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Since the 1990s, IMAP (an open standard with hundreds of implementations covering virtually all platforms) has allowed you to access all of your mail, from anywhere, on whichever device you want.

You don't have to use just one IMAP client, you can use many clients, just as you might use several different web browsers or text editors. They all access the same mail store, and the message state (read, flagged, replied to, etc) is synchronized among all the clients (this is what the IMAP protocol is for).

On a decently powerful computer, searching is typically faster than any online service, including Gmail (though it depends on the mail client).

Thunderbird's search is fairly poor. On OS X, I mainly use MailMate and Apple's default Mail.app client software. Both of these can search through my 500,000-message email archive (all my personal email in/out since 1995) much faster than any online service I have seen.

With a dedicated mail client, you can also have all your mail without being online -- to me, this is essential for working on international flights.

Being able to use multiple standards-based clients also lets you avoid keeping all your eggs in one basket. You can use the best client on each platform that suits you.

I only ever use Thunderbird on Windows, where there are not many good email clients. OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android all come with better (for my needs, YMMV) email clients than Thunderbird.

Finally, IMAP is a real standard with a huge body of work behind it. I look forward to even better standards emerging, e.g. something like JMAP[1] maybe, but for now we do have IMAP, and it solves every single problem that web-based email solves (indeed there are many webmail UIs that give you online browser access to your IMAP email store). But with native clients you also gain several advantages over typical webmail service from Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, etc.

Plus no ads.

[1]: http://jmap.io

Well, as long as you have credintials, any email client will let you use your account on any system

I think the main thing is that you can't really add on a lot of things to webmail. Look at the success of outlook in office, because you can add so many things to an exchange server that IMAP doesn't support. Reserve rooms for a meeting, schedule events, and more.

Or, small organizations often have a single IMAP server, and do not use gmail. If you are part of several servers(graduate students/scientists/professors), a client allows you to access your mail from all of these systems. If they have webmail at all, it's awful(Think Squirrel Mail). I sort of tried adding my university email to my gmail account, but the feature always broke in weird ways.

IMAP solves these problems and is older than the web, by almost a decade. Any mail service of note supports it.

There's no way I could go back to having access to my mail stuck on one machine.

Curious that you should say this, because with webmail, your mail is on the server. With IMAP, it's on the server and on as many clients as you want it to be on.

one that I can access all my mail from any device anywhere in the world

'anywhere in the world'? Good luck reaching your webmail from a place that doesn't have internet connectivity, of which there are a great many places in the world. Or if there's network issues. Offline clients still give you access to email history during network outages.

With any IMAP client your mail will not be stuck on one machine, you can maintain a copy on the server as well, and access it from any other IMAP client.

Right. I can't see why anyone uses Gmail. The built-in mail client in Android works just fine with IMAP servers. I have two desktops, a laptop, and an Android phone all using the same IMAP server. Everything but the Android phone runs Thunderbird.

It's rather nice that Mozilla maintains Thunderbird but doesn't change it much. The Firefox UI keeps changing, but not improving. Over three years, Firefox moved add-on icons from the top to the bottom, then hid them, then moved them back to the top again. I'm worried that if they change Thunderbird, they will "add social features", make it send your contacts list to Mozilla HQ for "syncing", or something like that.

> I can't see why anyone uses Gmail.

For a relatively consistent experience across platforms, without having to depend on a local application.

These apps have long supported IMAP, your email won't be stuck to your machine.

For me really I have my personal mail on my home desktop via thunderbird and there is zero reason to ever have it anyplace else.

Nothing is life is so important it can't wait until I get home for an answer. If it is so important like work email then they will provide me with a phone and an email account which they do. I'll gladly carry that. But for my personal use. I just don't see the point. Do I really need to see that recruiters email right now? Do I really need to see the amazon shipment confirmation right now? Nope.

I have all of my passwords in a keepass db which is also only accessible via my home desktop. I can't access anything even if I needed to since everything has its own pw which I don't know.

As I said. Nothing is that important.

I use IMAP and I use it regularly from at least 4-5 regularly used devices, through Thunderbird on the computers and whatever native client is on smaller devices. I have done this since well before 2003 as well.

POP hasn't been the only game in town for a very very long time.

I use Thunderbird to read email that's hosted on gmail, via IMAP.

That way I get an interface that allows me to open multiple emails at once, and all the keyboard shortcuts I like, that uses a lot less CPU than a gmail window.

It's faster, and less susceptible to phishing. Also, if you are not using Gmail, how great are the web email clients really?