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Email Clients A-L
Mac users have never had a wider or more powerful selection of POP 3 email client software to choose from. Indeed, even for a summary roundup of Mac email clients like this one, one has to arbitrarily draw a line as to what is included or excluded. There should be one to suit almost everyone's taste. I use several different email applications to manage my twenty or so email accounts, and while I like all the ones I use, I have yet to find one that offers the "perfect" set of features. For the purposes of this article, I have decided that only applications that can serve as full, standard POP 3 email client applications that can send, receive, and archive email will be included, while other email utilities. that may do more limited things like checking to see if there is mail on your server will not. I make no undertaking that this listing is 100 percent comprehensive, but I have tried to find every currently available Mac email application that meets the criteria outlined above. Apologies in advance for any inadvertant exclusions. There are of course a gaggle of other, older, Mac e-mail clients. Many veteran Mac-heads still swear by Claris Emailer, which Apple discontinued a few years ago. I never liked Emailer much myself, but then I'm not partial to email applications with multiple pane user interfaces in general. A few die- hards are still using Apple's abortive CyberDog, which I never thought much of either. The email clients appear here in alphabetical order. I have used some of these applications listed, but not all of them by a long shot, so these brief overviews should not be construed as reviews. Links to full reviews of the applications (in some cases older versions than the current offerings) that I have tested will be provided. Email Clients A to L E(asy)-mail 2.5.1 Arvid Andersson's .E(asy)-mail 2.5.1 is a simple, easy to use e-mail program. You can read the mail that is on your POP3 server and then you can send mail via the SMTP protocol. It has an easy to use interface and you make the setups in Internet Config or the Internet Control panel. Forwarding and replying is supported. E(asy)-mail 2.5.1 can be downloaded at:
Eudora 5.1 This latest and most powerful version of the venerable Eudora email client is arguably the cream of the crop in full-featured, heavy-duty, free, e-mail clients. Indeed, were I obliged to use just one email application, it would have to be Eudora 5.0.1. Eudora has every feature you are likely to need in an e-mail client, and a lot more besides. Other clients may do particular tasks better than Eudora -- for example, Nisus Email's wonderful one-click messaging -- but few, if any other clients handle all aspects of e-mail management as comprehensively well as Eudora does. I like 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. Eudora features:
Eudora versions 4.3 and later can be configured in three different modes: • Paid mode is equivalent to the old Eudora Pro, but requires an annual subscription fee in order to receive upgrades • Ad-supported or sponsored mode gives you all the features of "Paid" mode for free, but displays a small window with streamed advertisements as you use it • Light mode partially disables the program, and eliminates the ads, giving users a free equivalent to the faithful old Eudora Light application Paid and sponsored modes include a built-in spellhecker and more sophisticated message filtering. Eudora 5.1 supports only Power Macs. 680x0 Mac users are limited to the old Eudora Light 3.1.3 software, which is still available from Quallcomm's ftp site, but no longer supported. Improvements in this latest 5.1 version of Eudora include:
Returning features in Eudora 5.1:
The Paid mode option sells for $39.95 (including a $10 rebate). System Requirements:
Eudora 5.1 e-mail software can be downloaded at:
For my full review of Eudora (5.0) visit:
Eudora Light 3.1.3 Eudora Light it is fast, incredibly stable, has an unobtrusive interface, and very few aggravating aspects. Its biggest shortcomings until recently have been its mediocre search engine and filter support, and its non-support of multiple e-mail accounts. However, an increasingly serious deficiency of Eudora Light now that many ISP's and email services (such as Apple's mac.com for instance) are implementing SMTP authentication as an anti-spam measure, and Eudora Light doesn't support authentication. This also means that Eudora fans with 68k Macs are increasingly out of luck. Those points notwithstanding, for slick, basic email handling, this program still works fine under Mac OS 9.1, although of course there will be OS X version. As noted above, Eudora Light 3.1.3, 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:
Fizzilla - Mozilla for MacOS X Around May, 1999 (Mozilla milestone 5, or M5) Mozilla.org made modifications to Mozilla and created a single binary that ran on both MacOS 8.5 and MacOS X. The resulting app, code named Fizzilla, made its public debut onstage at the MacOS X Session at Apple's WWDC '99. Instead of relying fully on Carbon for the entire app, Apple suggested a hybrid approach. For the front-end and drawing code, we would use the same MacOS code on top of Carbon that the MacOS 8/9 product uses. However, on the backend, we could leverage the fact that MacOS X is BSD Unix under the hood and use our Unix codebase for threading and networking. While this means that we'd no longer have a single, "SuperFat" binary that runs on all MacOS platforms, it would be much faster than its MacOS counterpart. Finally, because the resulting app would be mach-o (not CFM), it would allow us to take advantage of the threading libraries present in BSD as well as Quartz, neither of which are available through the Carbon APIs. For more on Fizzilla's mail features, see the Mozilla section below. Download at:
Green 1.0b12 Green is a freeware email client from France that happily offers a 68k version ('040 only), and that lets you work with several mail accounts at different locations over different connections at the same time. Green allows you to create contacts, which make sending mail to frequent correspondents or groups of people easy, although it only supports groups of up to six names, unfortunately. Green lets you create hierarchical mailboxes to easily organize your mails, and allows you to import mailboxes from Outlook Express (pre 5.0 versions), Netscape, and Eudora. Green allows you to define mail rules that will automatically reply to incoming mails, print a paper copy of a mail, or forward the mail to someone else, and even start an AppleScript, all at the same time! Green allows you to share one machine with other people without each person needing a private copy of the program. Each person can define a personal mail environment, and password protect it against unwanted access from others. Green comes with a comprehensive online and integrated help system, making it easy to get any information on how to use Green or eMail in general. Green is Appearance savvy, and one of the smallest (and hence fast) Mac email clients at the same time. Green is freeware for personal use. Corporate or educational users pay a small fee. System requirements:
New in Version 1.0b12:
For more information, visit:
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