What’s the Best IMAP client for OS X?
I’ve been back and forth with Mail Clients on my Macbook Pro over the past few years and was wondering what everybody thought the best IMAP email client was?
I used Mail.app for a while, but started having connection issues. Messages failed to be sent even though Mail.app reported they were sent. Thunderbird gets flakey on and off. Entourage seems like overkill because of the calendar and address features I don’t need. I’m currently using Thunderbird but its not programmed native to OS X so it runs slower than it should. It’s also been hanging occasionally. It does, however, send messages which of course is a vital feature.
I have about 3 IMAP addresses on one mail server (different domains) and 2 Gmail accounts. All are used for various purposes and I’d rather not combine them.
So, what client are you using for IMAP connections on OS X?
In the past I have used Mail.App and then Thunderbird.
I find that Mail.App lasts for a while with my large IMAP accounts and then starts to get flaky and then I have to switch to Thunderbird.
Westi,
That’s pretty much the same thing I’ve seen. Mail.app works, then gets flaky and switching to Thunderbird fixes all.
It’s Postbox from http://postbox-inc.com – check it out..
Gyazmail is the least bad for me – good keyboard support with configurable bindings, reasonably fast. Quite customizable. It’s greatest weakness is probably search.
I’ll second gyazmail. I’ve tried pretty much everything else and keep going back. Only problem seems to be no updates for a while and patchy search as mentioned above.
It’s over a year now – do you have your favorite client now? I am using a Mac as my desktop, but I bought a netbook a couple months ago and I use Linux on it. By now, I like the Evolution client way better than Leopard’s Mail, since it does this „Apple Mail To Do“ stuff and does not mark emails as deleted as the IMAP standard says one should do.
Do you have a free client – other than Thunderbird – that can handle IMAP nicely?
Also interested in answers. I am a long-standing user of PowerMail, but it cannot cope with IMAP (or Unicode for that matter) and I expect it will become obsolete. I had to give up on it.
Its search facilities are unmatched. And that has been my problem with every other client so far. Mail is horribly slow and simplistic. Gyazmail’s poor search has been documented above, and many other email clients have gone down the drain since Apple Mail appeared.
I am now beta trying Mailmate. Early days.
In the past, I tried Postbox, but it did not feel very intuitive to me and I abandoned the beta—perhaps it got better? I’ll try the free version again.