Five email clients to help ease you away from Outlook

@Phil Brown thanks for the correct link

I can't believe how bad Microsoft live and/or outlook is!!!! Who cares if it syncs everything when it is ridiculously poorly conceived on the basics - everything! Outlook express was much better. Microsoft is simply the worst. The Worst! Inexcusable garbage.

I'm going with MAC everything for now on.

You gave the wrong link for Opera Mail. It should be:

http://www.opera.com/computer/mail

I would always miss seeing them if I was away from my desk - they pop up and then go away again - so I was never reminded. I did get some sort of system hacked together with Thunderbird and a Gmail account, but Thunderbird just got slow and clunky - and 'benefitted' from frequent updates that would cause some other thing to stop working. I had Outlook 2007, if that's relevant.

As a user who doesn't have to worry about anything enterprise-ish, I can't believe how good Windows Live Mail is. It integrates multiple email accounts, has a calendar with reminders, imports other calendars and best of all, allows me to block mail from everyone except those I want to hear from. No more missing client emails because they're buried in spam and bacn. Thunderbird falls apart every time it - or one of the components it depends on to achieve a working level of functionality - is getting its fortnightly upgrade, and it never seems to be truly 100% at any time. And it is s-l-o-w to boot up, also, it won't hold a default account for sending (which means... Oh, forget it. Just get Windows Live Mail and stop fretting about your email program. It just works, perfectly. I own Outlook, but I use WLM.

No mention of compatibility with the Outlook pst files Having an almost infinite store of email messages in my system backup I need to import these to any new Email client, and similarly export to a system backup.

check this out... now making rt a little more complete! http://windowsitpro.com/windows-8/skycap-mail-true-windows-8-email-client-replacement skycap mail supports both pop and imap including others

Time and again I read of alternatives to Outlook. Never, that I can recall, is there a mention of a backup and restore facility. Outlook has that by the simple expedient of backing up the .pst file.

I've never tried any of these alternatives because I switched from Outlook the Thunderbird about 3 years ago and haven't looked back. For the most part I like Outlook and the improvements it's made over the years but I love Thunderbird with it's tabbed interface and significant, steady updates. I recommend Lightning calendar add on. Also much faster and memory efficient than Outlook on my Dell laptop.

I just stumbled across this on sourceforge.net: DavMail POP/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav to Exchange Ever wanted to get rid of Outlook ? DavMail is a POP/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav/Carddav/LDAP gateway allowing users to use any mail client with Exchange, even ... I haven't tried it, but one of the complaints I am seeing in this discussion is lack of compatibility with Exchange. Bob Pegram

Outlook (or Express) is a bad idea for home users or other basic users. I have seen both "lose" lots of emails when the file containing them reaches the maximum size. I happens without warning. I have been using Thunderbird for a while now and, according to what I have read, that limit doesn't exist in Thunderbird. If I were in a corporate environment it might be different, but for the home and small business user, Thunderbird is likely to cause problems.

Last November Jack Wallin also wrote an article entitled Five email clients to help ease you away from Outlook. Is this the same one?

There is a Windows MSI version. I have it installed on my Win 7 64-bit. Have to emulate XP SP2 to make it work correctly. (just used the Win 7 repair dialog when it froze up and Win 7 fixed the settings).

Hi, i was interested in Evolution for MAC, but unfortunately is not available any more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_%28software%29#Defunct_Mac_OS_X_and_Windows_ports

Zimbra Desktop in combination with a Zimbra Server is a perfect replacement for Outlook/Exchange, and it supports ActiveSync too

How to recover corrupt outlook PST file with any third party software like Kernel for PST repair tool to revive data from inaccessible, corrupt, damaged and broken PST. It support MS Outlook version 97, 2000, 2002 (XP), 2003, 2007 and 2010.

1 - Lotus Notes - With a user base of over 50 million it is a player on par with Outlook / Exchange. However it is not much used in the personal use arena. It does LDAP, RSS, iMap, POP SSL, TTL, HTTP. Calendaring, Tasks, Todos, instant messaging and social media. It allows off line reading, full encryption of email and robust security features. It also runs on linux, Apple, Microsoft and other platforms and comes with an offline capable html / java version. It is one of the few contenders as being close to outlooks functionality - Thunderbird, pegasus etc are all excellent mail clients but as an outlook replacement? Not even close.That's like comparing my grannies bog standard, economy verson nissan with a Rolls Royce - not even close. Apple Mail - not even mentioned yet it is a huge player in the personal market. Statsitcally it is growing rapidly. like almost ofvery mail client message mentioned except maybe claws it is crippled in comparison to outlook - no calender, rss, instant messageing etc but it is still a robust player. Lastly, lets not forget the Cloud / Web based offerings. Google apps, open source CRMs and similar often a portal of full experience with voice, rss, blogs, messaging, clendars, shared contacts etc - all in a single portal. what is more with the huge increase in moble platfor uptake they ar emre viable than Outlook in th elongterm (only Lotus notes has any chance of competing of any mentioned asit has mobile versions nad is fully html / css compatible). If you are going to write an article at least lease compare apples with apples,not chalk with cheese. BTW - This was written using lynx, and i email via pine wth filters reads anything, fast and furious, no hassles with viruses and fully compatible with all comers :) viva the command line.

The Microsoft Outlook CLIENT is free with Office, which most enterprises already have in production. And training on another Microsoft Office product is minimal if it occurs at all, versus going to with an entirely new vendor. And don't forget SUPPORT. Actually, cheaper is not even the point when an enterprise has to consider "not every one of these clients offers a feature-for-feature replacement for Outlook." Not cheaper, not better. Hmm. Not migrating either.

I have used it since it came out and have like it better than Outlook for years, now.

I had to move away from Outlook because I really, really need reminders to keep my day on track as I juggle parenting with work appointments. Apparently, some folk complained loudly enough about their reminders getting in the way of their work - demanding attention by taking focus until they were dismissed - that MS decided not to let the reminders do any reminding. Unless you happen to be watching the screen when one pops up, an Office 2007 MS reminder can come and go without you ever knowing about it. I found another solution (Thunderbird and Lightning with Gmail) and would need to be completely confident that a replacement, especially one I had to pay the price of a Kindle HD to get the use of, had functioning reminders. Sorry, it's just one failure but it's a killer - in an otherwise good email/calendar/reminders app.

The version supplied with Vista can be made to work on Windows 7. It is a bit like Outlook Express, but better. Works very well with multiple e-mail addresses including various incantations of Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com (or whatever M$ call it today), Yahoo, G-Mail, etc. Extremely easy and logical to use.

also don't like the change to outlook.com from live.com. it now crashes and is harder to use. I'm considering an email client instead, and Thunderbird would probably be my first choice. I don't want to download any emails, however. I also don't want a calendar associated with it, or any of that other garbage. I want my email to be ONLINE, LOOK LIKE live.com, (or yahoo classic, which I might, after ten years of having both hotmail and yahoo, have to switch to yahoo as the primary since it looks good and works properly.) I'm not an office worker however. Maybe someone can come up with a way to make "outlook.com" look exactly like classic hotmail, then I won't have to worry. I do NOT WANT TO DOWNLOAD a bunch of emails and other junk just to delete them all. I'd rather just use webmail. By the way the blog post is titled Five MORE.. so even though I didn't read another article, I assume there were five others listed previously in another post!

One feature that I really like about Outlook is the ability to store a copy of the PST file and have a full email backup. Does any of these (Windows) clients have a single file storage mechanism, like Outlook? I have many email accounts in Thunderbird (mailing lists and such), and it is getting bloated. It has a mixture of POP and IMAP accounts. Based on these recommendations, I want to move several of these utility accounts to a new email client and remove them from Thunderbird. They will be set up as POP as I cannot figure out how to do what I want with IMAP and Gmail. POP allows me to download and delete Gmail messages without disturbing the content on the server.

How about some help. I'm a retired IT guy and currently serving on an board of condo owners. There are 7 of us and 1 office manager. If we had the money I would buy MS Outlook without batting an eye. However, the people I serve with are still living in the 20th century and some are just starting to use e-mail (that should tell you something about their ages) ! Of the five clients mentioned above what would you suggest (especially for ease of use) ? I've already set up a shared Google calendar and we are trying it out for 2 months. Any suggestions ???

For iScribe, the article states that it "...enjoys frequent updates....". That's sometimes not a good thing. Look at Google Chrome browser. Updated sometimes twice a month and the updates aren't always for new features [if you know what I mean]. Nobody wants to constantly update their mail client

There is a Mac port of Evolution available at: http://evolution-osx.sourceforge.net/

I clicked on the link to read the article only to find it was a waste of time. How the heck can you write an article about easing away from outlook and the programs don't support exchange. Other title would be better Good Email programs for personal mail Top 5 non exchange email programs. Those titles are not misleading.

At the risk of offending the writer and some vendors, the ability to send and receive email does not an Outlook replacement make! Outlook is first and foremost an Exchange client. If an app doesn't support exchange, either with EAS or OWA, it is by no means a valid replacement. Further, Outlook has the following features, that every user needs (if someone is using outlook and doesn't need these features, he or she does not need Outlook!): - Exchange email client - Calendar - Tasks Neither POP3 nor IMAP offer support for these. To the writer - please - pretty please! - do not write posts about Outlook replacements. There are none (unfortunately). If you still feel the need to discuss email clients, I'd suggest a title like "5 email clients for those of you who do not need Exchange support , calendars or tasks". Thanks, Assaf

I test several mail client platforms and at the end, I return to Outlook. Very realiable with us, lot of colaboration tools, easy to use, fast, very good import - export options, exchange integration like no other and sync features with Blackberry Enterprise Server and Blackberry devices like a champion: full notes, tasks, email, calendar and contacts "real time" - bidirecctional sync without a single glitch. Lot of archive integrated solutions like Exchange Archive Systems, Antivirus integration (AVG, Avast, Karpersky, etc). So I don't want to go away from Outlook at all.

"I have Outlook express,it works now and always has done!... it came as part of the operating system xp pro, my guess is once a company (ms) has sold you a product, they can't sell you it again!! rebadge it, rename it, call it what you will, why would you want to fix something that aint broken!....they make it near impossible to transpant all your ou express data to a new client without loosing at least some data (perhaps your saved email folder)..so why bother at all!...since i cant take with me to a new operating system...without loosing some data won't be doing that either!

If cost was a factor, I suppose I would just use the free Microsoft Mail client instead of Outlook.

EverDesk is probably the first email client I am totally happy with and I am still exploring its countless functions and features. Support is fantastic and the program has tons of great things - no other email app even comes close. All emails are stored as separate eml files, multiple calendars and address books, unlimited categories, identities, stationery etc. QuickBoard is fantastic and storing emails together with other docs and files in regular Windows folders makes EverDesk above competition. Plus Google Edition is the ultimate offline client for Google Apps, as it not only works with emails, contacts and calendars, but with Google Docs as well. No Exchange support though. But since our company moved to Google Apps it is not a problem for us. From any other point of view EverDesk is the best email app we could find on the market.

I'm sorry but I just don't get the hatred towards MS products? I know they can always be cheaper but so can gasoline. They work, most people know how to use them, they are supported by a host of internal and external sources, for the most part they are secure, and did I say they work without having to have a developers degree to get them running.... :) At the end of day I'm managing a company's infrastructure and I want something that is reliable, secure, and easy to use for everyone from the Board Room to the Mail Room.

I agree with JQBecker & Rizwan. We actually use Thunderbird for a majority of our user base to cut down on cost. (They also run open office). Thunderbird just doesn't mesh into Exchange. Irrespective of the cost, Exchange is the best platform we've come across and we've used quite a few alternatives.

I am currently running Outlook 2010 and Thunderbird (only for news without email or Lightning) and they are both talking up 91MB according to task manager. Once you add-in Lightning, Thunderbird takes up significantly more memory than Outlook 2010, so I switched back to Outlook quite a while ago.

@SlowPCHelp Just wondering what you use for notes. Have you found any application that can import notes from Outlook? For some reason it takes a few seconds before the content appears - is this normal? Otherwise I am enjoying my relatively new experience with Thunderbird.

Max size of a pst file is 20GB. Is a bad practice to allow the file to grow so big. I have about 3 Terabytes of PST (mail archive old users) data and have no issues at all. I just split the PST in years or by size. No issues at all! I have extensive experience with PST storage, working with outlook enviroments since 1995. I have a set of tools to search email duplicates, to backup psts in incrementals or diferentials, etc.

Another alternative not mentioned here could be EssentialPIM. In the past it was just a PIM which I used as a mid-point between my Palm TX and Pocket PC. Today it has email, calendar, tasks, contacts, and all kinds of syncing (still supporting old Palm and Pocket PC but also Outlook/Exchange and over a dozen cloud services). Plus there's a network version and versions for iOS and Android. Portable, too.

I agree. Most enterprise already purchase Microsoft Office, and Outlook is included. Document management software like Pcdocs, filesite, desksite, etc integrates perfectly with Outlook (there is even certification for the integration) and this is not possible with other clients.

I use reminders every single day with outlook and don't have any issues. The wireless integration of outlook with my blackberry has been a great tool since lot of years now, so I get the reminders at the office with outlook and during mobile work, with my blackberry. I get notified even with emails in special ways, by creating rules in outlook.

Google Apps. Web interface, and I know a lot of seasoned citizens who use it happily.

If you don't need the exchange interface why use outlook. And, if you are lucky enough to be connected to any one of the other fine UC products available, most have web and mobile interfaces of their own. And, most can use the desktop client of YOUR choice. The issue should not be how to ease away from outlook, but rather how to ease away from exchange.

Absolutely!!!

Outlook is still the premiere mail client because it is the standard. It has everything you need even if you don't use Exchange.

You sure? Ever want to switch from Windows [Live] Mail to another application? Good luck! WLM is horrible to support. One file per message. Hard to migrate from [or to].

Well said, Sir! I too don't understand this hatred. I personally believe it's more about the cost, and the power of Microsoft! If it has the MS Logo, people will hate! I've been using Outlook, (and not just the e-mail portion), since it's inception, and never ever had a problem. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best client out there! You get what you pay for... or what you don't.

Microsoft's products don't work well, crash often and have a lot of issues. This is true of Outlook more than any other product that they have.

I agree with JRed. For your situation Google apps would be a better choice. Gmail is easy enough to use and its in such a small environment that would be all that is needed.

If you stay on top of the updates and keep the systems cleaned up correctly they usually dont crash. I have found with MS products you get what you pay for. I have used Linux and other open source products in the past but found they are only as good as the community interest. The Open Source community is fickle by nature because there is no monetary investment into whatever product they are using at the moment. When they get bored with a product they move onto the next one even though at the business level you are left trying to keep the older product in place. Businesses can't be as nimble as developers. Dont get me wrong there are alot of good open source products out there but from a business standpoint reliability, ease of use, and someone standing behind their product means more than political views about who is doing what and why.

Try and be less biased in the future. I use both Windows and linux. MS products crashing? When? What version did you last use Outlook? 97?