I can't imagine using gmail for high-volume email; I've used it at various times due to being lazy about setting up something better, but ugh.
mutt is so much better, using maildirs synced with imap (with mbsync or something). Totally customizable, per-folder triggers, and works in a terminal.
Yes, I can't understand why highly computer-literate people use GMail. There must be something very compelling about it because it's so popular, but no one's ever explained to me what it is. If anyone here wants to explain, I'd appreciate it!
I use mutt too, which I find incredibly flexible. The only downside I experience compared to GMail is that searching is not as powerful. Am I missing something?
I've never used mutt, but I depend on Gmail's conversation view (a smoother experience than going through messages one by one) and easy searching of gigabytes of email; a proportional font, auto-linkification, and built-in video chat don't hurt either.
Searching is the one thing I still need to figure out for mutt (I cheat now by sending a copy of everything to gmail just for search). Linkification is handled by the terminal program.
To be fair, Gmail search takes several seconds for a basic query now, so I'm considering switching to Mail.app, which has the all-important conversation view.
mutt is so much better, using maildirs synced with imap (with mbsync or something). Totally customizable, per-folder triggers, and works in a terminal.