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Email Clients A-L
It's been a year and a half half since my last Mac POP 3 email client roundup article was posted, and it continues to be one of my most often referenced aechives in response to reader queries. A fair bit of water has passed under the proverbial bridge in the past 18 months, so I figured it's time for an updated piece on the topic. In the 2001 email client roundup, I speculated about what effect Apple's bundling of the Mail app.client in OS X might have on third-party email application development for the Mac. Happily, it doesn't seem to have hurt developer interest. All of the major players are still in the game, and a crop of newcomers as well. Indeed, I expect there has never been as much choice in email client software for the Mac platform as there are two-day -- at least for OS X. A few of the smaller Classic OS email programs have fallen by the wayside, which I guess is not surprising, and some that are still available, such as the old Eudora Light 3 (no longer supported, but downloadable) are increasingly marginalized by their lack of support for SMTP authentication. This is a trend that presumably will continue, although there are still a few clients that will even support 68k Macs. Innovation-wise, the main focus recently has been on spam filtering, as the struggle to keep the spammer bottom-feeders at bay continues ad infinitum. Other new or different ideas are incorporated in the likes of Nisus Email's several unique features, and Zoe -- a new freeware OSX email client that works in a Web browser (Internet Explorer or Mozilla so far). As with the previous roundup article, I've included only applications that can serve as full, standard POP 3 email client applications that can send, receive, and archive email, while other email utilities. that may do more limited things like checking to see if there is mail on your server were left out. I make no undertaking that this guide 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. The email clients appear here in alphabetical order. Which Mac OS platforms they support are noted. 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. With so many choices available, you should be able to find an email client that will set your needs and tastes too a "T".
Eudora Light 3.1.3 GNUMail 1.1.0pre1 Cocoa Email Client For GNUstep and Mac OS X GyazMail 0.9.8.3 Cocoa Email Client (OS X; Classic PPC) This latest and most powerful version of the venerable Eudora email client is in my opinion the all-round 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 5.2. Eudora has every feature you are likely to need in an email client, and a lot more besides. Other clients may do particular tasks better than Eudora -- for example, Nisus Email's wonderful one-click messaging and OS X Mail's spam filtering -- but few, if any other clients handle all aspects of email 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 5.2. That kind of flexibility is tough to beat.
Eudora features:
In Sponsored mode, Eudora displays ads. We have done our best to present the ads in a way that respects the work you do in email. By allowing Eudora to display ads, you get the full power of Eudora for free and we can still pay our bills. Sponsored mode users are not entitled to technical support. In Paid mode, Eudora does not display ads, and you get the full power of Eudora. if you have a paid and registered version of Eudora 5.x that is less than twelve months old, you can upgrade at no additional charge. Paid mode users are entitled to technical support. In Light mode, Eudora has many fewer features, but is free of charge and without ads. Light mode users are not entitled to technical support. If you are already using Eudora in Paid mode, please make sure it is registered before upgrading. You must have purchased and registered your current copy within the last 12 months to continue using Eudora in Paid mode. Paid and sponsored modes include a built-in spellhecker and more sophisticated message filtering.
Eudora 5.2 runs on Macintosh PowerPC or better.
Eudora 5.2 supports only Power Macs. 680x0 Mac users are limited to the old Eudora Light 3.1.3 software, which is still available from Qualcomm's ftp site, but no longer supported (see below).
Improvements in this latest 5.2.1b2 (puboic beta) version of Eudora include:
The Paid mode option sells for $39.95 (after a $10 rebate).
System Requirements:
Eudora 5.2 e-mail software can be downloaded at:
For my full review of Eudora (5.0) visit:
(Classic PPC; Classic 68k) Eudora Light it is fast, 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 email 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:
GNUMail 1.1.0pre1 Cocoa Email Client For GNUstep and Mac OS X (OS X) GNUMail.app is a fully featured mail application running on Linux (or FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc) and Apple Mac OS X. It uses the GNUstep development framework or Apple Cocoa, which is based on the OpenStep specification provided by NeXT, Inc.. GNUMail.app is licensed under the GPL, and the full sources of the application are available. GNUMail.app was written from scratch. It uses Pantomime as its mail handling framework. The current version of GNUMail.app is 1.1.0pre1. This release is quite stable and rich in functionalities and will work well for a day-to-day use.
Version 1.1.0pre1 has the following supported features:
Changed since the last release of GNUMail.app:
System requirements:
For more information, visit:
GyazMail 0.9.8.3 Cocoa Email Client (OS X) GyazMail is e-mail client software for Mac OS X. GyazMail is developed from scratch to be simple, easy-to-use e-mail client with many features, based on Cocoa framework. Currently it is still in development stage, but progressing every day.
The main features of GyazMail are as follows.
• 3 paned display (jpg, 156KB)
New in this version:
GyazMail is freeware Ê
For a mini-review of GyazMail (version 0.8.1) see OS X Odyssey 162:
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