Which email client do you prefer?

There are no shortage of options when it comes to open source email clients. Which is your favorite?
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A pile of paper mail

Judith E. Bell. Modified by Opensource.com. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Love it or hate it, for most of us, email is indispensable. And despite years of being told about the next big thing that's here to replace it, email doesn't appear to be going away any time soon.

One of the advantages that email has over many other forms of communication is that it's only defined by standards and protocols. If you can build a client that meets those specs, congratulations, you can send and receive email. You don't need permission from the Acme Email Corporation to play the game (although they could conceivably control whether or not you're allowed to communicate with users on their system).

Email's decentralized nature makes it a fundamental part of the free and open internet. And because of this, there are a ton of clients to choose from, including several great open source choices. We've compiled lists of some of our favorites.

Which email client is your favorite? Why would you recommend it to others? We're interested in updating our own recommendations, but we need your help. Which open source email client should we try out next? In particular, are there any new great clients for those of us working primarily in a Linux terminal?

Let us know your preferences in the comments below.

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17 Comments

Thunderbird make it easy to me!
Greetings

I'd love to use a desktop GUI, but work doesn't allow. I'm web based most of the time.

Thunderbird has all I need.

I read email in emacs with the gnus client and the nnimap back end

I've used all of them...thunderbird is still the best on the Desktop. I'm a Fastmail user so I just use their mobile client.

I have discovered Mailspring recently and I like it, especially the unified inbox since I have several mail accounts.

Mutt is my favourite email client.

I'm using Evolution to manage a couple different accounts. Feels very GNOME-y so the experience is very nice on Fedora.

Tried them almost all but ended up using KMail. Has the most features, awesome PIM suite Kontact comes with it, and has fastest search and the best integration with Plasma desktop.

sup ( https://github.com/sup-heliotrope/sup ) is a terminal based email client that uses tagging and search instead of folders. it also supports switching between multiple views while keeping state, unlike mutt which closes any view to open another one.

greetings, eMBee

Im in between clients, Mailspring vs Evolution is a tough call!

mutt.

at first maybe somewhat intimidating, but it works like a charm. plain email or reading html-mail with the use of lynx is no problem. using vim to compose and react sharpens my vim skills.

mutt is a different but necessary way to WYSIWYG mail. no hidden links to unknown or unwanted domains, just the plain email sent to you.

claws mail.
same idea as mutt but less learning curve.

I'm using Thunderbird for years and tweaked it via Addons to be perfect for me.

Geary

Feels like Gnome-Mail and that's why I use it. Evolution (and also Thunderbird) have to many buttons and configuration options. I prefer Geary's simplicity (and yes: some bugs...) over versatility.

mutt, mostly. I have Thunderbird on my desktop so that when people ask me a question about it, I have a better chance of knowing the answer (this was important back when Thunderbird was the official mail client at work, though I've since changed jobs).

The most important is web-based email clients.
Hotmail customer service phone number

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