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Email client recommendations ? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by phantomwise@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Hi, I tried using an email client over a year ago, and after trying almost all of them in the span of a week I gave up in frustration. Would anyone have a recommendation ? For an email client :

  • That is actively maintained
  • That is not controlled by a company that could pull a Mozilla on it (Thunderbird)
  • That isn't proprietary
  • That doesn't need 77 dependencies and 450 GB (WTF KMail 😭 )
  • That is reasonably fast and light and not too bloated (I just want to read emails, I don't need a full app suite...)
  • That supports POP
  • That supports writing HTML messages (sorry Claws, I really liked you but occasionally I kinda need to write formatted messages to preserve other people's sanity 😅 )
  • That supports reading HTML messages without showing the HTML version as attachments so that every single email has the paperclip icon and I can't tell which messages have real attachments (Sylpheed I think ?)
  • That supports MailDir format for portability (why isn't it the default everywhere already instead of weird non-portable formats ? 😭 )
  • If possible, that doesn't have an interface that's so awful it's a pain to find anything (Thunderbird)

I also tested Geary and another one but I don't remember much about it... I can't find out whether Geary does support POP and maildir, its documentation page is... well it's a list 8 lines long, but on a page called "Documentation" so it's technically counts as documentation I guess ? 😅 https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary/Documentation

Any recommendation would be greatly appreciated !

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[-] hamid@vegantheoryclub.org 2 points 1 day ago

I went through this same process and research and I landed on hosting Roundcube as a docker container on a server in my home built from the guts of my old laptop but you can run it locally too.

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Lmao that's what ChatGPT recommended after I ranted about all the email clients I had tried 😂

fetchmail/getmail6 to fetch the mails via POP3 in maildir format + a local roundcube server + CLI tool to still be able to read mails outside home but I thought I might be a bit overkill 😅

[-] hamid@vegantheoryclub.org 1 points 10 hours ago

lol I am as dumb as artificial intelligence. fwiw I have it hooked to my reverse proxy and can just use the roundcube website on my phone externally, it scales nicely for phone screens.

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 hours ago

Hey it's not a dumb idea just because AI suggested it, ChatGPT probably just pulled that setup from somewhere on reddit I wasn't saying it was stupid but the reverse : it probably would be too technical for me to set up and a bit overkill, but it's tempting to try anyway. If you managed to do it it's awesome !

[-] axum 10 points 2 days ago

tell me you are heavily neurodivergent without telling me

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 days ago

Aww crap and here I thought I was approximating a neurotypical post by removing my rant about the other email client whose name I forgot which had several half-empty toolbars disturbing the hell outta me by taking up space for nothing 😄

[-] oz200@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Vivaldi has integrated mail client.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 60 points 3 days ago

Thunderbird. The "Mozilla problem" is greatly exaggerated and even if so, there are forks.

[-] Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago

Thunderbird is independently developed from Mozilla and has been since 2020. It's driven by the Thunderbird Council which is community elected. Its only link now with Mozilla Foundation is that it's a financial subsidiary. But as others say, there's also Betterbird if one still fanatically hates Mozilla.

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 16 points 3 days ago

Thunderbird has their own finances and operates quite independent from Mozilla. They make more money than any other project under Mozilla's banner. Thunderbird is quite successful. And even if one day a problem occurs, one could still use a fork or switch to a different mail client. But I don't see any problem coming, unlike with Firefox in example.

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

Oh that's good to know ! Does this mean it doesn't have the same annoying opt-out "features" than Firefox ? Like the sponsored links, the "privacy preserving" ads, and so on ? Also you said you can switch to a different client if something happens, but doesn't Thunderbird use mbox which from what I understand is not portable to other clients ?

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 5 points 3 days ago

Thunderbird doesn't have the same annoying stuff of Firefox, as far as I know at least. However, there is no guarantee that Mozilla wouldn't force this on Thunderbird someday, even if Thunderbird operates mostly independent.

By switching to another client, I didn't mean you can takeover your offline accounts and data to another client. Just meaning you can switch, as your mail accounts are not bound to any mail client. Unlike something like Photoshop in example, that was what I meant. There is fork Betterbird, in case Thunderbird decides to go wild (we can't know that for sure). I did not look into it much, but I'm sure alternative forks that are compatible to the current Thunderbird profile (for import) will be available.

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

Cool if Thunderbird hasn't gotten the same treatment as Firefox, I hope that continues (though I wouldn't say I have much confidence in Mozilla not to muck that up too...) True you can switch, but you might lose all your previous emails if you have set up your client to use POP3 and it doesn't save your downloaded emails in a format that is portable 😬 ...which is exactly what I did when I tried Thunderbird a year ago 😑 That's why this time I want to be less stupid and be sure I choose a client that supports MailDir

[-] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 7 points 3 days ago

I kind of wonder who is behind the over exaggeration. People with real concerns or those that do not want strong open platforms. Too much controversy and bifriction and those that push it for their own ends are the enemy.

[-] furrowsofar@beehaw.org 6 points 3 days ago

Same. There is an Android version now too.

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

I use Thunderbird and hate it. Full of bugs and cramdowns (not sure what the right term is) where they make a bad setting that you can't undo. Also too difficult to find too many things. And way too many non-mail features. I haven't bothered seeking a good alternative but Thunderbird leaves a lot to be desired. Forking isn't likely to help much. It needs total replacement.

[-] Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

Betterbird

[-] zloubida@lemmy.world 27 points 3 days ago

Thunderbird is great. But if you don't like it only because of Mozilla (the interface is customizable so that's not an argument) there is a fork which does almost everything like Thunderbird, is slightly better on some points, and slightly worse on some others, called Betterbird. It has in my point of view no interesting point, but it's not Mozilla.

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

It's both but mostly Mozilla, I got fed up with Firefox and having to go through settings to see if there's anything weird enabled by default like telemetry and ads, and never knowing when Mozilla might add yet another wonderful opt-out feature like "privacy preserving ads". I really don't want to go through the same thing with my email client and my trust in Mozilla is somewhere down in the Earth's mantle. But I guess I shouldn't have called it "awful" since it's very subjective, for me personally it was a pain to find anything when I tried, even after trying to tweak it. I didn't know it had forks though, thanks I'll check them out !

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[-] poinck@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago

Evolution.

I have used Thunderbird a lot, but finally decided to go back to Evolution 2 years ago.

[-] Mwa@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Just a note: its more of a Personal information manager(it includes calender,contacts,to do,etc) rather then just a email client

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

Well I year ago I would have said "no way I want an email client that does email and nothing else" but after trying so many of them I'm fine ignoring the stuff I don't use as long as it doesn't get in the way so I'll look it up thanks !

[-] poinck@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

I basically use it only for mail, although I have set up my calender there, too. The evolution-data-server makes it possible to access the calender entries using gnome-calender which has a modern gui.

You can still accept email invites in evolution and see them in gnome-calendar. It works very well with my radical server.

And second bonus, it integrates your dates with gnome-shell. Just disable notifications in evolution to don't get them twice. (:

[-] Mwa@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

Alr yw

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I just installed Evolution to give it a try but it's throwing fits –and by fits I mean segfaults 😑

But I'll be switching to a new drive and new distro in a few weeks so I'll try again and see if it works then

[-] Puschel_das_Eichhorn@lemm.ee 7 points 3 days ago

Personally, I use mu4e (part of the mu software) to read, organise, compose and send emails. It uses a text-based interface, and runs from within the GNU EMacs editor. Emails are stored locally in the Maildir format.

  • It is actively maintained and open source, and not controlled by a company
  • Apart from xapian and EMacs, chances are that you have the dependencies already installed
  • Mails can be composed in HTML format, but this may take a few extra tweaks. (I do not do this myself.)
  • Emails have to be stored in the Maildir format to be indexed using mu and viewed with mu4e
  • Neither POP nor IMAP are directly supported. To fetch or sync emails from/with an external server, external applications can be called, like mbsync (for IMAP), offlineimap (same), or fetchmail in unison with a locally running postfix MTA (for POP)

I am not sure if I can recommend this solution, as it can be a bit technical compared with other email clients. For me, it is entirely worth it, though.

[-] tux0r@feddit.org 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

+1 for mu4e, really awesome software. There are a few HTML composing tweaks possible, I use org-msg that lets me compose HTML with org. (See my configuration.)

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

Oh I didn't know terminal mail clients could do html formatting so I excluded them, it's nice to know that's not the case, thanks for the info !

[-] tux0r@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago

HTML is text and org is basically a better Markdown. :-)

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Well yes HTML is technically text but who actually want to write HTML tags by hand in email ? 😭

I'm guessing org is a better solution to not do that ?

[-] tux0r@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

HTML is not that bad. I’d still argue that writing HTML e-mails is just a really bad idea. But yes, org has a somewhat cleaner syntax.

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

mu4e

I hadn't heard of it, thanks for the recommendation I'll check it out ! It's nice to see I haven't tried everything yet 😀

[-] richardwonka@lemmy.one 2 points 1 day ago

If you’re going there, give mutt a go. It’s an extremely efficient experience, once you have got the basics down.

[-] tux0r@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

But multi-account usage in Mutt is really… leaving room for improvement.

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 hours ago

Oh that's a shame, I hope they manage to improve it it woul be very convenient

[-] tux0r@feddit.org 1 points 10 hours ago

Unlikely, as even NeoMutt (which could improve it) still does it quite manually.

[-] littleomid@feddit.org 3 points 3 days ago

I use not much and Emacs. I use msmtp and mbsync. I was going to recommend that. The only issue I have is that I can’t figure out how to sync my sent mails across my accounts. So that if I send a message via service a, it lands in the sent folder of service a. Do you have any tips for me?

[-] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 3 days ago

So close on mutt! :)

I have it set up so that it autoconverts all HTML messages to plain text as best as it can. If it's not good enough, I have a macro set up to launch the HTML version in Firefox so it's usable. (None of the images come through, which is potentially a feature.)

I did look into writing HTML mail with mutt, and it's even uglier than reading. The gist of it is to basically have a wrapper script that launches some kind of HTML editor, then builds the multipart message (maybe autoconverting HTML to text so you can have both) and headers, then launches mutt -H email.txt to prepare to send it. If it looks good, send it from Mutt as normal. I don't know how well this would work with attached inline images, but it sounds potentially quite painful.

But I don't regularly send HTML messages, so I haven't bothered with that route. I'd just bring up TB if I had to.

(I can say, for me, since I went back to mutt, I'm happier with email than I've been for decades. And my RAM is happier, too. But I probably spent 20 hours configuring it. And everyone probably hates my preformatted text. They get back at me by sending 30 MB HTML-only mails. 🤣)

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago

20 hours spent on config is only a waste if you can't do it in a config file that you get to proudly display in a public repo as a gift to Humanity... dotfiles will be our immortal legacy 😁

[-] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 days ago

I'll have to post it all somewhere sometime. None of my passwords are in there, but some of my account names are.

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

yeah, I use Thunderbird, but it bothers me how slow it feels and the frequent little UI bugs with unread flags not updating and the delay of messages to show up in the unified inbox.

It's nice that Betterbird has a system tray (I can't believe how a standalone desktop app for emails neglects this, like TB does), but it still inherits a lot of the problems TB has.

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[-] singletona@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Claws Mail client. Solid, Lightweight. Doesn't have the polish thunderbird has, but also doens't have a lot of the bloat either.

[-] thejevans@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

OP specifically mentioned not wanting claws.

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yes I would really have liked to have kept it but the lack of html formatting is a deal breaker... it's still a very good mail client that doesn't get enough love though

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

Yes it's an awesome mail client, but alas I do need to write HTML formatted messages occasionally 😢

[-] singletona@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Auugh man I'm sorry for glossing that over. I hate being just another 'thunderbird exists' guy but given the need for HTML? Yea I'm gonna chip in on that bucket.

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[-] Dungrad@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago

Geary

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this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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