Apple

Inbox was so good, made email so easy. Can’t believe how long it’s been and no one has been able to replicate it. Still mad at Google for killing it off.

Gonna pop out the controversial opinion here and say I like the default mail app. It’s quick, simple, and does everything I need. The only thing I don’t like is that gmail doesn’t get push mail, but Google did that not Apple.

I hate that unlike iOS, mail does not run in the background on Mac though.

I have found Mail on both iPhone and MacBook to be enough for my use. Otherwise I use and prefer Thunderbird on other operating systems.

Mimestream was promising in beta. The subscription model is too much for me though.

Outlook is good. Apple mail is good. But I still like Spark the best, I think. But I dislike Spark’s terms of service and feel like they don’t respect my privacy or data.

I keep trying other mail apps but always come back to apples. It’s just the best, clean interface, always works. Even ended up ditching gmail and going all iCloud, yay privacy :)

Thunderbird on PC

Default Mail app on Mac and iPhone

I prefer using the default mail app.

If you're on Gmail, buy Mimestream for Mac and never look back.

If you're not using Google for your email, and/or you're looking for something on iPhone then it's a tougher choice. I wrote an extensive review of the options not too long ago and landed on Spark, but your priorities may be different from mine. Have a look and see what you think: https://kevinyank.com/posts/email-apps/

Mail.app on iPad , iPhone and Mac. I see no need to change it. I wish the search was a touch better but it’s rarely an issue.

I use Spark on Mac and iPhone. Multiple accounts with only one login is nice. Also being able to "done" (not a fan of the verbiage) all Newsletter emails at once is a must-have for me. I do miss Inbox though.

I still use Gmail over the native app because I instantly get the email when it comes in vs every 15 minutes or whatever it is without manually refreshing

On iOS/Android/Mac I like Spark most

Spark is the closest to how Inbox use to be. At least in my experience so that's what I'm using these days.

For me, the gmail app on iPhone is still my favorite. I like the Mail app, but there are two things that really keep me in gmail. One is the instant push delivery. The other is the simple swiping: right to save, left to trash. Given how good searching in mail is these days, I don’t bother to organize emails into folders. I just need to make a very simple decision: keep or toss. That is so fast to do in the gmail app.

I switch between apps often, but I tend to use Spark more often than Apple Mail/Outlook/gmail.

It’s Outlook for me. Trialed a bunch, disliked the data/privacy deets on many, and MS already worked it’s way into my heart via corporate America.

It does a nice job of pinning, snoozing, combining inboxes, and working cross-platform. FO FREE ;-)

I use Mimestream. It’s a beautiful, well-made Mac app (for now, iOS coming soon) by a developer who clearly cares about making a quality product that adheres to the platform’s design language and usage idioms.

I absolutely do not begrudge him for wanting to make a living from it, and currently subscription is one of the only effective ways to do that for small devs.

I also don’t begrudge anyone who doesn’t like it. We all get to use our money how we see fit.

I require a functional snooze feature so Apple Mail is out. Outlook randomly deletes iCloud emails and Canary is too slow. So I am left with Spark on both Mac and iOS.

Using Outlook on iOS for its multi account support. Work is Office 365 based so it makes sense. I can use a unified or separate inboxes and switch between them at will.

I was forced to use Outlook at my new job. Hated it at first but now I prefer it to anything else.

I'm very happy with Edison

Thunderbird on desktop, canary or stock mail on mobile

I use Apple's Mail.app on both macOS and iOS (on Linux I use KMail). I keep hearing people don't like it, but it does the job for me. The only thing I'm missing from it is GPG signing/encryption support and having it automatically format what I write to 72 columns, but I can live without those.

(If I may ask, why do people not like Mail.app?)

I don’t like how gmail shows ads even if you subscribe to Google One (I suppose this isn’t a problem on workspace accounts). I do like it’s rules to auto tag emails and the ability to set your own tags and rules.

Outlook app is a little bloated but it’s more functional than the native iOS mail.

Gmail is probably my favorite but since I transferred my domain to cloudflare after Google domains sold to square space, I’ve decided to use iOS mail again with my custom domain

I’m also using Spark; I like it but don’t love it. I often think about switching back to Apple Mail, but Spark’s block button is just too convenient. If junk mail filtering in Mail worked better, I’d switch.

I’ve been trying to find a good one, but it seems like all e-mail clients are bloated as hell. Like Jesus Christ I just want to read and reply to emails, I don’t need chatGPT, teams, calendars, real-time whatever the fuck, just… just email.

I use Fastmail for my personal email so I just use their app for that, and the gmail app for my business email. I’d much rather have both in one app but I don’t want the shit all these devs are putting in.

thank you for all the great feedback. I will take a look at some of the apps as soon as I'm back from my honeymoon!

for the next days i go with the standard mail app from apple just because I realized that I don't need all that fancy stuff. Let's see how that will work out for me...

I cannot recommend Canary Mail enough. It’s like the redesigned Mail.app that Apple themselves should have made. Looks, works and feels like a system app that Apple shipped, but adds a ton of neat stuff like PGP encryption, read receipts, GPT-powered email composition and email thread summaries, and more.

My Apple mail kept opening for no reason so I just switched to MailMate. It's a simple IMAP interface with a ton of backend options and hidden command line settings for the techies, a heavy-lifter email app. It's a one time payment and is as powerful or simple as you need it to be. Originally written around 2010 and still updated, it's a very mature program.