Wanted: One Good IMAP client
I’m on the hunt for another email client for Windows.
Here are my requirements:
1. It must be graphical, client-based. (Web-based is too slow; terminal apps require too much thinking and I like my cut and paste.)
2. It must support IMAP
3. It must support multiple accounts and allow sending from either
4. It must not only check the IMAP Inbox, but also IMAP folders for new messages. I do server-side filtering into multiple folders.
5. It must use subscriptions to IMAP folders; it shouldn’t just display them all.
6. It should be able to group by thread
7. It must be able to hide IMAP messages marked for deletion
8. It must render HTML in messages.
9. It must have a 3-pane interface, with folders on the side, messages at the top, and message preview below
10. It must auto-mark messages as read after viewing in the preview window for a few seconds (customizable)
11. It must allow different filtering/grouping display by folder.
12. It must allow sorting by date, most recent at the top
13. It must allow me to define the folder names for sent-mail and drafts
14. It must allow setting of the IMAP folder root.
Some nice to haves:
- Free would be nice, but this is something that’s important enough to me that I’d be willing to drop $50 or so.
- Redirect and bouce features sure are handy.
- Spell checking (pretty standard these days). This helps keep me from looking stupid.
- Signatures based on account
- A good find command. Apple Mail’s incremental search is pretty nice.
Outlook Express (Windows) falls down on #11 and has this problem where it will show there are messages in a folder but when I open it, none are there. It seems to have problems downloading them. Other than that, it’s pretty well-designed and powerful.
I used Outlook XP for a while, but it was very slow and clunkly, at least for IMAP. Outlook Express is way faster.
Apple Mail is pretty good, except for #5 and it’s kinda slow. It also doesn’t do #4 automatically except on startup or if you “Synchronize” the account.
Outlook Express allows you to subscribe to folders, but you can’t say don’t check this folder unless I open it. The interface looks like you can do that, but it doesn’t work. This is important because there are thousands of messages in my sent-mail folder and it takes a while for the imap server to check for new messages. I still want to have that folder in my list though.
Last week I tried Mozilla and then Thunderbird. Both seemed to have a lot of options, but they were really slow and it didn’t support #4, an absolute necessity.
Everytime a new version of Eudora comes out I try it out and everytime I’m dissapointed. At least this time it didn’t delete all my mail. Eudora is a mess of historical interfaces. I never found it intuitive, especially for IMAP. The one feature I really like from Eudora that I can’t find in other clients is default domain for sending mail. ‘@yahoo-inc.com’ is a real pain to type.
The best email client I’ve used was Claris Emailer back in the day. They really understood what users wanted. So much that subsequent versions of Outlook Express for the Mac were based on Emailer’s interface after Apple killed Emailer. (I saw the product requirements when I worked at Microsoft.) It didn’t support IMAP, but I those were the days before I used IMAP, so that wasn’t a problem.
I’m sure others won’t agree with my requirements, but this is how I use email. And since it’s probably the application I spend the most time in, it’s pretty relevent to my productivity.
Anybody have any good suggestions?
October 7th, 2003 at 11:38 am
Jeff,
Mozilla Mail supports checking IMAP subfolders for new mail, at least as of build 2003082704. Right click the folder, select Preferences, and look for the “Check this folder for new messages” checkbox.
Sometimes a new build seems slow, while the next is optimized and speedy.
I love it, and would take it over Outlook and Eudora any day.
Dave
November 1st, 2003 at 5:36 am
Thunderbird has that feature of default domain. It defaults to @.. Pretty nice if you send many mails to people on the same domain as your own. I don’t though.
But I am too struggling that IMAP-subfolder problem..
November 1st, 2003 at 6:19 am
Hmm, your filter killed the your-from-domain in the the brackets..
Anyway. That sub-folder problem is not an issue in Thunderbird it seems. Following the directions of Dave in Thunderbird you get the wanted result
December 17th, 2003 at 10:25 pm
Thunderbird definitely has the “check this folder for new messages” feature, but it’s really really tedious to go through 30-40 folders and mark them all to be checked. It would be really nice if a newer build of Thunderbird provided an interface to allow one to change this setting for all folders at once, kind of like Outlook Express allows you to set the synchronization levels for all folders at once.
December 23rd, 2003 at 4:05 am
@Bharat,
Making Thunderbird check all IMAP folders just requires one change to the ‘user.js’ file located in the ‘Application Data’\thunderbird\default\xxxxxxxx.slt\ dir.
Add the following line:
“user_pref(”mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new”, true);”
(you have to create the user.js file if it isn’t there yet)
March 13th, 2004 at 11:40 am
“7. It must be able to hide IMAP messages marked for deletion”
I totally agree. I really like Thunderbird, I wish someone would develop an extention that does this.
My company uses “FirstClass” (http://www.firstclass.com/) that has this combined “Mailbox” that has all your documents together incuding “Sent”, “Recieved”, “Drafts”, etc. Unfortunately, although IMAP, the mailserver must be configured for FirstClass.
I would like to see an IMAP client emulate this, perhaps with view options, such as “Sent” and “Recieved”, “Drafts”, etc. I would like to be able to have the option of threading these messages together. With this, there should be a new column that combines the “Sender” and “Recipient” with some other indicator to differentiate between them.
June 16th, 2004 at 4:28 pm
I’ve just tried out Thunderbird for the first time (version 0.7 out today). I was keen to get it to auto retrieve from all IMAP folders. Therefore I created the user.js folder and added the option. But, where does the user.js file go? The folder (’Application Data’\thunderbird\default\xxxxxxxx.slt\) does not relate to my installation. Under C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Thunderbird I can only see a Profiles folder, in which is a Default.7c2 folder. I tried putting the user.js folder here but it doesnt seem to of taken effect. Has the folder locations changed in the latest version or am I missing something? I reckon it would of made much more sense to include a blank user.js file to save confusion.
July 10th, 2004 at 1:12 pm
I’ve switched to Ximian Evolution and it does support all the points you list. I like it almost perfectly, its filters are slow but with server-side filtering it’s pretty good.
March 9th, 2005 at 10:41 am
Pegasus ( http://www.pmail.com ) … been around for years, stable, FREE !!, covers all you need and then some. It can even be run in a networked multi-user environment.
April 11th, 2005 at 11:17 am
Those of you still struggling with the user.js idea should drop by https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/ and download the about:config extension for Thunderbird (install Thunderbird extensions from your hard drive since TB doesn’t “browse”). It was add about:config to your tools menu. You can right click the current config listing and add a new boolean option for “mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new” and set it to True without editing any .js files by hand.
April 11th, 2005 at 11:18 am
Didn’t realize this blog would auto-link URLs. Here’s the direct link to the extension as of 4/11/2005. Remember, save the .xpi file to your system and then use the install button on the TB extensions menu. https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=thunderbird&version=1.0&os=Windows&category=Miscellaneous&numpg=10&id=423
May 3rd, 2005 at 8:20 pm
the user.js should be in the same directory that prefs.js is in… hopefully that helps
April 13th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Of course, none of this changes the fact that Thunderbird IMAP is STILL assininely slow. It displays the last selected message until it loads the new one (really annoying), won’t delete messages from the screen until it deletes from the server, etc. etc.. The UI is so annoyingly slow, I find myself not doing things, like deleting messages, so my inbox gets cluttered.
I use Thunderbird on my windows machine regrettably, but Mail on my Mac, which I love. It’s very responsive - deletes happen IMMEDIATELY visually so I can get on with my day. I must delete 400 message a day. A two second delay before I can move to the next message is unacceptable. And how about not auto-scrolling when a new message comes in, so I have to click on the tiny little down scroll button every time a new message comes in or to check if there is a new message. Ugh. I HATE THUNDERBIRD, although it has lots of nifty features and I like the idea. I really wish I could like it. I keep hoping for a fast asynchronous interface.
December 26th, 2006 at 10:21 am
Alex,
It sounds like you are dealing with alot of unwanted mail. In which case, you really should not blame the client for the fact that deleting it is tedious. You shouldn’t ever have to view it in the first place. I am running postfix+spam assassin and I get (maybe) 2 unwanted messages a week. In which case, the behavoir you mentioned (that I had never noticed before) is inconsequential. You really should attack the problem at its source.