OS X alternate Email clients: all missing basic features?

[dan steinberg]

Hi there! I use the built in mail application on my Mojave Mac Mini, but my wife also checks her email on the same machine.

I don't like to have 2 separate email accounts on the built in mail application, since it increases the chance of sending mail from the wrong account and gets confusing. We also don't use separate user accounts on the machine.

So, I have been looking for a "2nd" separate email program to use, that can just be for her email account. I was using "postbox" for this purpose, but besides being kind of ugly to look at, it has been driving us crazy lately with certificate error messages it throws up on certain inbox emails, that require you to force quit the program to stop displaying.

Today I checked out three other email applications, and all of them had fundamental issues not found in OS X default mail application

-Airmail: Won't display more than the last 100 messages or so in the Impact inbox, even when set to download and show all. Support threads show this to be an longstanding and common issue.

-Spark: When using the "classic inbox" (since I don't want to use their smart inbox, can't sort inbox by anything but newest to oldest. No sort by sender name, attachment size, etc.

Also seems to show more of the inbox contents than airmail, but still not showing all of the inbox contents as pone big scrollable list, seems to load more as you scroll down to bottom

-Mailspring: Same two issues as Spark. For sorting the inbox, support forums show this as a requested but unimplemented feature.

So I am little baffled. Our email needs are very simple, just want a an email program that can display the entire inbox in 1 big scrollable list, and allow us to sort that inbox by a few other criteria. Built in mail can do those things, but 3 other email programs can't seem to (Postbox could do all this but the error messages are a showstopper).

One other recommended application I saw was "canary" but it costs $20 and I am hesitant to try it since returns can be hard on the OS X app store if things don't work out.

Thanks!

[Sarcany]

Why not have one of you adopt webmail?

...If you're using IMAP or Exchange accounts, Outlook is decent and you may already have a license with MS Office or be able to get a discounted/free version through work/school.

[jdc]

Id simply create a seperate account for her.

You could try a paid email application, like postbox.

[Paul F.]

The "right" way is to have separate accounts on the COMPUTER for each user, so the each person has a separate Mail experience.

If you really don't care for that, then I'd seriously consider either Sarany's or JDC's ideas.

[Buzz]

Been in the same boat since being forcibly downsized a few years ago, w/ spousal unit and I now sharing a laptop. So, since she was using Apple Mail before the crunch, I've been using Mozilla's Thunderbird, thanks to some good folks around here awhile back. It ain't the slickest piece of work I've ever seen, but it's free, and does a decent job. There are a few/several interface "features" I'd change, but it's functional enough for the most part. I doubt I'd be able to teach the old ball & chain how to use it in any kind of reasonable time frame (like before I croak), so the path of least resistance was to use it myself.

The large scrollable inbox, and sorting criteria were the biggies for me, too, and that's what sealed the deal. I also have over 50 sub-folders, and while T-Bird has a mind of its own over organizing them, after a few months of fighting w/ it, you can eventually tame that beast; read that to mean, re-creating, and reorganizing things when the program tries to help you, but the implementation is not what you desired.
Good luck.
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[M A V I C]

Paul F. wrote:
The "right" way is to have separate accounts on the COMPUTER for each user, so the each person has a separate Mail experience.

If you really don't care for that, then I'd seriously consider either Sarany's or JDC's ideas.

This, just make sure you have plenty of RAM.

[Paul F.]

M A V I C wrote:
[quote=Paul F.]
The "right" way is to have separate accounts on the COMPUTER for each user, so the each person has a separate Mail experience.

If you really don't care for that, then I'd seriously consider either Sarany's or JDC's ideas.

This, just make sure you have plenty of RAM.
Always good... most important if you're going to do "Fast User Switching". If you're going to log out, and then log in to the other account, not AS important. Still nice, though.

[Winston]

I'm working toward a similar question. I use PowerMail, which hasn't been updated in several years and is no longer under development. It was the closest thing to Claris Emailer when I made the switch years ago, and has a very robust search engine. (So much so that the developer, CTM Development, has a competitor to Spotlight, called Foxtrot, based on the PowerMail search engine, as its main product.)

As far as I can tell, there is nothing on the market remotely like PowerMail.


Good luck.

- Winston

[dan steinberg]

Thanks everyone for all the prompt and thorough feedback, very much appreciated.

Looking through all of the suggestions above, none of them seem quite ideal, but I will keep pondering.

Separate user accounts, for me at least, would be trading one annoyance for another. My wife's main machine is her MacBook air, but when she does use the mac mini to check her mail (nice big monitor, comfy chair), I'd like to avoid making her have to log me out and log her in, or have fast user switching chewing up memory, etc.

Postbox is actually the program I've been using for her mail on my machine, but it has a specific behavior with assorted emails that drives us nuts. If you select an email in the inbox that it claims has a certificate issue (which no other mail program ever complains about), it throws up an error message box, and when you click "OK", it just throws the box up again, over and over. The only thing you can do is force quit the program and be careful to not click that email.

Webmail is an interesting suggestion, although the interface for our imap account (ions, formerly 1and1) is not as nice to work with as a real email program (one that does what we want anyway).

This thread reminded me I had a license for Outlook 2011 that I was not using, so I installed that a few minuets ago and gave it a try. Did not go well, very cluttered interface, very sluggish operation even on a nice new 2018 mac mini.

I was really hoping airmail, mailspring, or spark would do the trick but they all had issues as mentioned in the original post.

I have not tried canary yet, if I knew for sure it showed the whole inbox as a scrollable list, and allowed sorting by name/attachment size/oldest/newest, I would be willing to spend the $20 on it. Anyone here use that particular program by any chance?

[Robert M]

Dan,

I understand not wanting to deal with separate accounts on the machine. It can definitely be a nuisance at times. Although I'm not using the system for two separate people, I have a two e-mail client configuration on my machines and have been for a very long time.

I'm using Mail and Postbox. At home, Mail is for personal email accounts and Postbox is for business email accounts. At my office, it's reversed. Both apps have their issues but I've yet to find a combination that is superior and I've tried just about every email client out there.

Your post begs the question... Have you looked into the source of the certificate issues to see if you can resolve them? I use Mail and Postbox with Fastmail, Gmail, and AOL and haven't had any certificate issues at all. I'm betting there is a configuration issue somewhere and/or possibly the mail server for one of the accounts requires updating.

And, contact Postbox's tech support. They might be able to assist you.

Robert