Download eM Client for Mac. The best desktop email client is finally available for Mac. After our 30-day free trial, you may decide to use eM Client Free license or upgrade to the Pro version at any time. More information about the recent Mac version release can be found on our blog. 7 Best Free Email Clients. These days, there’s no shortage of powerful free email client software applications for all operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. Below are seven of our favorite email clients, each offering its own unique set of features and capabilities. Mailbird (Windows). MailMate, Airmail, and Mozilla Thunderbird are probably your best bets out of the 23 options considered. 'Extremely powerful search features' is the primary reason people pick MailMate over the competition. This page is powered by a knowledgeable community that helps you make an informed decision. It’s free for personal use but has premium plans in case you’d want collaboration. You can use Spark on Mac, IOS, and Android. An email client with lightning-fast speed, Airmail allows you to customize your email accounts and create actions to be left with a productive mailbox. You can also integrate with your favorite apps.
While every day seems to bring a new headline about an app that will “replace email,” it’s still a big part of our online lives. Particularly in the business world, email is very much alive and well.
This means that the difficulty of managing your email remains. The right email client can make this a lot easier, but finding the right one can be a challenge.
To make your decision easier, we’ve identified the best email clients out there. Below, you’ll find apps for everything from managing your personal email to organizing your team’s inbox.
Overview: One of the world’s most popular email clients, Gmail remains a great choice for many users.
While it was far from the first email client, the release of Gmail in 2004 was a big deal. It took web-based email to a whole new level, paving the way for the interactive email apps we know today.
Over 15 years later, Gmail is still an excellent email client. You can sort messages using tags, manage multiple accounts from one interface, and easily set up mail forwarding. Gmail also has a powerful spam filter, helping you avoid suspicious and time-wasting messages.
Plus, Gmail has strong integrations with Docs, Sheets, Slides, and especially Google Calendar. This makes it a great choice if you use other Google apps for school or work. And since Gmail is built by Google, you can easily find archived messages with Google’s powerful search algorithm.
Price: Free (with ads)
Platforms: Android, iOS, Web
Overview: A popular choice for business and university use, Microsoft’s flagship email client is also a solid choice for managing your personal email on Windows.
Like Gmail, Outlook needs no introduction at this point. While you’re most likely to encounter the app in a business or university setting, Outlook is also available free for personal use.
Outlook includes all the features you’d expect in a modern email program, including a built-in calendar, spam/malware filtering, and enough storage for most people’s needs. Outlook also features deep integration with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. You even get 5 GB of OneDrive storage free just for signing up.
For more advanced features such as message encryption, custom email domain names, and automatic removal of dangerous attachments, you’ll want to upgrade to Microsoft 365. This also gets you access to additional storage and the desktop versions of the aforementioned Microsoft apps.
Price: Free (with ads). Upgrade to Microsoft 365 Personal to remove ads, get additional storage, and unlock advanced security features.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Mac (for paid subscribers), Windows, Web
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Overview: A free, open source email client focused on privacy.
Moving beyond the world of massive tech companies, we have Thunderbird. Developed by a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, it aims to be a secure, powerful email client for personal use.
The features of Thunderbird are quite impressive. You’ll find all the standard mail filtering, archiving, and searching that you’re used to in other apps. But Thunderbird goes beyond these basics with tools for managing large files, add-ons to extend the app’s functionality, and a unified inbox that lets you track multiple accounts in one place.
Most notably, Thunderbird places a strong emphasis on security and privacy. It detects phishing attempts, warns you when you’re about to click suspicious links, and doesn’t track your activity.
And since Thunderbird is open source, anyone is free to contribute to the project or customize the app for their own needs. The only downside of Thunderbird is its lack of mobile apps, but there are plenty of other options on this list to meet that need.
Price: Free
Platforms: Mac, Linux, Windows
Overview: A free, mobile-focused email client with powerful organization features.
Unlike a lot of other apps on this list, Edison Mail has taken a mobile-first approach to development. They aim to provide an aesthetically pleasing, ad-free email experience on your Android or iOS device.
At its most basic, Edison Mail lets you manage all of your inboxes and email accounts in one place. Whether you have a Gmail, Outlook, or even Yahoo! email address, you can easily access it through Edison Mail.
Where things get interesting, however, is with Edison Mail’s built-in assistant. It has many features for travelers, including flight updates, destination weather forecasts, and just-in-time directions. It can also notify you about package deliveries based on incoming emails, monitor price drops on items, and even automatically unsubscribe you from annoying newsletters and promotional emails.
To keep all of these features free, Edison Mail uses an interesting monetization model. Instead of showing ads, they aggregate ecommerce information from your inbox and use that to create consumer trends reports that they then sell to businesses. While this is less private than Thunderbird or ProtonMail, it still provides a better user experience than ad-supported email clients.
Price: Free
Platforms: Android, iOS, Mac. A Windows desktop app is also in development.
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Overview: Spike transforms your email inbox into a fully-featured, conversational workspace.
If you wish your inbox looked less like email and more like iMessage or WhatsApp, then you’ll love Spike.
Aimed at teams who need a better way to manage their communications, the app turns your email into a real-time chat experience. This makes it an interesting alternative to dedicated chat apps such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.
Beyond its email management features, Spike offers a built-in Notes app for collaborating on projects with your team. While it doesn’t offer the power of dedicated project management tools, it’s enough for smaller teams to get a lot done without having to jump between apps. In a similar vein, there’s also an integrated task list to help you take action on emails.
Price: Free with limited message history, 5 GB of storage, and limited notes and tasks. To get unlimited messages, unlimited notes and tasks, and additional storage, upgrade to the Pro plan for $4 / month per account (billed annually).
Platforms: Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Web
Overview: An extremely secure, privacy-focused email client based in Switzerland.
Historically, you had to choose between usability and security in email apps. ProtonMail gives you the best of both worlds, ensuring that your data is secure and private while also providing a normal email client experience.
So what makes ProtonMail so secure? On the technical side, all messages are end-to-end encrypted. This means no one, not even ProtonMail, can decrypt or read what’s in your messages.
As a side effect, this also means ProtonMail cannot sell or share your private information with third parties. Plus, ProtonMail accounts are anonymous. They don’t log your IP address and don’t require personal information to create an account.
As if this weren’t enough, ProtonMail is based in Switzerland. Thus, Switzerland’s strict privacy laws apply, and it’s nearly impossible to access the extremely limited data on ProtonMail’s servers without a Swiss court order.
ProtonMail’s primary data center is also located beneath 1000 meters of granite in a well-guarded bunker, so physical security concerns are minimal.
Price: Free (limited to 500 MB of storage and 150 messages per day). Upgrade to the Plus plan for 5 GB of storage, 1000 messages per day, and a custom email domain. Business plans are also available for an additional cost.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Web
Overview: For teams that need to collaborate on high volumes of email, Front is the email client to use.
Let me preface this section by saying that Front is not the right email app for most people. If you’re just managing personal email or a small volume of internal communications, it’s likely overkill.
However, if you have more email than you can handle and need to easily delegate to teammates, Front is a lifesaver. We use it to manage our team inboxes at College Info Geek, and it’s made things so much easier.
My favorite feature is the ability to see different teammate’s inboxes in a single view. If I need to jump into my manager’s inbox to respond to a message meant for me, I can. Plus, Front lets you assign messages to other teammates, saving the hassle of forwarding and CCing.
Beyond this, Front lets you chat with team members about emails without leaving the app. This frees up space in other team chat apps and keeps communications about emails readily accessible.
Finally, Front includes lots of features for automating email. You can create rules and canned responses to process email more efficiently. And if you need features from other work apps, Front has an extensive list of integrations.
Price: Basic features are available for $9/user per month (billed annually). To unlock integrations, more team channels, and unlimited rules, upgrade to Plus for $24/user per month. Enterprise plans are available for larger teams.
Platforms: Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Web
Don’t Just Tame Your Email, Master It
I hope this article has given you some apps to manage your email more effectively.
While the right email app can make a big difference, remember that it’s often higher-impact to use apps that reduce the need for email exchanges in the first place.
For apps that can cut down on the amount of email you send and receive, read these articles next:
Image Credits: Gmail app loading
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Having an email client installed on your Mac can make a huge difference for your productivity. After all, your web browser is a portal to distraction, and any time you boot up Chrome or Safari to check on your inbox you’re in danger of losing at least 10–15 minutes to reading the news, browsing Facebook, or going down a “wiki-spiral.”
That said, not every email client is built the same. While macOS comes with the Apple Mail app by default, it might not necessarily be the best fit for your needs.
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With Setapp on your Mac, you get access to the list of best email tools. Experiment with all of them flexibly — until you find the one.
Best Email Apps For Mac 2021
So what’s the best email app for Mac then? Depends on what you do. You might be a power user, comfortable with running macros to make the most out of your email experience, or you might just want something that works out of the box without having to fuss with settings. Security could be your top priority if you work with sensitive materials, or you might just need to easily manage multiple accounts.
Best Free Email Client For Mac Os 10 9
Whatever the case, there are a few things to keep in mind when evaluating all email clients: How fast is the setup process? How easy is it to use? Is it secure? What are the sorting options for your inbox? Is it nice to look at?
Let’s sift through some top email apps using this questioning framework.
Apple Mail: Best email client for Mac by default
What makes Apple products great is also what limits them: because Apple needs to make apps that are so easy to use that anyone can use them, much of what they produce is quite basic in functionality. Which is fine — just make sure you know what you’re getting with the Apple Mail app.
You definitely get a clean, user-friendly design that’s in line with all the other Apple software. In addition, you get outstanding integration with macOS and iOS, including the use of the Notification Center and the ability to send emails via the Share function in other apps.
Although adding multiple email providers, including iCloud and Gmail, is easy — there have been some bug reports around using Microsoft accounts, such as Hotmail or Live. Maybe the old Apple and Microsoft feud is not over yet?
In step with the times, Apple Mail app makes it effortless to add emoji to your emails from the shortcut bar right in the composing email window.
Honestly, for most people, the Apple Mail app will absolutely be enough. However, if you’re the kind of person who has a lot going on in their inbox, there are not too many ways to filter through all the messages quickly and pin down important conversations, or simply delete unwanted mail.
What’s great:
Clean design
Easy-to-use Mac mail
Fantastic Mac and iOS integration
Not so great:
A history of bugs with Microsoft accounts
Lacking high-powered organizational tools
Mozilla Thunderbird: Best free email client for Mac power users
Perhaps most widely known for their web browser, Firefox, Mozilla’s other major product is their email client, Thunderbird. Hailed as the best free email app on the market at various points throughout its long history, where does Thunderbird stand in 2021?
Unfortunately, Thunderbird’s design shows its age. Blocky and utilitarian, it’s quite a bit uglier than most modern email clients. But look below the surface and you’ll discover some very handy features.
For one, you have the option of tagging emails as they come in. Just add tags like Personal, Work, and ToDo and suddenly conversations become much easier to find later on. Even better, create your own tags to make the classification system as specific as you need it to be.
Thunderbird features an integrated calendar and chat client, both of which are indispensable for work, and boasts great privacy features — like not automatically displaying images (hence stopping pixel trackers) when you open emails (can be changed in Preferences).
Overall, Thunderbird has some powerful value propositions but is also a bit ugly and unintuitive. So, if the looks don’t bother you, give it a try. Otherwise, you’re better off using another option.
What’s great:
Tagging is powerful and helps you organize your emails quickly
Precise search
Not so great:
Not the prettiest interface
Unintuitive user experience. It takes time to figure out Thunderbird’s best features.
Kiwi for Gmail: Best Gmail app for Mac
If you don’t use Gmail, you can skip this one: Kiwi isn’t for you.
But for all other Gmail for Mac users, Kiwi for Gmail is an excellent Mac mail option. A desktop app with the look and feel of your browser email inbox, Kiwi features the ability to combine multiple accounts and filter your inbox with Focus to organize correspondence by date, importance, attachments, and more.
In many ways, Kiwi is Gmail’s missing ingredient, making the best free email provider online also the premier Gmail app for Mac. What’s even more exciting is that Kiwi lets you run G Suite apps like Google Docs and Sheets outside of your browser. Being able to leave Chrome or Safari behind and get some focused work done alone makes Kiwi worth the install.
What’s great:
Best Free Email Client For Windows 7
- Kiwi makes Gmail better
- Combine multiple Gmail accounts
- Focused work outside the browser with Google Docs
Not so great:
Doesn’t support non-Gmail accounts
Spark: Best Mac email client for a clean inbox
A relatively new email client for Mac, Spark is based on an intriguing premise: What if your inbox was able to sort itself out based on your priorities but without your input?
Spark’s Smart Inbox algorithms are able to instantly identify whether an email is personal, work-related, or just a newsletter you signed up for years ago because it gave you a coupon but have since completely forgotten about. This kind of artificial intelligence works so well that Apple gave Spark an Editor’s Choice Award a few years ago.
In its quest for widespread adoption, Spark doubles down on usability, offering quick, one-click replies with generated text based on how you typically respond to emails and powerful automatic functions to clean up your inbox in seconds. Besides, the app is beautifully designed and very easy to use.
Of course, for Spark to have all of these powerful features, complete access to the content of your emails is required — which might raise some privacy-minded eyebrows. However, a lot of people would be happy to offer that in return for ease of use. So, if this notion doesn’t bother you, Spark might well be the best free email app for Mac.
What’s great:
- Clean design
- Smart Inbox organizes your unread emails
Could be the most professional email client for Mac
The only non-Apple email client with the Apple seal of approval
“Send later” feature lets you schedule emails
Frequent updates
Not so great:
Requires more of your data than other email clients
Pegasus Mail
Canary Mail: Best security in an email client for Mac
New to the Mac email client game, Canary Mail’s outstanding list of features still makes it a worthy contender.
Canary Mail prioritizes security and privacy, providing every email you send with end-to-end encryption, so that if your data is ever intercepted it can’t be read. Even better, you don’t have to change any settings to do this — everything is set up right out of the box.
Add to that a fantastic design and some excellent filtering options, such as natural language search, smart tags, algorithmic bulk cleaner, and intelligent typography enhancements, and Canary Mail might well be the best email app for Mac, period.
What’s great:
- Great design
- Smart filters
- Intelligent typography
- Automatic end-to-end encryption
- Available to all email providers
- Algorithmic bulk cleaner
Unibox: Most innovative email client for Mac
Email On Mac Not Working
The most exciting thing about Unibox is how it fundamentally changes the way you see your inbox. Instead of organizing everything by date received or subject, Unibox structures every conversation around contacts. That way your inbox resembles your text messages or messaging app, making everything intuitive and easy to navigate.
The developers of Unibox worked hard on making their email client for Mac the easiest to use on the market — and it shows. The design is stunning and you can easily respond to any email in the same window, get previews of attachments right there, and just scroll to remind yourself of all the conversations you’ve had with that person.
What’s great:
Best Email Clients For Mac
- Email like messages
- Intuitive and easy-to-use design
- Works with all major email providers
Best of all, Canary Mail and Unibox are both available for a free seven-day trial through Setapp, a subscription platform with over 200 top Mac apps chosen to make your day more productive and fun. Now can’t you wait to go back to emails already?