State of mail clients 2019/20

Mailing is a basic need for almost every user of computers. It’s the basic form of communication for decades now. The standards and protocols are mature and known. Mail is not perfect and there might be subtle flaws and shortcomings. Overall I would say it is a known domain with little unexpected things.

The server side of things will be disregarded but I know there is fairly stable and reliable software out there. Let’s rather have a look at the client software.

Apple Mail

This comes bundled with either iOS or macOS. As a lot of Apple’s bundled software it once was a big move but then started to stagnate in development. This is not per se a bad thing if the software works.

From my PoV it does work overall. But I noticed some annoyances on the current version of macOS that started to bug me hard. From time to time the app pops up and gains focus. It turned out that there are issues in connecting to Google Mail servers which seem to timeout from time to time (from the PoV of Apple Mail that is). This becomes even more annoying if you are working fullscreen in an app and suddenly you get a split screen and wonder what happened. Of course you completely loose focus. I wasn’t able to turn off this behavior. Maybe it would be better to trigger a notification instead as I can take care to not care right now but know that there is something off.

Another thing Apple Mail was still not able to provide is a clean plugin interface. There is PGP Mail and Mailbutler for instance that offer plugins but break in every iteration of the application and have to adapted.

The UI is dated but is also well understood. If you have multiple accounts it tends to get a bit confusing though.

The search is OK but could also be improved.

Features like rules and junk mail seem to me like a blast from the past as normally this will be done server side nowadays. But that can only be me. It would be awesome though if the server side filter etc. could be incorporated. But that might not be feasible as many companies use sub-standards and AFAIK this is not even standardized.

There is no push support which might be a bit outdated but as mails are async by their nature it’s fine. Less notifications less distraction.

To summarize: The biggest annoyance is the popping up and the sometimes going stale of Apple Mail.

Thunderbird

I think Thunderbird still exists but there have been rumors that it’s only maintained but not developed any more. I’m unsure about the current state but think it might still be under development (again?). I used it back some years but lost track because it didn’t fit my needs and was very resource hungry.

Postbox

Postbox when they first launched showed a way to have the solid foundation of Thunderbird with a more adapted look and feel towards macOS (OSX at that time). It was a fresh take on tackling emails. F.e. it supports the Gmail keyboard shortcuts that come very handy. It also has quick filter (Focus Pane) where you can filter by certain attributes like attachments etc.

The memory footprint can be an issue though. Apple Mail has a memory usage of 60MB where Postbox has at least 350MB which is 5x higher.

I also noticed that there are crashes after Postbox runs for a while. There are many patches and updates so that might get less but it kept happening regularly for me.

What I didn’t get was the from my PoV useless additions they put into their software like f.e. topics. These are only for the current client instance. This is neither a standard nor anything that can be synced anywhere. This will get lost once you reinstall the application and also will not be available on any mobile devices (the new shit you know). That’s for me only lost love. But there might be people using it heavily as the idea per se is not bad. Just the implementation lacks sense to me.

Another great thing though is (was, is again) that there is a plugin system. It has been diabled as Thunderbird removed it and Postbox is based on Thunderbird. They added it back though and it is possible to have e.g. PGP back aboard. The new extension system is very restricted though but there are not all too many things (nothing besides PGP TBH) I need.

To summarize: Postbox is good software. Unfortunately they do not offer a mobile app. This means all you signatures etc. need be manually ported to the mobile app you select for this.

Canary mail

Canary mail’s mission is to make mail privacy easy without inventing the wheel.

I had it monitored for quite some time and was really curious as the interface looked slick and it supported PGP for desktop and mobile. The reviews were little but good overall.

When I then wanted to jump on the train and buy it it turned out that they were preparing a complete rewrite and were currently in the beta phase. I installed their iOS version and was quite happy. The PGP setup is a bit weird as it automatically creates new keys and you have to replace those with your own. The restrictions on iOS make this not so exremly straightforward as the import of an existing key is… cumbersome.

So far the beta was OK’ish. The development process is Slack driven where I’m not sure how good that is. But it is a quick feedback channel so if it works for the developers it’s OK. Speaking of developers I am still not sure if it’s more than one which is a big bus factor and explains the stuggles I saw.

After the beta was progressing they released the iOS app with a new pricing scheme. From my PoV it was and still is an advanced beta version as there are a lot of crashes and glitches like not rendering the emails at all. You have to reset / quit the app and restart it. They offer a cross-device sync that is not working etc. There is a lot of things that need to be addressed.

After that they told via Slack that the macOS beta was underway. It was a quick development that resulted in the same quality the iOS app offered. It works most of the time somewhat.

As written before I think that this is only one person working on it and the topic of mail with PGP might be too much for one individual.

I bought the software and hope they can address all these issues at some point. Currently the software is not usable.

Besides that they also implemented features not many people need like f.e. favorites. It is not yet possible to deactivate it and it is an empty list for me with a switch in the UI I can’t just hide.

A very weird feature is that you can pin and star messages. I did not yet find out what the use of stars is. Pin seems to be the flag feature in Apple Mail.

To summarize: The software is promising but currently unusable for daily use.

Airmail

Once Airmail was the nicest mail app on iOS. They also added a macOS companion that even supported PGP via a plugin system. They iterated quickly and the software did it’s work besides some smaller issues which I hoped getting addressed quickly.

At some point I felt they just stopped developing the apps altogether. There were some bugfixes from time to time but no activity compared to the beginnings.

In the last year or so they then switched to a subscription model and capped a lot of features resulting in 2 star ratings and (maybe exaggerated) the death of the apps.

To summarize: Airmail was screwed up by their own development team.

Spark

The team of readdle created a lot of productivity apps like calendars which was a great app (still is I think) before jumping on the train for mail apps.

The first launch was like a revelation. It was a mail app that seemed to effortlessly take the crown that Airmail once wore. It was clean, responsive and beautiful. And it was for free. It was advertised to help you with machine learning and so on.

But there was a cost for the user. All mail and credentials needed to be transferred to their servers to enable the features. This comes at the cost of privacy. Readdle adapted their ToS and privacy statements that this is clear. So they do not trick you into it but you have to buy this in order to use the software. All in or nothing.

Of course also Readdle couldn’t just make a good mail program (which still does not exist to my knowledge) without putting useless stuff on top. They added team email where you can share mails within your team. This is the way they want to monetize and that’s fair enough. The feature leaks here and there into the otherwise so brilliantly and clean mail experience.

What bugged me the most was that it is not easy to find out where Readdle has their headquarters (on their homepage there is no address). Wikipedia and their job postings suggest that they are based in Odessa, Ukraine. But that point of not having an address on their homepage (maybe I overlooked it) compined with having to read (automated) all the emails and having access to your mail accounts does not drive trust all too much for me. Again I do not say they have bad intentions it just feels a weird to me.

Summary

I also tried a lot of other mail programs, like Outlook etc. Those also have their shortcomings in one way or the other. It is to date nothing available that combines simple email with multiple platforms (or only the Apple ecosystem for that matter). All the apps have downsides that might be caused by too wide focus. Of course it’s clear that only email does not seem to pay off. The good thing is though that with all these attempts the bounds of the standard of email is challenged. This is a good thing.

What I would like to have is in summary a mail client that supports the big companies (Gmail, iCloud, Outlook) with their sub-standards like labels and custom IMAP / POP. The only really advanced features I like is something like quick unsubscribe, go to Github issue and things like this that could be parsed client side. Another neat feature is a suggestion when you move mail. This can also be done (learned if you will) on the client side. Push is nice but not a blocker.

But this is only what I want and I know a lot of other people will disagree or simply want more features. This is why there are so many different clients with different approaches.