I’ve been doing a little distro hopping lately (from KDE back to Xfce this time) as well as spending some time in Windows 11 at work. I’ve tried a number of email clients over the years.
Some of them, I miss dearly. Eudora Pro 3 got me through college. I didn’t care for the ad-based model of Eudora 4. Earlier versions of Windows Mail were effective and Windows Live Mail did everything I need it to, but that was discontinued.
Some have been difficult to get setup properly. Claws, Sylpheed, and Pegasus Mail never felt as user-friendly as other I’ve used. Some choices don’t support HTML natively and require plugins to work correctly. They also look incredibly dated, and I tend to like older designs.
Geary went the other way and was too simple. I tend to like to keep messages as unread unless I mark them as read, so they stay visible in my inboxes. I couldn’t find a good way to keep messages as unread by default. I also remember having a devil of a time getting Gmail setup. Looks like I need to use GNOME online accounts for OAuth accounts.
The Outlook desktop program (old Outlook) is more of a workhorse. However, my boss and I started to have issues at work. Emails were missing from the program but I could still find them through the web portal or the new Outlook, which just looks like a wrapper for the web version.
KMail was a strong contender in KDE, but it never felt quite right to me. Still, it did everything I wanted and needed it to. I could easily check almost all of my accounts, save for Proton and my work’s Exchange account, and it looked modern. Like all of these other clients, I can’t get them to send email through my Outlook addresses. Microsoft really doesn’t like to play well with others. I’m also not sure if I can get it to connect to Proton Mail.
Vivaldi’s native email client is simple enough for most things. There are some things that annoy me though. If I click on an email so that I can scroll around the page with the arrow keys, there’s no (easy?) way to delete the email using the keyboard, which means I need to move my hand back to the mouse. Irritating. And when I supported this feature in the forum, I got raked over the coals by a user for wanting something that was unpopular and for wanting this particular piece of software to do what every other one does. I dislike the Vivaldi forums. Still, in a pinch, it can check most of my accounts, just not Exchange or Proton Mail. And I still can’t send email via Outlook through Vivaldi. I also started getting an odd issue on my Window work machine where I couldn’t log into or create an Outlook account once I deleted the old entry period. Seems to be an issue with that one machine, but it’s an annoyance. This is one I only use for looking through my inbox when there isn’t a better option available.
Evolution was a surprise. No, it can’t access my Exchange email address and I haven’t attempted to log into my Proton email, but it does let me send email through my Outlook accounts. This is one of the few email programs to do that, the other being the native Microsoft programs. It doesn’t do a good job of showing me when there’s something in my spam folders and I wish the little numbers that showed me how many unread emails I have in each inbox changed color when a new message came in. Otherwise, it’s just about perfect. Truly a pleasant surprise after hopping back to Xfce.
That leaves Thunderbird. This one has been my workhorse. Using the Owl for Exchange add-on, I have total access to my work’s Exchange account. It’s around $10/year to use it, but worth it. It even automatically included my shared inboxes for my department. Best yet, I can add any of my work folders in as a Favorite, which really helps keep track of new messages and frequently used folders. I have the Proton bridge setup at work so I can access that email as well. The only thing it doesn’t do is let me send mail through my Outlook mail accounts. Frankly I still blame Microsoft for that. It’s a real shame because one of the accounts was my primary email for years and now it’s… just not worth the hassle. I keep them in case anyone who has the old addresses needs to get a hold of me.
TLDR: Thunderbird, Evolution, and KMail are great choices. Outlook is fine if you need it. I do most of my Outlook work now through the web page. Vivaldi works, but I’ve had issues in the past.