Email client to replace Thunderbird

[rowdy]

I have been using Thunderbird at home and work.  The last few updates have, IMHO, gone backwards.  Tabbed emails I disable.  Performance totally sucks now.  Typing to addresses has changed since the last update or two and I mistype the addresses on nearly every email.  Performance sucks (I'll mention that twice because it has gone significantly backwards recently).

So I set about seeking alternatives.

Basic requirements are:

• free
• preferably open source
• cross-platform (at least Windows and OS X, preferably Linux too)
• updated recently (say in the last 6 months)
• supports POP3 (more than a decade's worth of emails and workflow around POP3)
• supports reading and composing HTML email (work requirement)
• GUI
• must be able to import more than a decade's worth of emails from Thunderbird

The first step was to review what was available:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_email_clients

I went through those one by one, tried a few, and crossed them off for various reasons.  Not open source.  Not updated for years.  Does not support HTML emails properly.

Eventually I narrowed the list down to two: Thunderbird and SeaMonkey.

SeaMonkey is basically Thunderbird with a different skin (and a few less features?).

Does anyone know of any email clients that are not on Wikipedia's list that would suit, or any on that list that can be tweaked to match requirements?

[Coreda]

If it came down it you could find a prior good stable version of Thunderbird and continue using that.

[rowdy]

If it came down it you could find a prior good stable version of Thunderbird and continue using that.

Because Mozilla (apparently) made some changes to the indexing and other metadata files they store, I'd have to delete all that, and reinstate the original plain text email files in their 25GB or so hierarchy of directories.  I have thought about doing that, but I'm a bit worried about the security flaws in older Thunderbirds.

[audioave10]

One of my PC's is Vista 64bit Business and I use the simple Windows Mail on that. On my Windows 7 PC I still use Thunderbird but in my case, I was keeping it simple.

You seem to need more features. Have you seen this list?

http://email.about.com/od/windowsemailclients/tp/free_email_prog.htm

[rowdy]

One of my PC's is Vista 64bit Business and I use the simple Windows Mail on that. On my Windows 7 PC I still use Thunderbird but in my case, I was keeping it simple.

You seem to need more features. Have you seen this list?

http://email.about.com/od/windowsemailclients/tp/free_email_prog.htm

Thanks for the link!

I've seen a few lists like that, but they tend to focus on, as in this case, a single operating system, although some of the apps they list are cross-platform.

Their list:

1. Thunderbird - meh
2. Opera - proprietary
3. Windows Live Mail - no thanks
4. Pegasus Mail - proprietary, Windows only
5. IncrediMail - commercial, Windows only
6. Mulberry - last update was 7 years ago
7. Foxmail - problems with the message editor, web site is in China and currently offline
8. DreamMail - Windows only
9. Alpine - TUI only
10. Sylpheed - does not support HTML emails
11. i.Scribe - proprietary, cannot write HTML emails

[audioave10]

I've got another list here (just in case)...

http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/clients.html

Good Luck.

[rowdy]

I've got another list here (just in case)...

http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/clients.html

Good Luck.

Lots in that list I haven't heard of, which may or may not be good!

I'll send that to work and check it out next week if things are quiet.

Thanks

[Coreda]

While commercial (at $10) Postbox is a cross-platform (Win/OSX at lease) client reviewed here amongst other modern clients such as eM Client and Mailbird (both Windows only). Checked out a few screenshots on Google Images, looks decent.

[rowdy]

While commercial (at $10) Postbox is a cross-platform (Win/OSX at lease) client reviewed here amongst other modern clients such as eM Client and Mailbird (both Windows only). Checked out a few screenshots on Google Images, looks decent.

Although it sounds nice, the main use would be at work.  There have been muttering of discontent about Thunderbird for a while now, and some senior staff experience continual problems with Thunderbird.  Me too.

I am unlikely to be able to convince the powers that be to spend money on something new (even if it is only $10 per installation)

[Coreda]

Ah, you only mentioned in the OP personal use. Might be slim choices otherwise.

[madhias]

Interesting, i am in the same 'position' right now too. Currently i have no Mail client installed - because of a new and bigger SSD and new Windows installation and i don't want to use Thunderbird anymore!

I used Thunderbird for years, but it was so slow now, that i really hated it and used webmail instead of the client. I have a mail archive with about 15GB, so not that big, but i like it - many folders, a little bit sorted, and i love to read through old mails from time to time. Somehow i want to archive it like my photos. Now i use the Google Nexus tablet for sorting, deleting and reading my mails... And webmail on the PC.

I tried now Claws Mail, but unfortunately it crashed in the about 3h i used it 10 times. So i don't use it anymore. I think i'll try or buy The Bat! - I did not heard that bad things about it.

[madhias]

So, i have installed The Bat! now. First i did not even find all my folders from my IMAP account, but after a restart of the application everything was there. The setup is very complex, and i have to dig trough all the properties. I have to use it now for some time, to see if i really like it or not. The first impression is that it truly is a good client, but a little bit old fashioned (what is no problem for me) and all the properties and tweaks seem to be too much.

[rowdy]

Ah, you only mentioned in the OP personal use. Might be slim choices otherwise.

The HTML reading/writing is a work requirement.  Personally I loathe HTML emails, but we have to use them at work.  Thunderbird's support for HTML email is very unstable.

So, i have installed The Bat! now. First i did not even find all my folders from my IMAP account, but after a restart of the application everything was there. The setup is very complex, and i have to dig trough all the properties. I have to use it now for some time, to see if i really like it or not. The first impression is that it truly is a good client, but a little bit old fashioned (what is no problem for me) and all the properties and tweaks seem to be too much.

The Bat! is commercial and, alas, Windows only.

I use a Mac at home, and Windows 7 at work.  And Linux sometimes.  One of our guys uses a Mac, about 1/4 use Linux full time and the rest use Windows, so for me to recommend a new standard company email client would require it to be supported on all three platforms.

[Matt3o]

While commercial (at $10) Postbox is a cross-platform (Win/OSX at lease) client reviewed here amongst other modern clients such as eM Client and Mailbird (both Windows only). Checked out a few screenshots on Google Images, looks decent.

Do NOT install MailBird! It phones home!

Unfortunately there are no decent mail client for windows. Thunderbird has been mostly abandoned by Mozilla (only maintenance updates).

The best I tried so far is The Bat! but it has absolutely no spam filters, so you either buy a third party filter or do everything server side.

[madhias]

The Bat! is commercial and, alas, Windows only.

I use a Mac at home, and Windows 7 at work.  And Linux sometimes.  One of our guys uses a Mac, about 1/4 use Linux full time and the rest use Windows, so for me to recommend a new standard company email client would require it to be supported on all three platforms.

That's true, it is commercial. In general i use three clients now: at work on Mac Outlook 2011, at work on Mac for private use the Mac OS mail client (which is not that bad, i hated it but it works and i like it more and more) and at home on PC ... nothing for now (except the The Bat! test i'm doing right now).

[Coreda]

Do NOT install MailBird! It phones home!

Link seems a little over-blown about what it's actually doing, but still good to know.

[Matt3o]

Do NOT install MailBird! It phones home!

Link seems a little over-blown about what it's actually doing, but still good to know.

they send themselves your email, name and user session (so they potentially could track your habits) without permission over an un-encrypted connection (and you are automatically signed in to their newsletter). I don't know what worst could an email client do

[Coreda]

they send themselves your email, name and user session (so they potentially could track your habits) without permission over an un-encrypted connection (and you are automatically signed in to their newsletter). I don't know what worst could an email client do

True. Shame as the UI is quite pretty. Why can't we have nice things

[whentheclouds]

is it possible to customize The Bat's interface to a darker color?

[rowdy]

Do NOT install MailBird! It phones home!

Link seems a little over-blown about what it's actually doing, but still good to know.

they send themselves your email, name and user session (so they potentially could track your habits) without permission over an un-encrypted connection (and you are automatically signed in to their newsletter). I don't know what worst could an email client do

Now that they've been outed, I wonder if they will stop doing it?

[Matt3o]

Now that they've been outed, I wonder if they will stop doing it?

I contacted them, it seems they are working on it for v2.0, I believe they'd just add https and leave everything else unchanged (ie: they'll keep sending data without user consent but over https instead simple http). But I could be wrong. Time will tell.

[jacobolus]

• free
• cross-platform (at least Windows and OS X, preferably Linux too)
• updated recently (say in the last 6 months)
• supports reading and composing HTML email (work requirement)
• GUI

I think this is basically impossible to meet with anything good (i.e. Thunderbird is your best bet with those constraints). Which of these “requirements” are you willing to ditch?

After everyone switched to free or preinstalled email clients, and later to webmail, the mail client market is basically a wasteland of crap and abandonware.

As far as OS X is concerned, here’s a recent review of a bunch of email clients:
http://thesweetsetup.com/apps/favorite-email-client-os-x/

Personally I find that cross platform apps are almost always worse than separate single-platform apps, with a few exceptions, like Photoshop.

[rowdy]

I can't quote for some reason, silly GH.

That list is pretty much requirements.

Ditching free or HTML would prevent use at work.

Ditching cross-platform would prevent use at home.

Ditching obsolete will probably leave me worse off than I am now.

And yes, I know that a cross-platform app will never look as good as one designed for a specific platform, but many apps I use are cross-platform, so I've become accustomed to that (Firefox, Chrome, muCommander, Thunderbird, Eclipse, ...).

If I had the time I'd write my own!

[dustinhxc]

I have used Thunderbird for about a year. With the newest update this week I had to disable All of my Add-Ons to make anything work right. lol Its getting buggy... 

[rowdy]

The earliest email I sent with my current work installation of Thunderbird was 01-Jan-2004 - nearly 11 years ago

I have nearly 32GB emails.

I would say that Thunderbird has coped very well until the abomination that was the 3.x+ releases, which I completely refused to install.  Not until, I don't know, version 20 or something did I venture back into Thunderbird upgrade land, and it's been just about adequate since then.  The last few updates have gone seriously downhill.

So yes, I have been a very Thunderbird user, but now the gloss has worn off, like a set of shiny ABS keycaps that the legends are fading, I am looking for alternatives.

[dustinhxc]

The earliest email I sent with my current work installation of Thunderbird was 01-Jan-2004 - nearly 11 years ago

I have nearly 32GB emails.

I would say that Thunderbird has coped very well until the abomination that was the 3.x+ releases, which I completely refused to install.  Not until, I don't know, version 20 or something did I venture back into Thunderbird upgrade land, and it's been just about adequate since then.  The last few updates have gone seriously downhill.

So yes, I have been a very Thunderbird user, but now the gloss has worn off, like a set of shiny ABS keycaps that the legends are fading, I am looking for alternatives.

Wow!! Yeah ive used them for a year. The only thing I have had bad luck with is getting a junk filter to work. I still get 30+  spam into my inbox daily.. :/

Any good add ons for that? Ive tried a few.

[rowdy]

Wow!! Yeah ive used them for a year. The only thing I have had bad luck with is getting a junk filter to work. I still get 30+  spam into my inbox daily.. :/

Any good add ons for that? Ive tried a few.

I've found the Thunderbird built-in junk filtering to be reasonable.  This morning, for example, there were about a dozen spams in my inbox, and about 180 in the Junk folder.

Most of my emails are pre-filtered - basically one filter for each client and one for each newsletter, so whatever ends up in the inbox is generally all spam.

I also have a workflow around Thunderbird's quirks that I have developed over the last, well, at least 11 years, so migrating to a different email client is probably going to break that )

[Matt3o]

gosh so many times I wanted to start developing my own mail client... but it's a quite gargantuan task

[rowdy]

gosh so many times I wanted to start developing my own mail client... but it's a quite gargantuan task

If I was a bit younger and without a family I probably would!  Even if just to learn more about the protocols involved.

But there are so many standards that a good email client would have to support.

[alec]

I have used Opera Mail for years. Can't recommend it to anyone because its discontinued. But can't migrate from it because nothing else is so fast and simple.

For my parents I ended up selection Microsoft Outlook. They already had it from the work and can't beat prefessional tools. Much better and universal than any free mail client.
I used to recommend Thunderbird but it has really gone downhill.

[godly_music]

The only lightweight alternative to Thunderbird I can think of would be Claws Mail (a spinoff of Sylpheed). It does HTML and some other stuff through plugins, but I've always found it to work a little better under Linux. Still, 9 out of 10 alternatives will be hacked-together Thunderbird spinoffs or programs that use twice as much memory. The mail client appears to be dying.

[rowdy]

The only lightweight alternative to Thunderbird I can think of would be Claws Mail (a spinoff of Sylpheed). It does HTML and some other stuff through plugins, but I've always found it to work a little better under Linux. Still, 9 out of 10 alternatives will be hacked-together Thunderbird spinoffs or programs that use twice as much memory. The mail client appears to be dying.

Sadly I suspect you are right - the day of the email client has come and gone.  A few that looked promising, like Spicebird, are no longer under development, and Thunderbird has stalled.

[godly_music]

Oh, one thing I totally forgot!

FossaMail 25 is based off Palemoon 25 and is therefore a proper Thunderbird 'fork'. It still only uses ~60ish MB memory and will probably not have a bunch of the annoying **** of the latest version. That's the one I presently use; even the official 24.7 is pretty good, no point updating if it's just getting worse. It can still do mail just fine, right? I also disabled Tabs entirely and it's never given me any issues.

[rowdy]

Oh, one thing I totally forgot!

FossaMail 25 is based off Palemoon 25 and is therefore a proper Thunderbird 'fork'. It still only uses ~60ish MB memory and will probably not have a bunch of the annoying **** of the latest version. That's the one I presently use; even the official 24.7 is pretty good, no point updating if it's just getting worse. It can still do mail just fine, right? I also disabled Tabs entirely and it's never given me any issues.

Windows only

[godly_music]

You're right. I should've said a compiler-optimized version of the old Thunderbird ESR 24.x release branch, since that's pretty much what it is. And those do exist for Linux.

[codyeatworld]

I've been extremely happy with fastmail.fm. I pretty much just use their web interface now + notifications.

Your list of features pretty much eliminated every client I've used but these ones stood out to me in the past:

https://airmailapp.com/
beta is free iirc, mac only

http://www.postbox-inc.com/
haven't used v3 but it looks really nice and its windows/mac only (no linux)

http://freron.com/
Looks interesting, mac only.

I don't think any of these are open source

[Coreda]

I don't think any of these are open source

Postbox is basically a fork of Thunderbird, although I have no idea what their license is. Mentioned the app earlier, seems decent but it's commercial which rules it out. If it were only for rowdy's use a commercial app may be okay but apparently it's for his entire office which is a pity.

[rowdy]

Unfortunately for the office - a few guys have constant problems with it (although that might not entirely be Thunderbird's fault), plus I am getting performance and stability issues, plus I don't like some of the UI changes they have suddenly decided to make which break my 10+ years habits using it.

Cross-platform = necessary - Windows for work, Mac for home, Linux for our overseas office (Ubuntu, if that makes any difference).

Free because I don't think I'd be able to sell a new email client to management )

[Matt3o]

I've been extremely happy with fastmail.fm.

Fastmail TOS: https://www.fastmail.com/about/tos.html

 

You've been terminated:

The Service Provider may terminate your access to any part or all of the Service and any related service(s) at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately, for any reason whatsoever, with or without providing any refund of any payments.

[rowdy]

I've been extremely happy with fastmail.fm.

Fastmail TOS: https://www.fastmail.com/about/tos.html

 

You've been terminated:

The Service Provider may terminate your access to any part or all of the Service and any related service(s) at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately, for any reason whatsoever, with or without providing any refund of any payments.

And they still manage to do business with ToS like that?

I guess not many people bother reading those, eh?

[Coreda]

Yeah, that's pretty bad lol.

[codyeatworld]

I never noticed that in their TOS, but I'm sure they are just taking measures to protect the customer and their business. I think they are in the US and Australia.

I still love fastmail, haven't found anything that beats their interface.

[Matt3o]

it's an Australian company with servers in US and backups in Ireland. Theoretically it's all good, but that ToS is hard to swallow.

[eth0s]

Another vote for Claws.  The GUI is totes retro.  It looks like your email from 1995.  The older guys in your office might really like it.

[rowdy]

Another vote for Claws.  The GUI is totes retro.  It looks like your email from 1995.  The older guys in your office might really like it.

Claws cannot compose HTML emails - that is a mandatory requirement for work (although personally I despise HTML emails).

[meztek]

The mail client appears to be dying.

I am the only person I know who uses a desktop mail client.  To be honest, while this may be true, I don't see how anyone gets by without a mail client.  I never cared much for the online mail interface and something about the lack of control over it and constantly having to keep a web browser open is incredibly annoying. 

Rowdy, I use Thunderbird.  I switched from Evolution a few years ago and never looked back.  That said I do not experience any difficulty using Thunderbird - I actually switched to it because I was having issues similar to what you described when using Evolution.  I am in no way an "expert" when it comes to email clients so all I am telling you is I do not have the same issue.  Could it be your years of emails stored in Thunderbird are bogging it down?  Since I switched from Evolution because of sluggishness problems I could not recommend it, but if you were interested in a new mail client, it may work better for you.  I do not believe it supports Windows however. 

[rowdy]

The mail client appears to be dying.

I am the only person I know who uses a desktop mail client.  To be honest, while this may be true, I don't see how anyone gets by without a mail client.  I never cared much for the online mail interface and something about the lack of control over it and constantly having to keep a web browser open is incredibly annoying. 

Rowdy, I use Thunderbird.  I switched from Evolution a few years ago and never looked back.  That said I do not experience any difficulty using Thunderbird - I actually switched to it because I was having issues similar to what you described when using Evolution.  I am in no way an "expert" when it comes to email clients so all I am telling you is I do not have the same issue.  Could it be your years of emails stored in Thunderbird are bogging it down?  Since I switched from Evolution because of sluggishness problems I could not recommend it, but if you were interested in a new mail client, it may work better for you.  I do not believe it supports Windows however. 

I've looked at a few IMAP web-based email solutions, including a few hosted on the server at work.  None of them was really up to scratch, all had limitations and performance problems (most of them were many times slower than Thunderbird).  And none of them had any easy was to migrate 30+GB of 10+years of email from Thunderbird into them.  Plus their filtering was primarily based on milter, which operates at the MTA level, proving slightly cumbersome to setup.

I used Evolution under Linux for a little while many years ago (probably pre-Thunderbird era, so I imagine it has changed a lot).  Although there is an (outdated?) Windows version, I don't think it runs reliably on Windows.