Thunderbird on Linux and FairEmail on Android. I don’t like Thunderbird’s opt-out telemetry, I just haven’t found something that works better for me at the moment on Linux. I have zero complaints about FairEmail. I like Thunderbird’s fast and frequent updates, FairEmail’s respect for privacy. I think both have the features I want. I just check my email on either when it is most convenient.

Thunderbird
Search Index constantly breaking (fuck outlook)
Good themes
I am too removed from services to have too much an opinion
Email always sucks. It is no longer what is was.
I would like my client to fully support m365
My inbox is kept tiny. Dont let it get big. Theres no reason for that.

“All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.” — http://mutt.org/

Outlook classic for work. Outlook for iOS for work. Sometimes I use the iOS calendar for both work and personal. Personal is Gmail workspace web and iOS app.

No complaints for outlook. Gmail isn’t snappy.

What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?

Mail on iOS, macOS

What is something you don’t like from the client.

Searching is difficult because you have to keep fighting with it.

• What is something you like from the client.

The UI, its ability to block remote content.

What is something you don’t like from the email service.

I’m confused by this part, are you talking about the email client or email provider?

I use primarily Gandi, and I don’t like their pricing model.

What is something you like from the email.

I love their spam headers and Sieve filtering.

Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?

Not really, most my problems with email come from how it’s implemented on various servers (lack of encryption) and its support for HTML rather than something more sane, like Markdown.

Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?

Not really, I just quickly work through the emails.

Thunderbird

Outlook with a 365 account.
Like about the application: The close button actually closes the application not minimising it to a tray icon.
Dislike about the application: Vaguely gestures at it
Dislike about the provider: it’s run by M$
Like about the provider: I don’t have to deal with Exchange anymore.

My ISP mail with a personal domain name in front. A self hosted roundcube web client for desktop use, thunderbird on my android phone.

In case of client failure I still have the ISP web mail as a backup. With my own domain name and mail alias I can change provider at will.

Oh yes and I run dovecot as an email backup on top of that.

Edison Email on Android for now.

Don’t like combined Inbox being default. Do like how fast it loads up and the rest of the GUI doesn’t annoy me. Good dark theme.

Betterbird on Desktop. Marginally better GUI options I care about over Thunderbird. Multi-line View. Linux/Windows. I like everything, no negatives.

I use Runbox who’ve existed since 2000 out of Norway and a separate service for a domain name as my backend. Runbox has a comically outdated web GUI. Very web 1.0. Very slowly replacing it with Runbox version 7. I don’t care as I never use the website except for creating sorting rules and email aliases.

Mobile I mainly just use for 2factor on mobile so the app matters less since I infrequently use it. Main usage I’m still primarily a desktop user when it comes to dealing with my email. Runbox I set up to sort my email for me so Betterbird isn’t doing much advanced stuff besides flagging Junk/Not Junk. Aliases are themed and I sign up for stuff with them, autosorted into dedicated folders for each alias. This also makes setting up on a new machine quick and simple.

I use https://port87.com/

It’s great, because all my email is sorted into labels by address, and everyone I’ve given my email to has been given a different address. So basically, I’ll go into each label I care about, set it to show only unread and in reverse order, then click each one.

It really works well for me, because mode switching is hard on me. When all my emails are placed in one inbox all mixed up, I get overwhelmed really quickly. So, having to only switch mental modes once I’m completely done with one sender’s emails is something I can manage a lot better.

It also has labels that require a challenge, so when you give a real person your email, they can email you, but robots can’t.

Full disclosure, I invented the delivery system for Port87, and I run the service.

mu4e with Emacs

It’s great because:

• process a big bulk of emails quickly
• renders emails in a consistent format, lowering mental overhead
• can link to individual emails in my notes
• many mail providers through the same interface
• custom views crossing many (or some) mailboxes and providers
• emails available offline
• tracking pixels and the likes don’t work
• can search/filter through many mails quickly

It’s bad because:

• requires Emacs, high learning curve
• first setup was cumbersome for Gmail
• rendering emails as text loses some information (rarely a problem, can view the email as html)
• no backlink from email thread to my notes yet (should be ok to write)
• I use another interface on mobile
• I send emails as plain text which is weirdly rendered in some clients (mostly fine, emitting html possible)

I use Thunderbird on both desktop (Linux) and mobile (Android). I currently have five accounts in a unified inbox:

• Gmail (2 accounts): ‘professional’ one I give to people and the other one for generic account signups - currently migrating away from both of these.

• Mailbox.org: the replacement for both my gmail accounts as mailbox.org allows aliases. They are completely EU based and don’t sell your data. Costs a small fee of €15 a year.

• Zoho: for my own domain which is public and attached to my various projects as a developer contact address

• Microsoft 365 🤢: Had to add this one literally today because I’m going back to uni in September. Hate that they use microsoft, but thankfully the uni enabled IMAP/SMTP instead of only allowing Microsoft’s proprietary OWA protocol.

As for general usage, I treat my inbox like a to-do list. Once I’ve completed all tasks relating to an email, it gets deleted if it’s not important or archived (usually if it’s anything to do with money like a receipt or invoice). I usually only have at most 3-4 emails in my inbox at once.

The only thing that annoys me about Thunderbird is that occasionally if I delete a message, it will leave a blank ‘ghost’ message where the old one used to be that has a date of 01/01/1970 which only goes away when the program is restarted.

Mail.

Like mail on the terminal.

It works.

i use seamonkey mail. it literally just works.

Dude, my email handling is a huge mess, no matter what angle we’re looking at it.

Let’s start with my private email on my private devices, as I have full freedom of doing whatever the fuck I want:

For more than 20 years up until about a year ago, my strategy was to keep everything in my inbox. That’s it. No custom folders, no labels, no filters. And I had been using the web UI, as it was clean, convenient and the search function was good, I always found everything I needed. I only deleted those emails that didn’t carry absolutely any value to me, like some promotions that didn’t automatically end up in Spam. I kept even registration confirmations just so I know when exactly I signed up on a website. This worked very well. At some point I created another account at a different provider, just to be able to pick a username that didn’t suck (as much as the previous one I made as a kid), and used that one for professional purposes only (job seeking basically).

Then as my long and painful degoogling process started last year, I signed up to proton (I should’ve done tuta instead), and I decided I wanna be more organized, because I’ve read how cool it was. I created a few aliases strategically: one I’d never share with anyone else other than financial institutions (I blew it right away with PayPal, because PayPal does share it with all webshops where you pay with it), I made one for personal communication (friends and family only), and a few others. Also, for a while I wanted to keep my old accounts to make sure I won’t miss changing my email somewhere important.

So I ended up with a crazy lot of email addresses, therefore I started to use Thunderbird on desktop and on mobile, but on mobile I also have to use proton mail, because there’s no proton bridge for mobile. But still, two email clients are manageable.

And I also started to create a meticulously designed folder structure in all my accounts, plus set up filters for every kinds of emails I regularly receive. I processed thousands of emails, and there are tens of thousands more in my inbox, and I’m so damn drained of dealing with them, I basically gave up. Now I have a half-baked solution, everything is all over the place.

I receive an email, I open it on my phone, but then I decide to deal with it later, and I forget to mark it unread. Then, when later comes, I try to open it on my computer, but I forgot which folder it was in (I have hundreds of folders by now), and it wasn’t marked as unread, so it wasn’t easy to spot. Also, generally, when I just receive an email, even if it’s clearly marked as unread, it’s still hard to spot, because the list is quite long on the left side when even just one account is not collapsed. I’d have to scroll a lot to actually see it.

Also, there are many emails that could fit in multiple folders. I hate that so much.

Thunderbird considerably slowed down due to the hundreds of filters, even though I have a pretty beefy desktop PC.

At work I don’t have much choice. We’re using Outlook and it sucks so much. I tried to do the same organization there, and even though I have much fewer emails there, I sucked at it the exact same way. It’s also a half-finished mess.

On top of that, Outlook filters don’t even work properly. You cannot apply the same condition twice within one filter (e.g. subject contains X AND subject contains Y), and those that I set up just simply stop working after a while. Some folders don’t indicate the count of new messages, some do. It’s the shittiest email software I’ve ever seen.

Overall I really like Thunderbird, it’s very flexible and it works well, I just suck at organizing my emails efficiently. Maybe I should just go back to the inbox-only mode, that one worked well.