Ask HN: What email client do you use? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What email client do you use?

21 pointsdawie69 comments

Wondering what email client people use?

I have 3 or 4 different gmail accounts and it's a pain keeping up with all of them. I have an email address for support, one for feedback and a personal one.

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Apple's Mail.app, which is Good Enough. I have five accounts, all of them are checked with a single click, and I don't have to worry beyond that.

And it syncs all the accounts over to my iPhone:)

I just wish there was an Inbox that combined all incoming mail from my 4 accounts.

I don't know what you're missing, but I've got one Inbox folder with four accounts underneath it (3 imap, 1 pop) - the root Inbox contains all messages in the sub-inboxes.

Not on your iPhone you don't. Unless you've found something really cool:)

Not to mention drag-and-drop support, which is why I don't use a webmail client as my main vehicle for email (which allows some nice workflow together with Exposé)

I'm also used to the excellent inline PDF viewing, quicklook for attached foto's and documents and the data detectors for addresses and phone numbers.

straight up google apps gmail with gmail notifier. As far as multiple accounts:

1) set other accounts up to forward to your gmail/gapps email 2) setup a filter + auto label system for those emails 3) add it as an outgoing email that you can reply from (limited to 7 i THINK)

I use the Google Apps/Gmail interface also. I've found that as it has matured over time there are less reasons I would want a desktop client and more reasons for having the portability of a cross platform, location independent web interface.

Gmail is a class act when it comes to web apps.

I use IMAP on gmail with opera. I need a desktop client, for times when i'm not connected and quickly need to search an old email for some small little detail.

I just use it as an offline backup, and keep it synced.

Google has an offline gmail version in beta. Requires Google Gears (not available for FF3.5, last I checked) but works for Safari.

All my mail is synced locally but I can still use the Gmail interface.

Me too - using Gmail + Gears w/ Safari 4 Fluid app, and a dock badge 'inbox count' userscript. Google will tell you you can't install gears with safari 4 - but it works.

it doesn't sync all your mail.

It is available for Firefox 3.5 and it does sync all your recent mail, including attachments. It uses an automatic, non-configurable heuristic to determine how much mail to sync. I believe mine syncs the past 1 year's.

Those are all good suggestions, and I would add:

4) Use Mailplane (http://mailplaneapp.com/). Disclaimer: Mailplane is not free and I'm not affiliated with it at all.

This is the setup I use too, but the main downside of it is that sending a message from within Gmail, as an account other than the main account you're logged in as, reveals your main account email address.

For example, if you're logged in as somebody@gmail.com, but send the message as evilperson@gmail.com, you'll reveal somebody@gmail.com to the recipient. In fact, Outlook proudly displays this address by stating "From: evilperson@gmail.com on behalf of somebody@gmail.com". I think you can also easily get this info from the mail headers from most web-based clients.

Maybe this isn't an issue for most folks, but it can create havoc with your filters if folks start replying to an address you had hoped to keep hidden from them.

same google apps gmail setup except i dont use gmail notifier (used to). instead i have an SSB (fluid.app) running it and it gives me the red dock icon counter thing.

seems a shame to have to jump through these hoops simply because the gmail web client doesn't handle account switching. Gmail really needs to fix this!!!

Surprised there isn't any votes for Postbox app (http://getpostbox.com).

  * It integrates well with gmail 
  * does great with multiple accounts 
  * multiple outgoing addresses 
  * great search functionality 
  * GTD tools such as assigning emails a topic. 
  * Integration with facebook/twitter to pull up contact info 
  * Extensions such as calendar and contacts

Based on thunderbird, all around awesome client.

I, too, was surprised there weren't more. I use this; I like it quite a lot. The search feels quite superior to Thunderbird's native search.

No Linux version :(

postbox is not free :(

Mail.app with MailActOn (http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html) which I am not affiliated with and is not free. Use it for 7 email accounts, lots of RSS, all filtered carefully into one combined inbox and organized manually but quickly into local folders with that MailActOn app.

In my experience heavy use of Mail.app results in accounts that do not get checked for email, and show no connection error or indication of a problem. No email for an hour and I restart the app. I wish refreshing my accounts actually displayed the status of checking each account, it is very obvious sometimes that the refresh button does basically nothing or at least doesn't inform me in any way what it is doing...

Turn on the Activity Viewer: Window->Activity Viewer or ⌘-0. Shows each account being accessed and all related activity. Also allows actions to be cancelled.

I second that complaint about Mail.app. It's a great client and I use it for my main job email account. But the refresh button is essentially useless.

More than once our mail server has been down at work and I don't notice until I try and send something.

I can't believe I'm going to say this

don't laugh, but I use outlook, and .........AOL.

I've had the AOL account for years and I've never cared enough to switch it over (it handles all of my spam like e-mails anyway).

I've never really cared about my e-mail client in general. If I were motivated to switch - which is the most intuitive for organization?

I use Gnus.

I've got it setup so all my incoming mail lands in Gmail. Then, Gnus checks that account via POP3. Gnus only checks mail when prompted, so anything that Gnus hasn't fetched yet shows up as unread when viewed on the web or via iPhone/IMAP. Gnus is setup to select the correct SMTP server based on the contents of the message being replied to or the view that initiated compose-mail.

Thunderbird latest beta.

I also use the iPhone email client just about as much as Thunderbird.

I also use my iPhone's client, but mostly for reading emails.

You might've made this a poll. From the HN FAQ:

> How do I submit a poll?

> http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

> This is an experimental feature so there is currently a fairly high karma threshold for submitting new polls.

VM, which (like gnus) is built on top of Emacs. I use a very old version (version 5) because I did not like the direction the project took after that. Heavily modified by me.

Outlook at Work. Gmail and Google Apps gmail for my domain accounts.Also use gmail on my blackberry through the regular blackberry email client.

Gmail and Mutt.

Opera.

Mainly because it's open almost the entire day on my laptop.

SquirrelMail, Thunderbird

Gnus. (Local IMAP fed by offlineimap from my real IMAP server.)

I use K9 on my phone.

I use mailnotify to check a few different accounts for new messages (http://www.nongnu.org/mailnotify/) then just log on to a webmail site to access the mail.

Thunderbird, Usermin (our webmail client), GMail, and the Android mail application, in that order.

All of my @virtualmin.com mail comes to one mailbox via aliases, and I can access that box from home on Thunderbird, the web with Usermin, and my phone with the G1. GMail is for personal stuff, and for chat.

Our support is handled through a ticket tracker, which makes things dramatically easier to manage.

fetchmail/procmail/mutt. All of my addresses forward to a single imap account (some via gmail for spam filtering).

I too use this. At work I use the same combination, but also Evolution, just because I get too many customer e-mails that are unreadable without an html reader. For personal e-mail, I get few enough of those that a lynx filter is sufficient.

GyazMail: http://gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/

I've been using this Mac OS X client for quite some time. It's everything I want in a desktop client. It has become rock soid and is slowly but steadily improving and adding features.

You can solve the problem using only one gmail account. Just forward mails from the other accounts, and configure a filter to put different tags on them. You can send from different email addresses using only one gmail account, too.

I have RoundCube [http://roundcube.net/] installed on my server and all of my other accounts forward to it.

I constantly hack it to add functionality where needed.

Outlook with Xobni at work. I've now become the guy that can find "that email".

I use Inbox2 (www.inbox2.com), but then again I am building that myself :-)

fetchmail -> procmail -> mutt -> vim -> gpg -> ssmtp

This is similar to what I use, except offlineimap instead of fetchmail and esmtp instead of ssmtp.

I like offlineimap because it does a bidirectionaly sync, meaning I can keep a local backup of mail, but still use the web client when I need to (without a ton of old mail sitting around).

I started using esmpt because it handles local mail delivery when paired with procmail, allowing me to get the infrequent messages to root without having to run a full MTA on my laptop. There's also a script to allow mail queuing, but I haven't ever bothered with it.

Outlook on my windows laptop. Thunderbird on my linux desktoip. Managing multiple emails with these clients have never been a problem. My personal gmail account alone is web only.

GMail on Mozilla Prism then Mail.app for everything else - I don't have a clue how Thunderbird performs on the Mac, but Mail.app works fine atm.

Lastly, Thunderbird on Windows

Mail.app with Gmail / Google Apps, so I have backup in the cloud, access anywhere, and IMAP syncing with iPhone. Works great.

Gmail on my desktop with the gears extension. Sometimes I use my blackberry message client to read emails.

Thunderbird for Windows over SSL POP3.

Google Apps GMail, mail app on the iPhone (and occasionally web app).

Mail sucks, GMail makes it ok.

Gmail: all my accounts syndicate to there and I use multiple inboxes lab feature to sort it all.

gmail for my main account and yahoo!mail for any sign ups, etc. that I don't really care about.

Behind my main machine thunderbird, outside Horde.

Interface 'dynamic' is quite amazing.

pine.

I kid, I kid. I use google apps all around (work & home).

I used Pine for a long time. It was great. I use Thunderbird now.

thunderbird for work, home and projects on the desktop. ipod mail.app and nokia n96 mailer the most rest of the time. If all those unavailable, squirrelmail.

Gmail in a Fluid app, and Mail.app on iPod Touch.

Kmail

i switched from thunderbird to evolution and have been very pleased.

TheBat for 10 years now.

KMail

Outlook for my exchange based email (at work), Thunderbird for IMAP (at home).

gmail + thunderbird at work.

1 gmail account for all span (even if it looks like it might possibly have a slight chance of being span i use this email). Not forwarded. 1 gmail account (old) forwarded to main gmail account 1 gmail account main 1 work account

I use thunderbird at work to view work related emails, but gmail client to do everything else. Can't beat that damn gmail client!

Mail.app in the office, mutt if I'm terminal bound.

claws

http://www.claws-mail.org

Me too. Stable, fast, extensible, keyboard friendly, and tons of features.

Gmail forwarding all my accounts to my main account.

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