When it comes to clients in the cloud, the number is quite more than on the desktop, email clients have taken a substantial turn over these years. In this case, to distinguish themselves, various desktop clients have emerged as more advanced and now provides more features to retain the customers.
In general, the users finding a good email client can be a huge success as it may bring the difference with getting on the work or getting frustrated.
In this article, we have listed few of the best email clients both desktop and web-based. We also have prepared this list to make sure your time is saved and make the search hassle free.
Desktop-Based
1. Mozilla Thunderbird
This open source POP and IMAP email client come without any cost, and it is developed by Mozilla.org. They are the same people who made Firefox. When it comes to its features, it lies between another client such as Outlook Express and Outlook. This means that it provides an upgrade to users of the Express. While using this, you can also add new features by adding free extensions. The most salient one is the Webmail, which is an extension which allows POP3 access to the email services provided by Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, Libero and couple of others. Thunderbird email files can easily be indexed via Google and Yahoo! Desktop search programs.
It comes with various added features which are listed below:
- It has an in-built spam filter and an RSS reader
- It also provides message color coding along with searching email much faster.
- It comes with anti-phishing measures along with spell checker.
- It also has inbox filters and allows you to view your emails appearing as conversational threads.
With all these features, this product is relatively more secure than Outlook Express and is actively being developed by its makers. The various tools which feature in Thunderbird make it easy to import your Outlook Express stored email and account settings.
2. M2 Mail Client
There is one other option which most of the people don’t know about it. It comes from Opera who call it M2 Mail Client. While this doesn’t have a calendar like the Outlook, it is significantly powerful. This client is a combined email database along with news reader, mailing list organizer and supports POP3 and IMAP protocols. This program is quite easy to set up and is quite intuitive to use. You can easily find any email exchange you ever had.
3. Foxmail
However its name may confuse you, FOxmail is nowhere related to Firefox. It is a well-structured impressive product with various salient features which are better than Thunderbird’s. However, the quality of help files isn’t good which is a major drawback. It supports IMAP protocol which is a nice feature. It is top end product which has over eight million users across the globe is a significant competitor to Thunderbird.
4. Incredimail
This email client is presently in version 2.0 which also supports IMAP, POP3, and other webmail accounts. Its basic version is available free of cost, but the additional features like themes, junk filers and other require you to get the client upgraded to the premium version.
Its user interface is quite good with basic animations which will pop up whenever you receive a new mail or in case you have deleted one. However, this feature can be disabled if you wish to. This email client supports webmail accounts of Gmail, AOL, Yahoo along with Windows Live Hotmail.
Along with these features, you have to select the tool-bar integration and allow Incredimail as default search engine to get further.
5. eM Client
This is one of the most popular clients for Windows (XP-7) which supports all major webmails along with POP3 and IMAP. By downloading a 30-day free trial, you can gain access to all of its features but the freeware allows you to have only two email addresses per each user.
Its user interface is quite seamless, looks good and feels premium. Setting up this client is quite easy and also allows you to import various accounts along with settings from any client which is installed on your computer.
This client is by far one of the best-appearing clients which are available for Windows. However, its free version does limit you to an extent.
Web-Based
1. Gmail
When it comes to a web-based email client, Gmail is the most popular webmail client of the present time. It is deeply integrated with Google Ecosystem and also provides more features when compared to earlier version. Some of the noteworthy features are mention below:
- It works easily with POP and IMAP.
- It allows you to arrange your emails into various folders by attaching ‘Labels.’
- It comes with a wide range of filters.
- Various contacts and related tasks can easily be added and updated.
Another salient feature of Gmail is Google Labs which is a collection of add-ons which users can use to customize their Gmail account, especially for more advanced users.
Even tough Gmail is free, you might feel awkward with the adds displayed on the top of email lists. You also get 10GB of storage space for free and in case you need more then Google also offer month-wise payment plans to provide you more storage space.
2. Outlook (the new Hotmail)
With Modern UI, Microsoft has brought significant changes. This new user interface is quite simple along with the layout similar to Hotmail which is kept intact, but it also comes with better visuals that newbies may find more appealing. Its setup is quite simple, and it also provides various options like Gmail. It allows you to get old emails being forwarded to a single email address or you can gain access to them by utilizing POP3 or IMAP support.
Few of its features include the ability to delete entire emails list by a particular sender, or you can also choose the number of emails from the sender to keep on the record before it deletes the old ones all by itself.
With this, we end our list of the best email client, both desktop-based and web-based. You can try any of these and find out which one is better and fits your requirement. Most of the users have multiple email client . However, the most popular ones are only few in numbers. You can try any of the desktop-based email client or web-based email clients. You can easily make the selection by checking out the features you require on your desired email client.
So, we leave it all up to you. Also, remember to mention your reviews and suggestions in the comment section below.