customizability.

I don't use any web clients, because I prefer a unified experience across
email providers but from those I tried, I prefer Fastmail's web clients. It
somehow feels faster than all these native desktop apps and if I could use it
as a generic IMAP/SMTP client like Roundcube, I would use it instead of native
desktop apps.

------
unforeseen9991
Outlook for pretty much everything. I've been using email since it was a
thing, and i've tried many others over the years, but i've also always had
interaction with exchange servers since version 5.5 (last 15 years maybe?), so
I had a reason to stay with Outlook.

As part of being a consultant I need to interact with about 6-7 exchange/o365
e-mail accounts, so Outlook is mandatory anyway.

On Android I use Nine. Sandboxing of exchange accounts was my primary reason
for buying it several years back, and it's an excellent e-mail client.

I use gmail both mobile and web (Also in Outlook) for anything
signup/newsletter/forum/junkmail related.

------
dewey
Default macOS or iOS mail app with Fastmail as my mail provider. I never had
any issues with it and it works well. Search works well enough and I don’t
need a lot of fancy features as I just archive emails to get to inbox zero.
Everything that’s still in my inbox is stuff I have to deal with so it’s part
of my todo list.

The churn rate on third party iOS mail apps always seems way too high and I
don’t want to get used to a new app every 2 years.

------
sombragris
I use Claws-Mail.

[http://www.claws-mail.org/](http://www.claws-mail.org/)

A simple GTK 2 interface, extremely stable, very fast, and does the job really
well.

I am a GNU/Linux user and specifically a Plasma 5 desktop user. Due to that
fact, I am partial to KMail/Kontact. However, several years ago, back in the
KDE 3-4 transition, I lost data with Kontact in one of the upgrades. Since
then, I began to use Claws-Mail and while I miss that smooth Plasma
integration afforded by Kontact, Claws-Mail's reliability is legendary.

Claws Mail now manages my inbox, with several gigabytes and going back to a
lot of years, without hiccups. And that's the best part. The Linux version
builds fast and cleandly; and for cross-platform convenience, it has a Windows
version. Recommended.

EDIT: seconded what others said about K-9 Mail in Android. Great app, and my
go-to place for email in my phone. Also highly recommended.

------
mstaoru
My journey was between four clients (Mac). For a long time, I used Postbox. It
was reasonably fast, its search wasn't great but wasn't too bad either (it
still doesn't search Chinese well), but as I grew bored, I decided to try
something new.

Comes Spark. All shiny, with nice fast search and much fresher UI. Fast-
forward half a year, and after an update, it loses all my custom signatures (I
use a lot), rebuilds the whole search database (took almost a whole day), and
still no support for SOCKS proxying neither app-wide nor per account.

Tried Mailspring after that, similar UI, good search, but too many bugs and
freezes on core things: sending emails, receiving emails can take forever.
Also the need for Mailspring account is creepy and unnecessary.

So I'm back to Thunderbird, it got a bit better over the years, but still, if
I need to search Chinese I have to go to the corresponding web UI.

Will try MailMate once I have some spare time.

------
tyingq
Gmail for personal, Outlook for work. Outlook is surprisingly not terrible if
you invest some time in learning it.

------
ufmace
I use gmail both for home and work. I'm not really an email power-user though.
I do like the gmail keyboard commands - they're surprisingly Vim-like, and I
would remember them better if I worked with email more.

Haven't found any email desktop applications that were enough better to get me
to switch back.

------
stevekemp
I wrote my own, inspired by mutt, because I wanted more flexibility and a real
scripting language (lua in my case)

[https://lumail.org/](https://lumail.org/)

This is now my second console-based mail-client. I'm almost ready for #3, but
I know it will be a huge timesink.

~~~
Arkanosis
Very interesting!

In case you hadn't noticed: the “ASCII video” has been archived by asciinema
(whatever this means), meaning there's a dead link in the first paragraph of
the Lumail home page.

~~~
stevekemp
Thanks for the notification; I also received a bug report about it. I'll try
to fix over the next day or two.

------
newscracker
On desktop, I use Thunderbird, although it’s showing its age on performance
and search. The lack of native integration with MS Exchange is also a drawback
for me (I have used some extensions, but they’re not very reliable). I do
donate to the Thunderbird project regularly though.

On mobile, I use Mail.app from Apple and connect to mailboxes using IMAP. The
only exception is ProtonMail, which doesn’t support IMAP directly, needs a
bridge software on the desktop and supports it only for paid tiers (which is a
fine business decision).

For productivity, I don’t think any desktop app or webmail could compete with
well configured command line applications (like Mutt, Emacs, etc.).

------
jayalpha
I stopped using Pine/Alpine since it is not well suited if you have several
email accounts. Not I use Evolution AND Thunderbird. While both have their
strengths, both also have major flaws. Thunderbird is a resource hog,
evolutions search function is barely functional. Easier to use recoll to find
emails in Evolution than to use Evolution.

Had problems with Claws Mail, dont use it.

This never got off the ground: [https://ivelope.com/](https://ivelope.com/)

Also tried this one out:
[http://www.memecode.com/scribe.php](http://www.memecode.com/scribe.php)

------
pengo
I've used Thunderbird on my desktops since it was launched and, despite its
shortcomings, find it works well for my multiple accounts. I host my own
calendar and contacts services and these integrate well too. The current
desktops I use email on are all Linux Mint; on the rare occasions I need to
access mail on other machines I log into one of my server's webmail clients
(usually Squirrel).

Mobile? I'm still running a Blackberry Z30, hopefully replacing it with a
Librem 5 later this year. I use the default Blackberry app and it works
superbly with my multiple accounts (I'll miss it).

------
ylee
I use a MacBook Pro as remote terminal to a Linux VM with mosh and iTerm2. In
the VM I run tmux, and emacs runs in one of the windows. (Other windows run
shell sessions in the Linux VM, the Linux server the VM runs on, and the
MacBook Pro, respectively.)

For email I have used VM
(<[http://www.nongnu.org/viewmail/>](http://www.nongnu.org/viewmail/>)) for 24
years. It does a great job of rendering HTML mail in a text console. When I
choose a URL (whether HTML or in plaintext), Emacs sends the URL to the Mac's
browser over ssh.

------
soufron
I used Thunderbird, then sylpheed when I was on Linux, then gmail, then
App.mail on osx... with the Mail-Butler add-on (I schedule my mails a lot)...

I always wanted to leave App.mail, and then Mail-Butler 2 went broke and begun
losing scheduled mail (sic).

Thus, I got the motivation to switch back to Thunderbird which might be old
and clunky, but mail is old and clunky.

I am super-fine with Thunderbird right now. It's stable. It's free. It got
tons of add-ons. It's a great piece of software.

PS : I used pegasus mail on windows 3.11 and I loved it for its simplicity and
good choice of features

------
pwg
I use mutt - but then I also run my own email server on my own domain.

------
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Mutt, unless you have to interact with people who are incapable of using email
a lot (there are limits to handling broken emails if you want things to be
fast and secure).

------
y0ghur7_xxx
I really like thunderbird. Because it is the only client I know of that has
all the features I use:

\- multiple identities

\- multiple accounts

\- a very good search

\- imap idle support

\- nntp client

It could be better on a lot of aspects, like the ui looks a bit outdated (I
use it on kde, so it does not integrate very well with the rest of the de),
the search could use some more filters, and I can not sort folders in the left
pane. But apart from that, it has all the bells and whistles a real email
client needs to have to make it really useful.

------
jasonhansel
FastMail's web client on my laptop, the Spark app on iOS. I'd use a CLI but so
much of email is in HTML form that I suspect it wouldn't render well.

------
marczellm
Home PC, personal emails: Windows 10 Mail. I don't need anything smarter. Mac,
work and personal: Mail.app Android, personal emails: AOSP Email (It's no
good, but less annoying than Gmail, and on the Android tablet I use it so
rarely that Gmail would update the app more often than I open it)

I haven't tried Thunderbird though. I guess I'd like it because I like Firefox
very much.

------
infinityplus1
Gmail web and android app for me. The search feature simply does not work
properly in third party clients.

~~~
kinleyd
Ditto for me.

------
proaralyst
ProtonMail's web & Android clients. It works pretty well: tags, folders &
sieve filters.

~~~
msh
The only problem is that their mobile apps don't have full text search.

~~~
newscracker
And their mobile apps don’t allow more than one account in the free tier
(which may be a good decision for ProtonMail, but is not for me). Since the
free tier doesn’t support IMAP, and since the paid tier supports IMAP only
through a bridge and only on the desktop, I don’t have a paid account with it.
Seems like a lot of hassle for me.

------
Yetanfou
Desktop (Debian Sid, Xmonad etc): claws-mail

CLI: mutt

Mobile (Android): K9

Claws because it starts in less than a second and does all I want, mutt
because of the same reasons, K9 because it it does most of what I want and is
free software like all other software on my mobile devices.

------
clircle
Since it seems that a lot of people are using Gnus to read mail, I have to
ask: is anyone using Gnus with Evil-mode? I would like to try Gnus, but lack
of support by evil-collection is holding me back.

------
ddavis
mu4e in Emacs; tried many others and it's far and away the best.

------
cyaniventer
I use claws-mail, its super easy to use. Thunderbird was too heavy for my
computer (still the best one though), claws-mail is light on memory and just
works.

------
reidrac
For personal use (I host my own domain and mail server) I use Thunderbird and,
occasionally, mutt.

At work we're a Google G-Suite shop, so Gmail web interface.

------
omaranto
I mostly read email in my phone's GMail app. I mostly write email in Emacs,
using message-mode. I also often read it in Emacs, using Gnus.

------
libeclipse
I use Thunderbird on the desktop and GMail on Android. I would love an
alternative to the latter but have not managed to find a suitable one.

~~~
BlackLotus89
What about k9mail? It has a unified mailbox and a clean interface.

Only problems I had with it were when searching for mails and when I had a bug
in dovecot.

There are some other up and coming open source solutions
(FairEmail/SimpleEmail), bjt I don't like the interface

~~~
jayalpha
k9mail does not work so well on my phone. I can read emails but never got SMTP
to work.

~~~
BlackLotus89
That sounds like either a user error or worth a bug report. Did you create
one? Which email server? What did the logs say?

~~~
jayalpha
Common Email server from infomaniak.ch

------
whitepoplar
Desktop: Gmail web app

iOS: Gmail.app

I don't love either one, but for Google's Advanced Protection program, I don't
have much of a choice. They're fine.

------
rado
Apple Mail

------
diehunde
For work I have to use Windows and Outlook is pretty decent. Then for Linux I
just stick to thunderbird.

------
girzel
Gnus on Emacs! The only mail client that's bigger on the inside than it is on
the outside.

------
georgespencer
AirMail. And I hate myself for it.

~~~
pvinis
Why? I use airmail on macOS and iOS and I love it.

~~~
georgespencer
It's the buggiest app I've ever encountered. A few examples I've seen in the
last few hours alone:

1\. The new "dark mode" periodically sends emails with white background and
white text. (Check out their support forum/Reddit and lots of people
experience the issue. Users are asked to send it in and… nothing changes.)
I've just disabled dark mode because of this.

2\. There has been a bug which causes the app to erroneously display "Inbox
Zero" despite being badged with new messages. This error has been in the app
for 3-4 years.

3\. Searching a large inbox throttles up CPUs. On my i9 MacBook Pro CPU usage
goes to >250%.

4\. It struggles with quotes/signatures. I send long emails which regularly
get folded in bizarre places in the preview panel.

5\. Periodically hitting forward/reply on an email will not include any of the
text in the chain, when the original email is archived.

6\. Saw this at the weekend but not today yet: the main window disappears
sometimes and can only be brought back by quitting the app and reloading.
Right clicking the dock icon and hitting "Show main window" does not work.

Honestly if _any_ other email app was simply designed and had either mappable
keys or by default mapped backspace to archive, I'd be using it.

------
jtanderson
Evolution mail with the exchange compatibility plugin has worked great for me!
(On Linux)

------
antisthenes
Opera mail when I need to mass delete things quickly.

But mostly from within Gmail itself.

------
dnh44
Apple Mail. It’s search function is amazingly fast.

------
w84death
ProtonMail (so web), is clean and simple.

------
drivingmenuts
iOS: Apple Mail for personal, Gmail app for work macOS: Postbox for personal,
Gmail in a browser for work

------
shauntrennery
Spark on both desktop and mobile.

------
jlokier
Since the 1990s I've been using Pine, Elm, Emacs VM, Mutt and/or Neomutt for
mail, with Procmail for filtering mailing lists into folders. Over SSH, in a
terminal window. These days Notmuch with Neomutt, with the occasional
forwarding to Gmail to view HTML mails if they really need it (although I have
other ways to view HTML mails too). I also forward things like invoices and
receipts into data processing scripts that populate accounting databases for a
couple of businesses, and manually check or fill out data linked to those.

I used to read a huge amount of mail, in particular most of linux-kernel and
gcc-devel, and other things like that. Eventually it got burdensome to keep
up, about 1000 mails/day incoming, and taking about 1 hour every day of fairly
intense skipping through.

For a while I started to find mail traumatic. It was because of one, then
another, person being abusive and pushy to the point that handling their mail
was taking too much time and stressing me, on top of difficult personal
experiences (partner illness, bereavement etc). As a result, I stopped reading
mail regularly for a while. Naturally this had some unfortunate effects, and
it put me off doing tasks that needed doing.

This was transformed when I started using Notmuch to filter mails, with the
default filter being "everything in the last 1 hour", and two secondary
filters: "all work mails in the last 7 days" and "all non-list mails addressed
to me in the last 24/48 hours".

Even while the trauma issues continued, this one change transformed how I deal
with mail, and it meant even when I felt tired I could approach little tasks
that involved immediate emails quickly, instead of putting them off; and
improved keeping on top of work and related things.

That won't apply to everyone, but it transformed my productivity with mail
when I wasn't coping, and I suspect a similar time-based filtering can
transform productivity for someone who is coping ok, but finding the quantity
of mail, or their "ever expanding todo list stored in email", to be putting
them off dealing with it.

Notmuch indexing and searching has also transformed how I file mail. I used to
store mail from different people or organisations in separate folders. That by
itself turned out to be quite a bit of grind every day (don't dare take a
holiday!). Now I tend not to file mail, so much as add new search filters,
which I add to auto-tagging scripts. When I add a new search filter, it isn't
just used for new mails (as Procmail is). Updating filters re-tags older mails
as well.

One of these days I will link my search-tagged mail to an app (of my own) on
my phone so that I get notifications for "important stuff", but nothing else.
For the moment, I avoid mail notifications, and take a look when I feel like
it, every few hours, or when I'm expecting something. If something's important
and time-sensitive (like a server alert - I look after a number of critical
services), it's linked to SMS as well as mail, so I won't miss an alert. And
people know to call me if something is time-sensitive.

------
Rygu
Polymail for mac and ios.

------
azevedol
Spark is really decent

------
rtomanek
Windows: The Bat!

Android: AquaMail

Webmail: Roundcube

------
zzo38computer
Heirloom-mailx

~~~
purplezooey
that's hard core

------
kfogel
Gnus in Emacs.

------
jjav
mutt

Nothing better!

~~~
stevekemp
I was always limited by mutt; it feels like it has a real scripting language,
but doesn't. So you use per-host hacks. Gets a bit messy.

I wrote an alternative; [https://lumail.org/](https://lumail.org/)

------
paulhenrytx
Superhuman

~~~
devm0de
The features of that app sounds too good to be true. Also sounds like a
privacy nightmare taking gmail and laying more AI processing on it across more
servers.

------
nemoniac
gnus

------
DyslexicAtheist
neomutt

------
fxfan
for productivity- outlook, hands down.

