
Ask HN: Best alternate client to web-based Gmail? Now that it sucks - Humphrey
With the most recent update to web-based Gmail, it is super janky and it feels like the interface gets in my way.  I&#x27;ve started to dislike writing emails now.<p>What are good alternate clients that still get all benefits of Gmail, but with a fast productive interface?
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true_tuna
Funny how it has come to this. There’s a common refrain at google. Reliance to
regressive change is branded change aversion. It utterly misses the point. If
you change something it damn well better be better. Because change forces your
user to re-learn. Actively making things worse for no benefit (like the latest
gmail update) is the final stage of “that’s just change aversion” mentality.

~~~
Humphrey
Absolutely! I get that they have added in some cool new features under the
skin (the auto suggest as you type is cool) but it's too many steps backwards
to be worth it!

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sublupo
I recently changed to Thunderbird due to the Gmail gui change. So far it is
working really well. There are some very small problems that may be fixable, I
just haven't figured out how. Such as, no automatic 30 second undo option on
sent mail, a lot of emails get saved as new drafts even after sending, and I
can't figure out how to link other accounts and then bring and to send as that
account without having to add it as a new account. However, it is amazing how
fast it is relative to Gmail. Creating a new email is instant and can be made
full screen, where as in Gmail it takes a few seconds for a small compose
window to open. Simply opening Thunderbird is instant as opposed to the new
Gmail that has taken me 30 seconds at one point. Another reason that I
installed Thunderbird is because I eventually hope to leave Gmail. So I'm
starting by changing the GUI, and maybe in a year I will update my address.

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Kagerjay
Im actually considering going from thunderbird to gmail, fastmail or outlook

The reason is b/c thunderbird doesnt have a good reply monitor,threading for
conversations or plugins to handle it. I have to buy things from vendors all
the time and manufacturer reps always never do their job properly until I
remind them 2 to 5x _(not an exaggeration)_ over the course of 2 weeks. The
reason is b/c most are all low tech and cant manage emails. I wish I could
just bypass them entirely but its complicated.

Sometimes vendors dont use emails like purchasing@company.com and use
name@company.com and dont tell me they fired their sales rep and hired a new
one. So sometimes my emails go to deadlinks again and thunderbird has no
monitoring solution and poor conversation threading.

Its becoming a huge hassle for me so I need a better tracking system. Gmail
has many integrations for this though on the other hand.

I dont know if I care all that much about privacy in all honesty. I am more
worried about getting vendor locked through google,so I might set an smtp/imap
account with thunderbird for my google emails.

The new google gmail is not really that bad in all honesty. It loads slow
starting out but it does not bother me though. Some of the view modes make my
eyes bleed though UX is beyond atrocious especially with attachments.

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Klonoar
FastMail.

Nothing is as _good_ as GMail, which is the most frustrating part, but
FastMail gets pretty close in my experience.

I guess disclaimer that I did some brief consulting work with them years ago
to explore WKWebView usage in their app; I only recently started using them
myself, though, so my opinions at this point are more influenced by that than
anything else.

~~~
troydavis
Seconded. After 15+ years mostly using Gmail or mutt, I moved to FastMail’s
webmail about 3 years ago.

I like FastMail’s webmail better than Gmail today, but not quite as much as
Gmail ~10 years ago.

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thorin
What's the official comment on it now that the unequivocal response seems to
be negative? Normally you can't comment on here without someone from FANG
getting involved and giving some (normally useful) input, but in this case
nothing...

A couple of messages on their forum here, but nothing from Google

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/nP0YcpI...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/nP0YcpIQPXw)

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/9k8Y3Yn...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/9k8Y3YnlLEA)

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garyclarke27
I happily pay for Office 365 in my startup which is open source based
(PostgreSQL, HTML, CSS, JS, Polymer) just for Outlook and Excel. There are
cheap subscription options I think available for consumers. Outlook is for me,
far superior to GMail (I’m no MS fanboy, I hate Word and Sharepoint). GMail
was fine for a free product, but the thing i hated about it most was that you
could not easily sort mail by clicking on column headers such as date/ from /
to etc. I could not believe that such a basic critical capability was absent -
have they added it now?

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throwaway487548
Two options.

1\. Apple. Really.

2\. Setting up your own Linode with postfix, dovecot and roundcube is just a
half of an hour. Domain name registration is about an hour.

Of course, you won't get any services, which is the main product Google is
trying to sell indirectly (it monetizes your content, services are free as
long as you your generate content).

~~~
tjoff
Is roundcube really the best option? I just can't stand using it.

~~~
0xADD1E
I use rainloop for my self hosted. Works much nicer, especially on mobile
devices

~~~
tjoff
Thanks! Looks nice, I will definitely try it out.

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wingerlang
What changes exactly is everyone talking about that made it worse? I literally
feel no difference in the UI/UX (apart from the initial 2 second load
animation).

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Humphrey
The main issue is performance -- so janky -- animations shudder. There is even
a delay waiting for text to appear while I'm typing an email.

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negativ0
Thunderbird, for classic email usage is the best option if you don't want to
pay for Outlook.

And you are right the interface not only gets in your way, most of the time it
doesn't open the email when you click on it. Incredible that at Google those
praised engineers make a unusable product.

~~~
sieabahlpark
They're just trying to materialize their brand everywhere.

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fjni
you can go 10+ years back via
[https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html](https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html)
but that's probably not what you're looking for either.

~~~
maxxxxx
Thanks! I think I like this better.

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nshelly
Superhuman. Not cheap, but I love how fast it is with its native app (Electron
I think). They write updates immediately locally, and sync that in the
background, so you can breeze through your unsorted email quickly (pressing
keyboard shortcut 'e'), and pressing 'tab' to switch between split inbox
views. They also show read/open receipts if you enable it, and have keyboard
shortcuts for unsubscribing as well. When you reach inbox zero they reward you
with a new, beautiful picture every day.

A fully-featured integrated calendar is lacking but apparently will be
improved in the coming year or so.

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nil_pointer
ProtonMail's web-based client is solid. The bonus part is you can ditch Gmail
all together as well. Hosting on your own domain is also nice if you don't
like @protonmail.com or @pm.me. If the price is too much, they are going to
have some great Black Friday deal coming (it's actually secretly available now
if you enable it in the CSS).

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msh
I have on big problem with the protonmail web interface (and apps). It can't
do full text search, only subject and sender which makes it hard for me to
use.

~~~
nil_pointer
I had a similar search issue. For paid users, they also offer a "ProtonMail
Bridge" client for macOS/Win that can make it so you can use your regular mail
client with ProtonMail.

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sdan
Apple Mail.

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cco
Which parts get in your way? I much prefer the previous gen to current default
settings but I've found that you can largely emulate the previous gen even if
it's not perfect.

~~~
Humphrey
> Which parts get in your way?

The slowness, lag, ugly font. Even scrolling is laggy. I'm just waiting for it
to respond often. Sitting around waiting for the collapsible sidebar to
collapse.

~~~
cco
I definitely notice it's a bit slower to load new pages of emails, never
noticed any laggy scrolling though.

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zzo38computer
I run my own mail server (using Exim) and use Heirloom-mailx as the user
interface. I find it is better than other stuff I have tried.

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quickthrower2
Gmail app on android. I guess you cold run it in an emulator on the desktop
too.

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ngrilly
I've started to use FastMail, which is great. The thing I miss is the
automatic triaging of emails provided by GMail (personal, promos, forums,
updates, social). FastMail provides something similar, but with a lot of false
positives, and sady the filter is not available in the mobile app :-(

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buboard
still not as bad as reddit

