Discussion on:

Five top alternatives to Microsoft Outlook

If you are using an email system like Office 365 or Google Apps, why use an email client at all? If you store your email on your own computer you have to load a client like Thunderbird, configure it, patch it, update it, and back up your data. When you are on a different computer you can't access your old email. Why not just use a web browser to access your email?

I can see needing an email client if you need access to old email when you are away from the Internet. Other than that, an email client is starting to seem irrelevant.

Actually if you use BPOS or Office 365, your email goes where ever you do. This is true for people that use the installed client as well. If you move to another PC that you've never logged on to and it has Outlook and the sign in tool installed, all your email is available to you with a more powerful, fully featured client in seconds.

When the Internet is not up, your email client still has your downloaded messages. If you can always guarantee access to the Internet, then you can rely on a web-based client. If not, you need a way to keep your messages locally.

Actually when you have to work with emails, it is almost always to receive them, or to reply to them. Offline emails have absolutely no use.
But if you need them anyway, you can perfectly use Gmail, which has also a locally installale plugin that allows ytou to read them offline, without sacrificing the mobility from one PC to another or to your smartphone or tablet.
It's been long that I have stopped using Outlook (even if I have it as part of Office), simply because it is a nightmare to transfer the mails (and sort them again) once you have to change your PC (the export functions in Outlook do not work and take a considerable time).
Gmail works for me for everything. It's fast, reliable, accessible from anywhere, clean, non obtrusive, and offers a considerable storage even for years of emails, provided that you cleanup them regularly as you should (notall emails are to be kept).
I have used now Gmail for more than 6 years, and even transfered all my past archives to it, including from several email accounts. I will never come back, because I have never lost any important emails in it, unlike with Outlook in the past for archives that proved to be not workable, and even very slow, and not accessible.

I agree. I use gmail in conjunction with Incredimail. Works great. Wouldn't change unless something happened that I could not get it to work.

as has happened in a number of publicised cases where gmail has summarily and without warning done so with some people's accounts

We will supposedly point our Outlook/Windows Mail to the GMAIL server. For now they have a GMAIL and exchange server in house. When most of the area is converted, they say they will hand that server off to GMAIL servers in the cloud. We will still be able to use server based Outlook email, but just not a Microsoft Exchange one.

The internet may not have been down where you live, but entire countries have gone offline due to copper theft etc. I also spend a reasonable portion of my time in areas with no possibility of internet connections but use that time to work and respond to messages I downloaded earlier.

Wow man! We live in the desert, and we went to fiber optic years ago!

Here in Africa it is used in abundance, fibre is rare

That's an interesting conundrum. I wonder which is more expensive - replacement with fiber or keep putting up with copper theft. I should think their would be a source for fiber cable somewhere in Africa - Perhaps South Africa?

I do productive stuff when I'm OFFLINE. Are you a irrational cloud zealot or are you just oblivious to reality?

Email can be composed OFFLINE, Graphic artists do their work offline, video & music production can be done offline.

It should be PLAINLY obvious that countess PRODUCTIVE tasks are accompolished OFFLINE.

Please stop spouting inane nonsense.

You just need to change the option to leave a copy of your mail on the server. This way, your service provider hosts your data securely, you don't need to worry about backing-up and you can access it anywhere.

For the benefit of productivity, client applications are most useful, though with the imminent standardisation of HTML5, I predict the web-based client to be as feature-rich and fluent as Outlook.

Embedding images, sharing calendars and what-not will soon be accessible with third-party sites, but I can't see M$ developing a free, full-featured web client for the pure fact that it will not generate revenue unless it's heavily laden with advertising, which frankly puts people off and subjects them to spam, data mining and malicious content.

Not all mail servers will allow you to keep your mail on the server indefinitely [without paying extras]. My ISP assume you aren't keeping it on the server ass they only give [by default] 20mb of space [I think] but pay extra for more storage.

Microsoft has a full featured web client called Outlook Web Access but it ain't free and since Outlook itself isn't free....

It's called Windows Live Mail & I'm quite satisfied with it. It has no advertising ...

No online email service can guarantee 24/7, 365 days a year uptime. Even if the service isn???t experiencing problems, It must have a period of maintenance that makes the cloud unavailable to ensure the service is properly functioning.

All you ???cloud??? advocates stupify me. You all ecstatically promote the clouds benefits while ignoring its plainly obvious disadvantages. Why is it so hard to see the disadvantages?

I can definitely see the clouds obvious advantages but at the same time, Its disadvantages are a valid concern that mustn???t be ignored or brushed aside.

I want my email stored locally & while that???s still possible via downloading from a cloud email system, I don???t want to rely upon the cloud. So, This requires LOCAL software.

why I can't trade server based email for the cloud is legal reasons. There are Federal laws governing the email requirements of certain regulated businesses, forcing them to have local machine storage of each client email. The client must be legally identifiable to do business over the web; so I have to have a service that stores my emails on my hard drive, and use my real name on the account.

Why would anyone use webmail or cloud apps?

because many people access their email on multiple devices these days and want to see all their mail. If you just had local storage it would be a total nightmare to manage

has come up with a way to let their customers use Outlook to synchronize all devices thru GMAIL. Now we can use any device - smartphone, tablet, or PC, and still be synchronous across all platforms and devices. They are getting ready to dump Exchange.

I use Outlook predominantly, but use my iPhone to check for mail very often (and fairly regularly to reply as well). I also use webmail when I'm in front of a PC that's not mine.

we weren't able to connect to our server based email accounts, with anything but a PC.

I use my ISPs email for my personal correspondence & other important correspondence such as when I order something.

I use gmail for trivial email

You've identified one obvious one (discrediting your own point!) - you don't have access to your existing mail if you don't have Internet access (which doesn't always mean the 'net is down - often I take my laptop places where I don't have Internet). I often need to check old mail - to check on something I told a client (a price, timeline etc), to open attachments that have been sent to me, or to check out all sorts of things people use email to tell me.

On the attachment thing, having a local client means you only need to download the attachment once. With webmail I need to download it every time.

With webmail I need to log in every time.

The webmail experience is poorer. If I click on a mailto: link on a website it won't open webmail - it will open my default mail client. If I want to send someone an attachment I can right-click and Sent To Mail Recipient with a mail client. With webmail I have to go to the login page, log in, click New, click Insert, browse for the file, click Attach and wait for it to upload. That's a significant difference.

When uploading images local clients and/or addon software offers to resize the images down before sending. If I want to do this with webmail I have to manually do this first.

There are quite a few similar cases to the above where a local client provides a better experience.

Gechurch: I couldn't agree more! With an email client like WLM you can click on a mailto: link and Windows automatically opens a new email in your default clent and inserts the mailto: address, which is just so easy. And the photo resizing ability in email clients is so often useful too.

And as some have already stated, if you configure your local client to always leave a copy of your emails on the server, they are all accessible from any other computer in the world too, just the same as with web-based email.

And I would hate any client, whether it be local or web-based that doesn't allow you to create and use folders, as I prefer to sort mail into folders to keep track of individual sales/purchases. I currently have about 80 folders on the go and I save the main emails as .html files to sub-folders in my Sales/Purchases folders. Then when the purchase or sale is complete, I just delete the folder in my email client (WLM) knowing the important ones have all been saved for future reference.

As for backing up and getting all your emails and email accounts back if you re-install your OS or move to a new computer, you only have to save your email accounts once and as long as you store them off your C drive, you only have to import them, which takes nano-seconds! And the first thing I do when I set up WLM is change my WLM message store location to My Documents/WLM. That way, all my current emails are automatically displayed again, in my newly re-installed client!

So although it is human nature to always wonder if the grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, usually it is not - and sometimes it is even LESS green! Which is why I will probably resist the temptation to try out any new email client until such time as WLM ceases to fulfil my needs!

I'm using "google mail offline"
An app for google chrome/chromium that lets you use your gmail and read emails automaticly saved to your harddisk, i also set up sync from my gmail to download mail from other boxes including wp and hotmail.
I can choose account to use while sending mail.

No need for using anything else

ps. In fact thunderbird is the best

It's been a while, but I was, for many years, a Pegasus user. I recall traffic on the PM discussion group that it was, in fact, possible to connect Pegasus to Exchange (although it wasn't a trivial exercise - Exchange does not play well with others).

Since many corporate environments are Exchange-bound, it would be useful to have info on any clients that will connect with it. Most corporate IT departments aren't about to ditch whatever they have invested in Exchange, so a client not compatible with it is pretty much a non-starter.

Evolution is probably the best open source email client out there if you need to connect to Exchange. Works great for Linux and Unix/Mac and there is Windows builds available as well if you are stuck there.

I've been using Thunderbird for years and am very happy with it, but the address book leaves a lot to be desired. Also, some synchronizing software doesn't recognize it. One advantage of TB, and perhaps others, is the add-on capability. I use very few of them, but the support from the individual authors can be stunning.

We've used Thunderbird for awhile now at most of our offices and it's been pretty good for us. It's not quite as robust as Exchange, particularly in the calendar area but it works well.

I really like OWA in Exchange 2010 and we'll probably migrate to that because it frees us from the desktop software support.

Outlook is more than just email. It also is contacts and calendar, both personal and company wide. And has nice things like Chief/Secretary just by difining permissions and probably more stuff.

Yes, I was looking forward to seeing an article that would show REAL alternatives for Outlook - not for Outlook Express (or Windows Mail nowadays, I think). This article only lists some well-known email clients with just a fraction of the MS Office Outlook functionality.

As for Thunderbird I have seen several cases where the email database has crashed resulting in several hours of recovery work. Even a simple task like moving the application to another computer has been a nightmare.

I have to disagree with you here. I frequently move Thunderbird from one new computer to the next and it's quick and easy. Just install the application, then copy the profile folder and subfolders over to the new computer. When you bring up Thunderbird again, all of your accounts, contacts, plugins, and email databases and folders are ready to go. It's also very easy to set it up for multiple computers accessing the same servers. I have my home, laptop and work computers all sharing the same emails without confusion or difficulties.

As for the robust nature of the databases.... In 10 years of using Thunderbird, I've had one database crash, and that was in an early version (3.x I think). They are up to version 12 these days and I have not seen a crash or problem in years. I have dozens of folders with thousands of messages archived in each.

although I've yet to use it I've seen it praised over Thunderbird on most Linux sites and magazines...but just like any client that downloads your email you lose the ability to view your emails from anywhere unless you have your laptop with you. I've used Thunderbird from time to time but not being able to view my emails on the web caused me to stop using it. I'd rather have the ability to view my emails from anywhere instead of one location.

I have multiple emails using several providers. Gmail, Yahoo, Comcast, Exchange, etc. The things is that almost every email provider today has a web based email client. If you want to use an email client on your desktop, you simply configure the settings to leave a copy on the server, and all your emails will remain on the server, where you can access them from the web from anywhere. This also allows you to access your dowloaded (synced) emails when away from the interent. I would try that, and if the client you have on your desktop doesn't support it, I would use a different one. I do know that Thunderbird (free) has this feature, as well as Evolution (free), and Outlook (never free).

I tried Evolution, but it dumped the email from multiple email addresses into one inbox. There was no way to set up multiple email accounts in Evolution. I dumped it immediately.

Evolution uses separate folders for each mail account by default now, I believe. At least that's how it has worked on the last three installations I have done. It's easy to keep accounts separate.

Scott

I used it for years before moving our company to Exchange/Outlook (cost decision), very feature rich and had all the bells and whistles. Kind of surprised to not see it mentioned here.

We still use it, and it is still highly popular. I don't understand why it is not listed as the number 1 alternative. My only guess is that MS is the alternative to notes as notes and domino does what takes 4 or 5 MS servers.

NT

I used it for years and still really believe in the Domino platform as a whole.

My company has used Outlook for many years but we found it particularly annoying when trying to sync the calendars of each of the developers. We've moved to web Gmail and even though the UI isn't slick it works well for us and the calendars sync well. The only problem we've faced with the UI is trying to move inexperienced users from using 'folders' to adding a 'label'.

We use GroupWise. As a server, it beats Exchange in lots of ways. ($$$ and manpower being the two biggest.) And, the GW client connects just fine with imap, pop, Exchange, and many other back ends. If you get the latest client, you can have Twitter, Facebook, etc. panes open as well to keep track of all your connections.