Mail alternatives in macOS

We looked for alter­na­tives to Apple’s mail pro­gram because we want­ed to have two mail pro­grams run­ning on one com­put­er that were con­fig­ured for dif­fer­ent users with­out set­ting up mul­ti­ple users on the Mac. As a pri­vate user, imap is now the usu­al pro­to­col, so that we hard­ly wor­ry about the syn­chro­niza­tion between the end devices.

 

Thunderbird

Thun­der­bird has been on the mar­ket for many years and is still the free alter­na­tive to Aplle’s own mail pro­gram.

Thun­der­bird is a very clas­sic mail client, which offers the func­tions in known extent.

Thun­der­bird is not avail­able in the App Store and not for iOS either.

Spark

Spark is based on the prin­ci­ple that it is avail­able for free in the basic ver­sion and that there is a pre­mi­um ver­sion as a sub­scrip­tion sup­ple­ment with an extend­ed range of func­tions.

Spark can be ful­ly inte­grat­ed into the Apple struc­ture and installed both via the home­page and the Apple Store. The pro­gram is also avail­able as iOS ver­sion.

The pro­gram can be upgrad­ed with an intel­li­gent mail­box and in the coop­er­a­tion of dif­fer­ent users. For nor­mal mail­ers these func­tions will cer­tain­ly be more con­fus­ing than use­ful. In small­er teams, how­ev­er, the pro­gram can show its strength.

Airmail 3

Is a paid pro­gram and is cur­rent­ly offered at the Apple Store at 10.99 euros. It adver­tis­es with a slim design, but mix­es the incom­ing mails if there are sev­er­al mail accounts, which is bad for the overview.

It is rather applic­a­ble as a lean appli­ca­tion for sin­gle users.

Postbox

Post­box is a rather expen­sive alter­na­tive to the mail client of MacOS (cost 40 $), but offers only lit­tle more. On the con­trary, the design is based on the Apple App, so that the advan­tages are not direct­ly obvi­ous here.

Polymail

Poly­mail is even more expen­sive. A mail client designed for use with mul­ti­ple users. With 10 $ per month and user no cheap under­tak­ing, even for small­er teams. There­fore sev­er­al project man­age­ment func­tions are inte­grat­ed, which makes the pro­gram cer­tain­ly unin­ter­est­ing for the pri­vate sin­gle user.

Outlook

Microsoft Out­look often appears on the home com­put­er as a “waste prod­uct” with­in the office pack­age. If you use MS Office on your com­put­er any­way, you cer­tain­ly won’t do any­thing wrong with Out­look.

With pre­paid sub­scrip­tion pack­ages, the price for an Office pack­age can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced. Espe­cial­ly when Ama­zon starts a price cam­paign, an inter­est­ing offer can hide in the light­ning actions. For exam­ple, we recent­ly extend­ed the Microsoft sub­scrip­tion for 35 euros.

A Microsoft only for Out­look sub­scrip­tion is then not worth­while.

Trans­lat­ed with www.DeepL.com/Translator

Newton

An e‑mail client in a sub­scrip­tion mod­el? Can it work? No, it can’t. Even if you can still take out a sub­scrip­tion on the home­page, the end of the mail­ing ser­vice is in sight.

Synchronisierung

A short word at the end to the syn­chro­niza­tion. Some providers adver­tise a syn­chro­niza­tion of mails across dif­fer­ent oper­at­ing sys­tems. Since the IMAP mail stan­dard has become estab­lished in the mean­time, this is a rather unin­ter­est­ing argu­ment. Nowa­days, mails are also processed by pri­vate users direct­ly on the servers and no longer have to be syn­chro­nized on the soft­wares side.

Fazit

The pri­vate user, who does­n’t want to use Apple’s own mail app in macOS, can use the proven Thun­der­bird or Spark. Air­mail is cer­tain­ly also an alter­na­tive and afford­able. All oth­er apps are rather unsuit­able due to their price mod­el and appli­ca­tion area.

 

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