List of most useful desktop email clients

Almost all of us have one or more email accounts and most of us check our Inbox regularly using either web browser or a dedicated email client. Nowadays almost all email service providers like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, etc provide so many advanced features in their web interface which makes the use of email desktop client negligible.

Do you know about email client? How many email clients services are available in the market?

Let's find out in this post -

What does email client mean?

An email client is a desktop application that enables configuring one or more email addresses to receive, read, compose and send emails from that email address through the desktop interface. It provides a central interface for receiving, composing and sending emails of configured email address.

The email client is also known as email reader or mail user agent (MUA). Email client primarily is a desktop application that enables users to receive and send emails directly on their desktop.

In short, an email client is a computer program used to read and send electronic messages. An email client isn't the same as an email server. An email client is what a single user like you interacts with. The client downloads messages from the server for local use or for use within a browser and uploads messages to the server for delivery to its recipients.

Email client requires an email address to be set up and configured before a user can start using email service. These configurations and settings generally include an email address, password, POP3/IMAP and SMTP address, port number, email aliases, and other related preferences.

To organize email, email clients typically offer folders, labels, or both. An integrated search engine lets you find messages by details such as senders, subjects, times of receipt, and content.

Here are some best email clients -

Gmail

As the most popular online email client in the world, Gmail remains one of the better options out there. As part of your overall Google account, the client gives you 15 GB of storage space for free, which is ample space for most users, even if you aren’t the most fastidious at deleting older emails. It also has an intuitive interface that is clean and easy to navigate, and there are plenty of tabs and tools for segregating emails of different types into categories to make managing a busy account that bit easier.

eM Client

The eM Client is easily the best email software for Windows and Mac PCs. It has smart-look, modern interface and plenty of advanced features. eM Client also offers calendar, tasks, contacts, and chat. There's even built-in support for a chat (via Facebook, Google or Jabber). Setting up accounts is very straightforward - most popular email services are automatically recognized and configured without you having to faff around with SMTP server settings and suchlike. eM Client will helpfully offer to import data from your old application.

Opera Mail

Opera Mail is a free email client originally bundled with the Opera web browser, but now in development as a standalone project. It’s a great tool for keeping multiple email accounts organized, avoiding the need to open multiple browser tabs. It also stores an offline backup of your messages so you don’t need to worry about accidentally deleting the email.

Hiri

Hiri is usually a paid-for premium email client, but it's free for TechRadar readers. It's designed primarily with business users in mind (it currently only supports Microsoft email services including Hotmail, Outlook, and Exchange), but home users will also appreciate its productivity-boosting features. If you find yourself spending too long managing, reading and replying to emails, Hiri is the email client for you. It includes a smart dashboard that lets you see how many unread messages you have at a glance and how long you should wait before checking them.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a resolutely old-school email program that offers support for multiple POP and IMAP accounts and provides the easy set-up for popular services, such as Gmail and Outlook.com. You can configure it so that it looks and works how you want it to, and there are loads of features, including powerful filtering tools, an RSS reader and instant messaging.

IncrediMail

IncrediMail is a fun and easy to use an email client that adds spice to the messages you send while protecting you from spam, phishing, and fraud attempts in a convenient manner.

iOS Mail

iOS Mail for iPhone and iPad does a great job rendering emails and attachments pretty, swift and useful. Text snippets expand oft-used text, and rudimentary formatting lets you highlight passages. A few more shortcuts (such as extensive email templates, a Reader feature borrowed from Safari or filters) would be great, though.

Mailbird Lite

Mailbird Lite isn't just an email app - it's a whole communication platform to which you can add apps for scheduling, chatting, file syncing and teamworking. Free users miss out on features such as speed reading, email snoozing and quick previews of attachments, but Mailbird Lite is still an excellent choice. The Lite version only lets you connect one email account but, it's optimized for speed, and looks great to boot.

Outlook

Outlook is the app that will help you manage all your emails and stay in touch with your friends. It also includes calendars and a system that always keeps the important messages on tops so you don't miss a thing.

The Bat!

The Bat! is a great email client that makes it easy to deal with an inbox with thousands of incoming email every week. The downside: it's strange and cumbersome interface and design.

Zimbra Desktop

Zimbra Desktop has fallen off the radar recently but it does have some distinguishing features like the ability to read all your email while you're offline.

ProtonMail

ProtonMail comes highly recommended. Not only are all emails sent using ProtonMail entirely encrypted end-to-end, but all of the company’s servers are located in Switzerland and are therefore protected by the country’s strict privacy laws. With email, your security is only as strong as the person you’re sending the email too, but at least with ProtonMail, everything at your end is as secure as it can be.

Sylpheed

Sylpheed is an email client that’s been around since 2001. While it does feel dated when compared to modern email clients, it’s not bad by any stretch. In fact, its old-school interface and approach to email management may actually prove helpful if your email habits are causing undue stress.

Airmail

It’s quick, it has a Mac-oriented aesthetic that also makes it intuitive for Mac users to operate, and includes support for some of the newer MacOS features, such as split screening and translucency. Airmail divides received messages based on the assumption that each email is a task, sorting them into To-Do (basically your inbox), while Done and Memo folders exist for shuffling emails based on what you do with them next.

Inky

Inky is an email client that focuses on security, using “sophisticated AI, machine learning and computer vision algorithms” to block all manner of phishing attacks which might otherwise get through.

Mailspring

Mailspring, previously know as Nylas Mail or Nylas N1 is next-generation email app built with open web technologies. It has a really modern and slick user interface.

Yahoo! Mail

Yahoo! Mail is an e-mail service launched in 1997 through the American parent company Yahoo. Yahoo Mail provides four different email plans: three for personal use and another for businesses. By December 2011, Yahoo! Mail had 281 million users, making it the third largest web-based email service in the world.

Geary

Geary is another open-source email client from GNOME project. Another variation of Geary is Pantheon Mail, that is maintained by Elementary OS community. It also takes things a step further and offers an analytics dashboard, which allows an administrator to see patterns of attacks based on dates, or targeted users. The Inky email client does offer a free trial, but sadly, pricing details aren’t made available on the Inky website. However, the site does note that pricing is per mailbox per month on a subscription, with volume discounts available.