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Four Popular Mac Email Clients Compared And how to hack Eudora Light for multiple email account support
The Mac platform is graced with a pretty decent selection of email clients, and there should be one to suit almost everyone's taste. I use several different ones regularly to manage my twenty or so e-mail accounts, and while I like all the email applications I use, I remain mildly frustrated that none of them offers the "perfect" set of features. Eudora Light 3.1.3 My evergreen favorite remains Eudora Light 3.1.3, which is no longer supported by Qualcomm, but still available on the Eudora FTP site if you go looking for it. To save you the trouble, here is the URL:
I love Eudora Light because it is fast, incredibly stable, has an unobtrusive interface, and very few aggravating aspects. Its biggest shortcomings are its mediocre search engine and filter support, and its non-support of multiple e-mail accounts (however there are workarounds for the latter that will be discussed below). Those points notwithstanding, for slick, basic email handling, this program has yet to be topped in my experience. It still works fine under Mac OS 9.1, although of course there will be OS X version. Eudora 5.0.1 In a sense, the current Eudora 5.0.1 still retains all lot of Eudora Light's goodness, while adding powerful filter support, an excellent search engine, and of course multi-account support. It is also commendably fast, although slower than Eudora Light 3.1.3, and reasonably small today's software standards, but in direct comparison with Eudora Light, it has a slightly ponderous, sluggish feel, as can be expected with as feature-packed an application as this. Eudora 5.0.1 has stuff like an on the fly spell-checker, a flame filter, and even and an e-mail use analyzer. 
Eudora 5.0.1's user interface definitely honors its roots, which is a virtue in my estimation, but it is a lot busier than Eudora Light 3.1.3. Happily, you can turn the toolbar off, and I do like it a lot better than multi-pane interfaces like Outlook Express and several others. I also prefer the way that Eudora archives saved messages in categorized, draggable, and easy to identify mailbox files that can be opened and searched with a word-processor or text editor. I have dragged Eudora mailboxes around among various versions of Eudora from the old Eudora Light 1.5 that I used with System 6, to the most recent release of Eudora 5.1. That kind of flexibility is tough to beat. Indeed, were obliged to use just one email application, it would have to be Eudora 5.0.1, which does everything quite well, but it doesn't quite bring a smile to my face the way Eudora Light does. Eudora has every feature you are likely to need in an e-mail client, and a lot more besides. There is too much to address adequately in this capsule format, so if you are not familiar with Eudora, please check out my full review here:
Eudora is available in three modes, a partially disabled free "light" mode; a full featured advertising sponsored version; and a paid commercial software version. The registration fee for the paid version of Eudora is $49.95 For more information, visit:
SweetMail Another e-mail client that I use is SweetMail, a relatively new shareware application from Japanese developer S. Ichise. There is good reason why I like SweetMail. Mr. Ichise professes to be a fellow Eudora Light aficionado, and his objective is to produce a full-featured, modern e-mail application that retains Eudora light's quick and nimble "feel." 
To a considerable extent he has succeeded in his quest. In terms of "feel," I find SweetMail very much like Eudora Light 3.1.3, and it is a nice package that also supports all three Mac orbits -- 68k, Classic PPC, and OS X. It is also small and fast, has a decent search engine, a customizable interface with an array of configuration options, and most important, continues Eudora's minimalist user interface that pretty much disappears except for the menu bar when there are no mailboxes or messages open. However, SweetMail, which is very much a work in progress (Mr. Ichise releases incremental upgrades a couple of times a week sometimes) still has a few shortcomings. It supports multiple email accounts, but the configuration and checking of only one more email address(es) instead of the whole kaboodle involves menu and submenu diving (this is one feature by Microsoft Outlook Express, which I generally dislike, has superior implementation with its convenient pull-down menu). Another thing that I find annoying about SweetMail is that it doesn't display header information in the open received message window, or at least I have been unsuccessful in finding a way to make this happen. Nevertheless, I quite like SweetMail, and will continue using it for one of my accounts for now. SweetMail's system for archiving messages works fine, and creates only a single, do - fall, archive file, which is less versatile and flexible than Eudora's multi-mailbox mode, which I mentioned previously. SweetMail can import archives from other e-mail programs, but has no ability to export archives in, say, Eudora format, as PowerMail does for instance. The potential to reverse-migrate would probably encourage more people to try out the program. SweetMail is $18.00 shareware. For more information, visit:
You can read my review of SweetMail (ver. 1.9.3) here:
Nisus Email The fourth Mac email client that I use every day is Nisus Email, which, in the Nisus tradition, offers features distinctly different from any other e-mail program. Among these, the most unique are Nisus Email's ability to integrate its functions with virtually any text-crunching program, and to send chunks of dragged and dropped text or attached files with just a couple of mouse clicks. Working from a word-processor or text editor, you have access to much wider variety of text formatting and proofing functions than even in powerful e-mail client Eudora 5.0.1. On the downside, there are some things about Nisus Email that I find cumbersome enough that I have not yet considered adopting it as my main e-mail program at its current stage of development. One is that you can't queue up a one-off e-mail for sending later when you're offline without creating a new "contact" in the contact list. If you're online, a chunk of dragged text prefix with "to" and an e-mail address (EG: To: Bob Smith <smith@nisus.com>) can be zapped off instantly with one click, but this is not always convenient when you are a dial-up user. There should be a send later option without mucking about with the contact list.
[Addendum:
Reader Darryl Burgwin writes:
Re: HT Queue messages in Nisus Email
Mr Moore,
You can select "Queue all messages" in Nisus Email's preferences and NE will save any message until you "Send Mail", "Receive and Send" or "Receive and Send All".
Further, even with this preference selected you can automatically send an already addressed message to the Dispatch Folder (Macintosh HD:Nisus Email:Dispatch:). Nisus Email checks the dispatch folder at a time interval you set in the preferences).
One of Nisus Email's strengths (and, yes, it does have a number of weaknesses) is it offers multiple ways to send mail. Have you tried the "Send Clipboard" method uses the Floating Post Office Contacts. This method is handy if you are in a program which does not have drag and drop capabilities.
Even though I have been using NE since it was released I am just beginning to use the FPO Contacts to any real extent; I almost exclusively filled in my own header info and just dropped the text on the FPO.
Thanks Darryl, and I stand corrected. CM] Another minor issue is that the "Command M" keyboard shortcut checks all accounts, and sends any queued email, although the "Check Mail" menu selection commendably checks only the "personality" currently selected in the Personalities menu. Nisus Email saves received and copies of sent e-mails As Nisus Writer text documents that you can open and read or edit individually with any word processor or text editor. However, this motif does result in an awful lot of small, individual files being added to your directory. However, this program is a very interesting and innovative approach to email management, it is fast, and I really like it. The one-click or two-click send feature is reason enough to keep it on your hard drive. Nisus Software is in the late beta stages of a significant upgrade of Nisus Email to Version 1.5. Nisus's Dave Larson kindly supplied me with a beta copy a few weeks ago, and while changes are not earth-shattering, they polish and refine this unique and already very likeable email client. There is a new button configuration in the windows, and a new search engine. 
Nisus Email sells for $29.95. For more information, visit:
For my full review of Nisus Email version 1.09, visit:
The Others I'm less inclined all the time to use Microsoft software, but I did test Outlook Express 5, when it first came out. I didn't care for it much except that the start-up chime is rather charming, and as previously mentioned I like its pull-down menu to check individual e-mail accounts. Not enough to sway me, why I'm afraid, and there's no way I'm going to entrust my e-mail files to Microsoft software!. There are of course a gaggle of other Mac e-mail clients. Many veteran Mac-heads still swear by Claris Emailer, which Apple discontinued at couple of years ago. I never liked Emailer much myself, but then I'm not partial to email applications with multiple pane user interfaces. A few die- hards are still using Apple's abortive CyberDog, which I never thought much of either. OS X has a built-in email module, which looks like a good, basic, e-mail application, but I haven't tried it out. Then there are PowerMail, QuickMail, Green, Musashi, Mulberry, MailSmith, Magellan, and Netscape Messenger, and I may yet be forgetting one or two. I haven't really used any of these enough to more than generalize, but they all have their adherents. My son is a big PowerMail fan, although he recently switched to SweetMail because its OS X support works better. Most of these applications offer free demos, or in the case of Green and Messenger are freeware, so if you're shopping for a new e-mail client, they can be checked out with no cash commitment. Hacking Eudora Light For Multiple Account Support Now, as I mentioned in the discussion of Eudora Light, there are ways to make it support multiple e-mail accounts. My personal favorite is a simple ResEdit hack that lets you use multiple copies of Eudora Light to access multiple email accounts by creating multiple Eudora Folders in your System Folder. If you're not familiar with ResEdit, it is a free Mac application, from Apple itself. You can download it from Apple's software support Website (http://www.apple.com) ResEdit ("Resource Editor") is both fun and a useful tool, but if you're a programming novice (like me), proceed cautiously and be sure to experiment only on copies of your applications. Here's how to run multiple copies of Eudora Light. 1. Start ResEdit use its Open dialog or drag the Eudora Light application icon to ResEdit to open its resources. 2 Find the icon for the STR# resource and double click it. 
3. Scroll down to Id 6200 and double click to open. 4. Scroll down to Num String 14 -- Eudora Folder -- and add a number; ie: the syntax could now read Eudora Folder 2, Eudora Folder 3, and so on. Actually, you can name them anything you want other than just plain Eudora Folder. 
5. Close the ResEdit windows. You will be prompted to save your changes. Click Yes. 6. When you open your modified copy of Eudora Light, it will create a new Eudora Folder in your System Folder with whatever name you entered in Num String 14. Your existing Eudora Folder will be unchanged. With this method, you can have as many copies as you need of Eudora Light running simultaneously to access different email accounts. It helps to paste a custom icon on each copy of Eudora to distinguish one copy from another more easily. The downside of this particular workaround of course is that you have to have a bunch of copies of Eudora Light running: one for each Eudora folder. This could be worse, since you Eudora Light is small, with modest RAM demands, but if using a separate program for each e-mail account or offends your sense of efficiency, there are alternatives. Reader Walter J Ferstl of Insbruck, Austria, suggests another way.
I haven't tried this method, but it sounds like a useful workaround. As for "safety," my Res-Edit hack is pretty foolproof, but of course you should make a copy of your original copy of Eudora Light to modify. If space is an issue, to cut down further on Eudora Light's size, use a shareware program like PowerPC Check or Fat Free to strip out either the 68k or PowerPC code from the application. Note that even five or six Eudora Lights thus stripped will still be cumulatively smaller and use less memory than a single Outlook Express or Communicator application.
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