5 ms·

What does HN recommend as a better Win10 email client? I'm familiar with Thunderbird and I'll probably switch to it if nothing else, but I'm not a huge fan of t

What does HN recommend as a better Win10 email client? I'm familiar with Thunderbird and I'll probably switch to it if nothing else, but I'm not a huge fan of the UI/UX.

Someone1234 8y ago
This might sound glib, but as someone who has used both Thunderbird and Outlook extensively, I don't recommend any desktop email client. Email clients were designed for a whole different era, and only work well in that context. Gmail, Outlook.com/O365/etc, are designed for you to "keep everything." Problem is that all desktop email clients aren't designed that way, they want you to have a very small limited subset of email that they can index and constantly have in memory. When these two worlds converge desktop clients choke and choke hard. Outlook is so terrible that it almost needs to be completely retired. They've barely updated it in ten years. Best case scenario right now is full webmail (with anyone) and browser notifications for new email etc if you need that.
- jcelerier 8y ago
  > Problem is that all desktop email clients aren't designed that way, they want you to have a very small limited subset of email that they can index and constantly have in memory. with large amounts of mail (~90k in one of my inboxes - and if someone asks just yesterday I had to go and fetch some info from a 2007 mail), GMail chokes much more than thunderbird, e.g. it takes 2/3 minutes and sometimes does not work to mark a large set of email as read/archived/whatever while this is almost instant with TB.
- modzu 8y ago
  clients still make sense for users with multiple accounts. and modern clients only sync a subset of the db but still permit online search and retrieval. also for certain tasks the web clients aren't much better (gmails interface is garbage for working with multiple messages for example) the default answer to op's question in enterprise land (where windows is still treading for relevancy) is Outlook. thunderbird suffers the issues the comment mentions above -- barfs with large dbs, no support for exchange, not sure if it even supports push notifications, etc it should be noted that mail on mac works well and the win 10 mail app this article is all about works pretty well too, which is why its a travesty MS is going to ruin it.
- SyneRyder 8y ago
  > Problem is that all desktop email clients aren't designed that way, they want you to have a very small limited subset of email.... I have over 20 years of email stored locally in Postbox. I've kept every non-spam email since I first got online in 1997. I regularly use it to search for things people sent me (or I sent them) months or even years ago. It's really not a problem at all. I've got Postbox open right now and it's using 625MB RAM. (That's a lot compared to the Eudora days, but I have 16GB RAM now.) A desktop client on your laptop also means you can write emails & be able to search your email history while in flight mode, and queue the messages to be sent when you land & have WiFi again.
- bad_user 8y ago
  You have this opinion because you haven’t used a good desktop client yet. I use Mailmate. It’s everything I wanted Thunderbird to be.
vezycash 8y ago
I liked Win 10 email client because I can close it and still get email alerts. I'd like an alternative that has close to tray functionality.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  I remember that more than 15 years ago it was a pain to set up thunderbird to be closed in the systray and display a notification when new mail arrived. It wasn't a core feature and you had to mess around with extensions or binaries that would just check out your mail and launch thunderbird (but couldn't open the mail mentioned in the notificatin). 15 years later and 3 major windows iterations later and we still don't have it.
- wvenable 8y ago
  I have a close-to-tray plugin for Thunderbird.
SyneRyder 8y ago
Possibly Postbox, it's a commercial app but derived from Thunderbird. I've been using it for years on Mac since Eudora was discontinued, and plan to use it on Windows now that I'm switching back to PC this month: https://postbox-inc.com/ https://postbox-inc.com/
- reading-at-work 8y ago
  Looks good, but is it worth $40? At that point I'll probably just do what others suggested and go back to webmail with browser notifications.
  - SyneRyder 8y ago
    For me, email is absolutely mission critical. $40 is an absolute steal for the software I use the most in my business & spend lots of time in every day personally. It's cheaper than Sublime Text too. If you do feel that's a lot, try the demo first to see if you like it, and maybe wait for Black Friday in case they have a sale.
  - SyneRyder 8y ago
    If you're still interested in Postbox, the Black Friday sale just started, 40% off to make it $24. (And if you're not interested, that's cool too.) https://www.postbox-inc.com/store https://www.postbox-inc.com/store
ip26 8y ago
Ten years ago I would not have said this, but Outlook is really pretty solid. Pretty fast, uses hardly any RAM, excellent Calendar integration (big deal for me), extremely flexible account setup. I swear half of the clients on the market turn out to support only a small list of authentication methods, or don't let you specify port! It is of course overkill though if you have one email account and only process a couple emails a day.
- juststeve 8y ago
  Sorry, but Outlook 2016 is broken compared to 2013. I am forced to use it at work with exchage, and it has weird bugs that simply did not exist in the 2013 version. i still dont think it supports the iCalendar/calDAV standard either.
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    They support it, but in a very strange and broken way (lots of MS-specific fields with poor documentation). IIRC from my time trying to do appointment sending from line of business app, if you send someone an ICS attachment with the right MIME type, Outlook treats it as a regular appointment request.
    - juststeve 8y ago
      > lots of MS-specific fields with poor documentation It's too easy to write a backhanded comment regarding this issue, but it's just really annoying.
abawany 8y ago
Thunderbird works very well for me and with the new (to me?) CalDAV/CardDAV plugins, it is able to sync with my remote repo seamlessly for appointments and contacts in addition to email. I recommend it highly.
pmalynin 8y ago
I use Spark, but I don't think its available on Windows.
swiley 8y ago
I like mutt+fetchmail quite a bit. There are probably a dozen ways to run it on windows.
malshe 8y ago
I use Mailspring which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. I use the free version but they have subscription model with many features (which I don't necessarily need). https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring

What does HN recommend as a better Win10 email client? I'm familiar with Thunderbird and I'll probably switch to it if nothing else, but I'm not a huge fan of the UI/UX.

Someone1234 8y ago

This might sound glib, but as someone who has used both Thunderbird and Outlook extensively, I don't recommend any desktop email client. Email clients were designed for a whole different era, and only work well in that context. Gmail, Outlook.com/O365/etc, are designed for you to "keep everything." Problem is that all desktop email clients aren't designed that way, they want you to have a very small limited subset of email that they can index and constantly have in memory. When these two worlds converge desktop clients choke and choke hard. Outlook is so terrible that it almost needs to be completely retired. They've barely updated it in ten years. Best case scenario right now is full webmail (with anyone) and browser notifications for new email etc if you need that.

jcelerier 8y ago
> Problem is that all desktop email clients aren't designed that way, they want you to have a very small limited subset of email that they can index and constantly have in memory. with large amounts of mail (~90k in one of my inboxes - and if someone asks just yesterday I had to go and fetch some info from a 2007 mail), GMail chokes much more than thunderbird, e.g. it takes 2/3 minutes and sometimes does not work to mark a large set of email as read/archived/whatever while this is almost instant with TB.
modzu 8y ago
clients still make sense for users with multiple accounts. and modern clients only sync a subset of the db but still permit online search and retrieval. also for certain tasks the web clients aren't much better (gmails interface is garbage for working with multiple messages for example) the default answer to op's question in enterprise land (where windows is still treading for relevancy) is Outlook. thunderbird suffers the issues the comment mentions above -- barfs with large dbs, no support for exchange, not sure if it even supports push notifications, etc it should be noted that mail on mac works well and the win 10 mail app this article is all about works pretty well too, which is why its a travesty MS is going to ruin it.
SyneRyder 8y ago
> Problem is that all desktop email clients aren't designed that way, they want you to have a very small limited subset of email.... I have over 20 years of email stored locally in Postbox. I've kept every non-spam email since I first got online in 1997. I regularly use it to search for things people sent me (or I sent them) months or even years ago. It's really not a problem at all. I've got Postbox open right now and it's using 625MB RAM. (That's a lot compared to the Eudora days, but I have 16GB RAM now.) A desktop client on your laptop also means you can write emails & be able to search your email history while in flight mode, and queue the messages to be sent when you land & have WiFi again.
bad_user 8y ago
You have this opinion because you haven’t used a good desktop client yet. I use Mailmate. It’s everything I wanted Thunderbird to be.

vezycash 8y ago

I liked Win 10 email client because I can close it and still get email alerts. I'd like an alternative that has close to tray functionality.

johnchristopher 8y ago
I remember that more than 15 years ago it was a pain to set up thunderbird to be closed in the systray and display a notification when new mail arrived. It wasn't a core feature and you had to mess around with extensions or binaries that would just check out your mail and launch thunderbird (but couldn't open the mail mentioned in the notificatin). 15 years later and 3 major windows iterations later and we still don't have it.
wvenable 8y ago
I have a close-to-tray plugin for Thunderbird.

SyneRyder 8y ago

Possibly Postbox, it's a commercial app but derived from Thunderbird. I've been using it for years on Mac since Eudora was discontinued, and plan to use it on Windows now that I'm switching back to PC this month: https://postbox-inc.com/ https://postbox-inc.com/

reading-at-work 8y ago
Looks good, but is it worth $40? At that point I'll probably just do what others suggested and go back to webmail with browser notifications.
- SyneRyder 8y ago
  For me, email is absolutely mission critical. $40 is an absolute steal for the software I use the most in my business & spend lots of time in every day personally. It's cheaper than Sublime Text too. If you do feel that's a lot, try the demo first to see if you like it, and maybe wait for Black Friday in case they have a sale.
- SyneRyder 8y ago
  If you're still interested in Postbox, the Black Friday sale just started, 40% off to make it $24. (And if you're not interested, that's cool too.) https://www.postbox-inc.com/store https://www.postbox-inc.com/store

ip26 8y ago

Ten years ago I would not have said this, but Outlook is really pretty solid. Pretty fast, uses hardly any RAM, excellent Calendar integration (big deal for me), extremely flexible account setup. I swear half of the clients on the market turn out to support only a small list of authentication methods, or don't let you specify port! It is of course overkill though if you have one email account and only process a couple emails a day.

juststeve 8y ago
Sorry, but Outlook 2016 is broken compared to 2013. I am forced to use it at work with exchage, and it has weird bugs that simply did not exist in the 2013 version. i still dont think it supports the iCalendar/calDAV standard either.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  They support it, but in a very strange and broken way (lots of MS-specific fields with poor documentation). IIRC from my time trying to do appointment sending from line of business app, if you send someone an ICS attachment with the right MIME type, Outlook treats it as a regular appointment request.
  - juststeve 8y ago
    > lots of MS-specific fields with poor documentation It's too easy to write a backhanded comment regarding this issue, but it's just really annoying.

abawany 8y ago

Thunderbird works very well for me and with the new (to me?) CalDAV/CardDAV plugins, it is able to sync with my remote repo seamlessly for appointments and contacts in addition to email. I recommend it highly.

pmalynin 8y ago

I use Spark, but I don't think its available on Windows.

swiley 8y ago

I like mutt+fetchmail quite a bit. There are probably a dozen ways to run it on windows.

malshe 8y ago

I use Mailspring which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. I use the free version but they have subscription model with many features (which I don't necessarily need). https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring