Minimum Requirements: PowerPC, MacOS 8.5 or Mac Os X v10.0.3
Mac OS X Compatibility: Yes
Retail Price: $49 ($29 upgrade), $149 for 5-user license
Availability: Out now
Reviewing e-mail programs is a tricky business. People use them for very different reasons, and they use them in very different ways. For some, support for multiple accounts is key. Others want powerful spam filters or searching capabilities. Still more want the program to look a certain way, and many want a combination of all these. I wouldn't be surprised if there are people out there who expect their e-mail program to mow the lawn and remember to pick up the kids from pee wee football practice.
The good news is that pretty much all the e-mail programs available these days address most of these needs. I've messed around with everything from Mail to Nisus Email to Mailsmith, and do you know what? I was able to send and receive e-mail with all of them. Didn't get the lawn mowed, though.
Of them all, the one I prefer to send and receive e-mail with is PowerMail. I first hopped onto this program after reading about its similarities to Claris Em@iler. That was many versions ago, and PowerMail has continued to grow. I dare say I now like it even more than Em@iler, and I never came close to that with any other e-mail program I tried, including Outlook Express and the mighty Eudora.
The problem PowerMail faces is the same faced by many other e-mail programs; it costs money. Outlook Express was free in Classic, so it pretty much became the standard. Now, OS X contains the free Mail program. It's actually not half bad in Jaguar, so again, most don't see the point in paying for a different e-mail program, even if it is a better one. Understandable. If the free stuff works for you, use it.
If, however, Mail leaves you wanting, I suggest you give PowerMail a look before turning to some of the more familiar programs. It's powerful, it's easy to use, it's OS X compatible...and hey, it sends and receives e-mail!
I've reviewed PowerMail twice before, so I won't go into details on the program's basics. For that, check out my review of v3.1. Instead, I'll talk about a few of PowerMail v4.0.1's new features, such as:
"Recent Mail" interactive log window - useful to quickly process mail
Partial POP3 downloads - selectively fetch large messages
SSL security - for IMAP, POP3 and SMTP with multiple authentication
Server-side mail management - to clean up server contents
Enhanced address book - includes daughter windows for groups
User interface redesign - complies with Mac OS X Aqua guidelines
Text clippings - stationery-like feature for repetitive messages
Mail schedulings and locations - new mobile and PowerBook-friendly settings
Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) compatibility and Quartz text smoothing
English, Japanese, French, German and Dutch user-interfaces
These are the features most heavily touted by CTM Development, but there are a total of 38 new features and 27 improvements since v3.1.2. Many of these are simply cosmetic changes that improve the user interface in OS X. Groups and folders are now easier to manage with the addition of daughter windows, for example. Many bugs, most of them in the OS X version, have been corrected as well. All in all, PowerMail v4.0.1 is a much improved OS X experience.
I've become a bigger fan of the way it shares its database with the OS 9 version. Rather than release a Carbon version, your registration of PowerMail gives you access to individual Classic and OS X versions. With the simple creation and relocation of an alias, both of these versions can share the same accounts, remembering what's been done in each version. I rarely boot up in Classic anymore, but I do, this feature comes in very handy.
Also handy is the new address history feature. With this, e-mail addresses don't have to be entered into the address book in order to be auto completed. Much like with web browsers, addresses are stored in cache for a set period of time. When you begin to type an e-mail that's not in the address book, PowerMail will pull up a list of possible recipients from which you can choose. This has repeatedly saved me plenty of time I would've spent digging through my sent and received folder trying to find those lost e-mail addresses. Of course, if you'd rather PowerMail didn't always second guess your recipients, this feature can be turned off.
Perhaps even more handy is the ability to edit e-mail addresses when adding them to the address book via the contextual menu. PowerMail is full of quick shortcuts like this, and this new version streamlines many of them. That's one of the things I most enjoy about PowerMail. After they come up with a new feature, they don't forget it and move elsewhere. They continue to refine it until...well, I assume until their user base quits bugging them about it.
Oddly enough, there's not much new going on with some of PowerMail's bigger features. Their search and filter capabilities have remained untouched, allowing Mail to bypass them in the ease of use, category. Not in power, mind you, just in ease of use. A bonus, however, is the attention paid to what some might consider the more obscure areas of e-mail management, such as the server side. This has been fully rewritten in PowerMail v4.0.1, allowing the user to delete messages from the server after a defined number of days, delete messages when deleting locally, purge all retrieved message from the server on the next connection, or force the download of all messages on the server even if they have already been "seen." Nice, especially for those who check their accounts on multiple systems. PowerMail is quickly catching Eudora in this area.
POP3 downloading has been improved as well, allowing for partial downloads on a per-account and/or per-location basis. After seeing the downloaded portion, you can decide whether to grab the rest or delete it on the next connection to the server.
Now, PowerMail v4.0.1 offers many other new features and enhancements, more than can be covered in this review. More details are available at their website, as is a 30 day full demo. If you try it out and decide you don't like it, you can always take advantage of the new export to Mail feature.
So, aside for some refinements and a few nice--if not really imperative--new features, there's really not a lot here to convince current users to upgrade. If you're using another program, however, and are even just slightly unhappy with it, you really should give PowerMail a try. CTM has built a strong feature set into their program, and now they're able to fine tune everything else. As long as they keep doing that, they'll keep having a great program.
Review: PowerMail v4.0.1