While every day seems to bring a new headline about an app that will “replace email,” it’s still a big part of our online lives. Particularly in the business world, email is very much alive and well.
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This means that the difficulty of managing your email remains. The right email client can make this a lot easier, but finding the right one can be a challenge.
To make your decision easier, we’ve identified the best email clients out there. Below, you’ll find apps for everything from managing your personal email to organizing your team’s inbox.
Overview: One of the world’s most popular email clients, Gmail remains a great choice for many users.
While it was far from the first email client, the release of Gmail in 2004 was a big deal. It took web-based email to a whole new level, paving the way for the interactive email apps we know today.
Over 15 years later, Gmail is still an excellent email client. You can sort messages using tags, manage multiple accounts from one interface, and easily set up mail forwarding. Gmail also has a powerful spam filter, helping you avoid suspicious and time-wasting messages.
Plus, Gmail has strong integrations with Docs, Sheets, Slides, and especially Google Calendar. This makes it a great choice if you use other Google apps for school or work. And since Gmail is built by Google, you can easily find archived messages with Google’s powerful search algorithm.
Price: Free (with ads)
Platforms: Android, iOS, Web
Overview: A popular choice for business and university use, Microsoft’s flagship email client is also a solid choice for managing your personal email on Windows.
Like Gmail, Outlook needs no introduction at this point. While you’re most likely to encounter the app in a business or university setting, Outlook is also available free for personal use.
Outlook includes all the features you’d expect in a modern email program, including a built-in calendar, spam/malware filtering, and enough storage for most people’s needs. Outlook also features deep integration with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. You even get 5 GB of OneDrive storage free just for signing up.
For more advanced features such as message encryption, custom email domain names, and automatic removal of dangerous attachments, you’ll want to upgrade to Microsoft 365. This also gets you access to additional storage and the desktop versions of the aforementioned Microsoft apps.
Price: Free (with ads). Upgrade to Microsoft 365 Personal to remove ads, get additional storage, and unlock advanced security features.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Mac (for paid subscribers), Windows, Web
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Overview: A free, open source email client focused on privacy.
Moving beyond the world of massive tech companies, we have Thunderbird. Developed by a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, it aims to be a secure, powerful email client for personal use.
The features of Thunderbird are quite impressive. You’ll find all the standard mail filtering, archiving, and searching that you’re used to in other apps. But Thunderbird goes beyond these basics with tools for managing large files, add-ons to extend the app’s functionality, and a unified inbox that lets you track multiple accounts in one place.
Most notably, Thunderbird places a strong emphasis on security and privacy. It detects phishing attempts, warns you when you’re about to click suspicious links, and doesn’t track your activity.
And since Thunderbird is open source, anyone is free to contribute to the project or customize the app for their own needs. The only downside of Thunderbird is its lack of mobile apps, but there are plenty of other options on this list to meet that need.
Price: Free
Platforms: Mac, Linux, Windows
Overview: A free, mobile-focused email client with powerful organization features.
Unlike a lot of other apps on this list, Edison Mail has taken a mobile-first approach to development. They aim to provide an aesthetically pleasing, ad-free email experience on your Android or iOS device.
At its most basic, Edison Mail lets you manage all of your inboxes and email accounts in one place. Whether you have a Gmail, Outlook, or even Yahoo! email address, you can easily access it through Edison Mail.
Where things get interesting, however, is with Edison Mail’s built-in assistant. It has many features for travelers, including flight updates, destination weather forecasts, and just-in-time directions. It can also notify you about package deliveries based on incoming emails, monitor price drops on items, and even automatically unsubscribe you from annoying newsletters and promotional emails.
To keep all of these features free, Edison Mail uses an interesting monetization model. Instead of showing ads, they aggregate ecommerce information from your inbox and use that to create consumer trends reports that they then sell to businesses. While this is less private than Thunderbird or ProtonMail, it still provides a better user experience than ad-supported email clients.
Price: Free
Platforms: Android, iOS, Mac. A Windows desktop app is also in development.
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Overview: Spike transforms your email inbox into a fully-featured, conversational workspace.
If you wish your inbox looked less like email and more like iMessage or WhatsApp, then you’ll love Spike.
Aimed at teams who need a better way to manage their communications, the app turns your email into a real-time chat experience. This makes it an interesting alternative to dedicated chat apps such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.
Beyond its email management features, Spike offers a built-in Notes app for collaborating on projects with your team. While it doesn’t offer the power of dedicated project management tools, it’s enough for smaller teams to get a lot done without having to jump between apps. In a similar vein, there’s also an integrated task list to help you take action on emails.
Price: Free with limited message history, 5 GB of storage, and limited notes and tasks. To get unlimited messages, unlimited notes and tasks, and additional storage, upgrade to the Pro plan for $4 / month per account (billed annually).
Platforms: Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Web
Overview: An extremely secure, privacy-focused email client based in Switzerland.
Historically, you had to choose between usability and security in email apps. ProtonMail gives you the best of both worlds, ensuring that your data is secure and private while also providing a normal email client experience.
So what makes ProtonMail so secure? On the technical side, all messages are end-to-end encrypted. This means no one, not even ProtonMail, can decrypt or read what’s in your messages.
As a side effect, this also means ProtonMail cannot sell or share your private information with third parties. Plus, ProtonMail accounts are anonymous. They don’t log your IP address and don’t require personal information to create an account.
As if this weren’t enough, ProtonMail is based in Switzerland. Thus, Switzerland’s strict privacy laws apply, and it’s nearly impossible to access the extremely limited data on ProtonMail’s servers without a Swiss court order.
ProtonMail’s primary data center is also located beneath 1000 meters of granite in a well-guarded bunker, so physical security concerns are minimal.
Price: Free (limited to 500 MB of storage and 150 messages per day). Upgrade to the Plus plan for 5 GB of storage, 1000 messages per day, and a custom email domain. Business plans are also available for an additional cost.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Web
Overview: For teams that need to collaborate on high volumes of email, Front is the email client to use.
Let me preface this section by saying that Front is not the right email app for most people. If you’re just managing personal email or a small volume of internal communications, it’s likely overkill.
However, if you have more email than you can handle and need to easily delegate to teammates, Front is a lifesaver. We use it to manage our team inboxes at College Info Geek, and it’s made things so much easier.
My favorite feature is the ability to see different teammate’s inboxes in a single view. If I need to jump into my manager’s inbox to respond to a message meant for me, I can. Plus, Front lets you assign messages to other teammates, saving the hassle of forwarding and CCing.
Beyond this, Front lets you chat with team members about emails without leaving the app. This frees up space in other team chat apps and keeps communications about emails readily accessible.
Finally, Front includes lots of features for automating email. You can create rules and canned responses to process email more efficiently. And if you need features from other work apps, Front has an extensive list of integrations.
Price: Basic features are available for $9/user per month (billed annually). To unlock integrations, more team channels, and unlimited rules, upgrade to Plus for $24/user per month. Enterprise plans are available for larger teams.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Web
Don’t Just Tame Your Email, Master It
I hope this article has given you some apps to manage your email more effectively.
While the right email app can make a big difference, remember that it’s often higher-impact to use apps that reduce the need for email exchanges in the first place.
For apps that can cut down on the amount of email you send and receive, read these articles next:
Image Credits: Gmail app loading
Are you still managing your business emails manually? Killing your productive work hours while checking into the endless email workflows? We know, it is a tough row to hoe to prioritize, organize, and schedule emails with the standard email management system that you’re using for decades!
Switch to the smartest and modern email management software for business today to get rid of information overload, cluttered inboxes, spam emails, unwanted newsletters, etc., to send and receive organized email communications.
Which mode of email communication works best for your business? Do you require a web-based email tool or an email client that you can host on your personal computers or software that smartly manages your incoming and outgoing email communication with additional productive and time-saving features?
Well, it's now the time to give it a thought on which one to choose and why?
If you prefer to access your emails from online email service providers, you can go with the world-popular SaaS providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, etc. All your emails reside on their remote servers, where you need to access them via the internet.
You can find many famous and budding free email clients for business, such as Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, Mailtrim, and more, for securely accessing emails from your on-premise servers and PCs. You have to download the desktop edition on your Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems to use these email clients.
And now, moving on to the part of efficiently managing your emails, you require a simple yet powerful email management software that sorts your emails automatically according to the preferences set by you. Such kind of tools helps teams spend less time fishing the emails and more time to attain productive work hours.
How would it be if you can organize your inbox into categories for quicker view and readability? Isn’t that amazing to have email and calendar together in one place within one free email client software to schedule events and track meetings? Do you often feel the need for encrypting your email contents from third-party readers with end-to-end encryption?
We have answers for all the above questions with an amazing feature stack from different email management systems!
Let’s take a quick dive into the all-in-one productive email tools with real-world features that help business users to have sustainable communication with their clients.
Microsoft Outlook
Most business establishments still prefer to go with Outlook for its intuitive, collaborative, and tons of ready-to-use features. Though it is not as easy to use as Gmail, however, the people of the small, medium and large corporations majorly hinge on this ever-upgrading sophisticated UI for their office email communication.
- Features
Outlook filters the focused emails for you, enabling the view of important emails. While drafting an email, you can use; My Templates, Get Add-ins, customize the text with fonts and formats, insert your business signature, make your email conversations fun with emojis and GIFs, schedule your email, etc.
Outlook says, it has come up with the most accessible inbox designed for everyone, with intuitive, voice-controlled navigation, support for multiple assistive devices, and more.
- Platforms
The best email client for windows offers the variants of; For home and business. You can keep checking your inbox with its mobile app too.
- Integrations
Microsoft Outlook has its own apps integrated into it. You can switch to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote, One Drive, Meet Now, To-Do, etc., from the same emailing interface.
- Pricing
You can create a free account to access its one-month free trial! It offers the pricing plans of Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, and Microsoft 365 Apps (only includes apps) at different affordable pricing structures.
Mailtrim
Maitrim, the new-gen free email client for business, comes with a clean and sophisticated UI along with a great emailing experience for the users. This end-to-end encrypted email software allows the users to use it from the other email servers of Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, and more. You just have to set up any of these servers if you prefer to use Mailtrim using your current account credentials, or you can directly log in and start using it.
- Features
This modern emailing platform helps its users to split the inbox into eight different categories. The incoming emails are sorted as per the preferences set by the user. The categorize feature routes emails into separate inboxes on their arrival. The other features of this secured email management software include:
- 3-Layout View: You can change between the 3-email layout view according to your changing preferences.
- Create Rule: Let your emails reach pre-destined folders with this feature.
- Respond Later: Tag respond later to the received mail to reply at a later time.
- Email Signature: Configure your business email signature and let it automatically attach to every email you send.
- Blocked Users/Domains: Receive what you think is important. Enable this feature to stop receiving unwanted emails.
- End-to-End Encryption: Enable email masking to hide the contents of your emails while sending them. Only the recipient has the control to read the contents of the mail by decrypting it.
- Contacts: Find all the sent and received email addresses in one place for easier use.
- Platforms
You can download Mailtrim email client on your Windows, Mac OS, and Linux from its official website.
- Integrations
The inclusion of the calendar feature in its last version upgrade allows the users to create, schedule, and join the events. In addition, few more integrations to join the pipeline include; Cattle Call for audio-video conferences, Troop Messenger for team collaboration, File Deck for managing files and attachments in a cloud etc.,
- Pricing
Mailtrim Personal and Business both are free to download!
eM Client
eM Client has been made for business email communication and for the home users too. This all-compatible free download email software works with Google Workspace, Office 365, Outlook, Exchange, and many more. It lets you import all your emails and data from your current email system in just a few clicks.
- Features
eM Client offers a mix of features such as calendar and tasks, contacts, notes, chat, message encryption, send later, quick text, etc., to streamline your business email communication with great ease. It comes with an easy-to-use and simple interface, letting the users have a great emailing experience.
- Platforms
The Best Gmail And Google Drive Alternatives - Lifehacker
This email client works with your Windows and Mac!
- Integrations
It doesn’t mention any specific kind of integration support on its official website. However, it says it is compatible with G Suite, iCloud, IceWarp server, Mailfence, Microsoft Office 365, and more.
- Pricing
You can explore its free trial for 30 days and later Pro-for Individuals and Pro-for companies as per your need.
Mailbird
Manage your multiple account emails and contacts within Mailbird’s unified inbox. This ultra-customizable email client has received a good number of rewards as the best email client from Lifehacker, Windows Report, softonic.com, and IT World. Take a break from sending the routine email formats! Use Mailbird to send beautiful and professional emails to your business clients.
- Features
- Snooze
- Speed Reader
- Custom Sounds
- Linkedin Lookup
- Attachment Search
- Dark theme and more
- Platforms
- Windows
- Mac(coming up)
- Integrations
- Google Calendar
- Dropbox
- Google Docs
- To Do and more
- Pricing
You can download Mailbird for free! Mailbird-Personal, Mailbird-Business (pay once), and Mailbird Business-Yearly are the paid variants available for the users.
Thunderbird
The free and open-source email client platform from Mozilla Foundation is serving users across the globe for more than a decade. It says to forget about the complexity and focus on the emails that matter the most to you! This customizable emailing platform lets you peacefully exchange emails with do not track and remote content blocking facilities. Thunderbird has partnered with Mailfence to provide encrypted email service to its users.
- Features
Along with the basic features of a one-click address book, attachment reminder, quick filter toolbar, message archive, it allows you to customize your emailing experience with its look and feel, smart folders, open PGP, calendar, add-ons manager, phishing protection, and automated updates.
What Desktop Email Clients Still Do Better Than Webmail
- Platforms
- Windows
- Mac OS
- Linux
- Free BSD
- Integrations
- XNote++
- Smart Templates
- CardBook
- Google Calendar
- Mail Merge and more
Pricing
- Free
Signing off
Email communication is the heart of every day-to-day business transaction. You have to choose the best email management software for your teams to deal with the volumes of emails you receive every day. I have personally tried and tested Mailtrim for my office communication and, it is allowing me to save my crucial business hours with its efficient and smart feature stack. That being said, it’s you who can decide what you require for your office needs. Choose wisely!