Best Free Imap Email Client For Mac
Meet the 7 Best Desktop Email Clients for Mac. These are our favorite desktop email clients for Mac, in no particular order. Inky talks about itself as being an alternative to Outlook. It works with Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud email accounts if you opt for a free account. If you want to use your business IMAP email account, you’ll have to pay $5 per month (per account).
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been desperately in need of a solid email client on my Mac for years. The Mail app that comes preinstalled with macOS Sierra or earlier just doesn’t do it for me, and I’ve been using Airmail for a couple years too. It’s an improvement over the stock offering, but for the price it never felt like it reached its potential. At long last, my favorite mail app for iPhone and iPad has arrived on the Mac: Spark.
Spark by Readdle (the makers of PDF Expert 5 and Scanner Pro) calls itself the “smart email client that solves a problem of an overwhelmed inbox.” In my one week of beta testing the Mac app plus about a year using the iOS app, I can declare it lives up to the mantra.
Spark’s Smart Inbox Tidies Up the Mess
Spark’s signature feature is its Smart Inbox. While traditional email clients just present all your new emails at once, Spark sorts through the new stuff and organizes them into cards. New, personal emails are at the top, followed by notifications, newsletters, your pinned read emails and the rest of your inbox. This alone dramatically saves me time as I can quickly click and swipe through emails this way. Plus, the emails come from all linked accounts.
Spark has quick action gestures that are completely customizable in the Preferences. By default, a left swipe lets you mark an item as unread or archive it (long left swipe) and a right swipe lets you delete or pin it (long right swipe.) So in just a few gestures I can clear through all my newsletters without even thinking about it.
Like the now defunct Mailbox, Spark also has a snooze feature. It lets you deal with emails later on so that they reappear in your inbox when the timing is more appropriate. By default you can snooze an email for later today (in three hours), tomorrow morning, next week or pick any date. Choose Someday and the email won’t have an assigned date, it’ll just stay in the Snoozed folder. Again, all of these time and date options are customizable.
Other Key Features
While Smart Inbox plus gestures and snooze are highlights, they aren’t the only features Spark has going for it. Smart notifications cleverly omit strangers and automated messages from your notifications, leaving only the important senders. These are enabled on a per-account basis, so some accounts can have smart notifications, some can have all notifications and others can have none. It’s up to you.
Another useful feature though limited in its functionality is quick replies. These are basically quick actions you can take on an email to essentially respond without, well, responding. Click the Quick Reply button at the bottom of an email to send a small message with a relevant emoticon. Examples are “Thank you!” with a check mark or “George liked this email!” with a thumbs up. They’re like Facebook reactions. People who don’t use Spark don’t get the full effect including the nice UI and image though. Luckily, with the release of the Mac version in addition to the iPhone and iPad apps, the number of users should be growing.
Speaking of the iOS version, arguably my favorite feature of all is iCloud sync. Not only does Spark sync your accounts across all your devices, but it syncs your settings too. That means all of your swiping customizations, smart notification settings, even snoozes and quick replies show up instantly wherever you have Spark installed. It worked beautifully when the iPad app debuted, automatically importing all my accounts and settings, so I’m sure it’ll be an even greater delight here.
Email Support
The cherry on top of the cake is that Spark works with just about any email address. You can sign in with your Microsoft Exchange account, Google Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft Outlook or iCloud. Otherwise, with your server settings on hand, you can also use Spark with any IMAP email server.
Spark Delivers on Its Promise
Best Free Imap Email Client For Mac
In pretty much every way, Spark has helped ease the stress over checking and responding to emails. Best of all, it comes packaged in a fantastic design — the best design ever in a Mac email app, I’d argue. It’s lightweight yet powerful. The UI fits in nicely with macOS Sierra while still adding some personality of its own.
You can’t beat the price either. Spark is zero dollars and zero cents — free — on iPhone, iPad, and now Mac starting today. Apple and Airmail really have a lot of catching up to do.
➤ Download Spark in Mac App Store (free)
Outlook is one of the most widely used email clients in the business world. But with more smaller-sized companies starting to migrate to other, cheaper, solutions a lot of users are finding email clients that handle the tasks, without the headaches (and cost) that often accompany Outlook.
Email clients offer a variety of features; some features map perfectly to Outlook, some may not. Some email clients offer calendars, some stick with just the basics. In the end, what's important is that you find a client not only offers you what you need, but does so reliably and within your budget. I've found five solid email clients to help you migrate away from Outlook. Give these a look and see which one(s) might work.
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1 Opera Mail
Opera Mail is one of those clients that surprise a lot of people. Most have heard of the Opera browser, few know about the mail client. That is a shame as Opera Mail is quite solid, supports POP, IMAP (no Exchange support), newsgroups, RSS, and Atom feeds. Opera Mail has a nice list of features: Threaded views, spam protection, allows you to browse websites within tabs, and has a very simple (and lightning fast) user interface. Opera Mail is free and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
2. Dreammail
Dreammail is another lesser-known client that plays well with POP3 (no support for IMAP or Exchange) and allows you to set up and use multiple accounts and multiple-users. Dreammail does offer some handy features like templates and signature management, anti-spam, message filtering, address book, search, a built-in webmail tool, RSS support, and ESMTP/Google/Yahoo support. Dreammail is free and available for Windows XP/Vista/7 (no support for Windows 8 yet).
3. i.Scribe
i.Scribe doesn't have the most modern-looking interface. What it does have (more than most other email clients) is speed. If you're looking for the one email client that will work faster, and more efficiently, than nearly all others (except maybe Claws Mail), i.Scribe is the one you want. This mail client features: Support for most major protocols as well as international standards, can be used from portable drive, has a built-in baysian spam filter, enjoys frequent updates, and runs on both Windows and Linux. The i.Scribe email client is free.
4. Postbox
Postbox is one of the best email clients for Gmail integration you will find. This application (available for both Window and Mac) is the only one on the list that isn't free (cost is only $9.95 per license), but does offer enough features to make the cost valid. Postbox includes: Social networking integration, native Gmail label support (even has a dedicated view for 'Important' labels and support for Gmail keyboard shortcuts), fast access to your favorite accounts, integration with services like Dropbox, and much more.
5. Evolution
Best Free Imap Email Client
Evolution is the Linux equivalent of Outlook. Evolution is also the only email client on the list with Exchange support. This client offers email, calendar, tasks, contacts, memos, LDAP compatibility, multiple account support, plugins, intelligent junk mail, powerful folder search, built-in encryption support, collaboration server support, and much more. Evolution is only available for Linux and is free (and open source). Evolution includes the Eplugin system. By default you can enjoy a number of plugins such as: Attachment reminder, Backup and Restore, Default Sources, Calendar publishing, Mailing list actions, and more.
Bottom line
Email is the single most important means of communication in the office. If your email client doesn't work well with your requirements, that communication is going to suffer. Though not every one of these clients offers a feature-for-feature replacement for Outlook, they will work splendidly with Gmail and POP (and IMAP, in some cases). Give these clients a try and see if they don't serve your email needs well.
Mozilla Thunderbird
