Misc Looking for a Good Free Email Client for Windows 11

[HarveyHouston]

Hey peeps! I'm having a heck of a time finding a really good email client. I'm kind of an old-fashioned guy in that I hate using the web interface of email providers. I use various mail accounts for various services, and I'm not finding a really good robust email program.

So, here's the question I want to propose to you all: What is the best FREE email client that's out there? Here's what I'm looking for:

• I know about Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and Mozilla Thunderbird. I have my own reasons for not using them; don't recommend them, please!
• I tend to think of "free" as in completely free, not "freemium" or "trial" clients. I'd prefer completely free, but if it's a decent client which has most features not behind a paywall, I'm willing to look into it.
• I've already tried Sylpheed/Claws Mail and Mailspring. I've found both lacking in various areas.
• Web browser extensions are, in general, NOT a good alternative, as they still pretty much rely on the web interface. Unless you can point me to a Chrome-based plugin which does not redirect to the email website, I'm not interested.

A lot of the messages I get are rendered in HTML, and while I do understand the risks of HTML email, I still want them to be rendered properly, which Claws Mail has trouble doing on Windows.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

You've already ruled out the #1 suggestion people were going to give you without giving an explanation for why so I'm not sure what you're hoping to get out of this thread.

 

[FAST6191]

As above if you have snubbed thunderbird and its clones then most things in the open source world are far less shiny/far more utilitarian/usually leaning into the running super lean aspect where thunderbird went for user niceties.

Thunderbird has always done well for me, and if you jazz it up with the likes of http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ and other tools on the back end it saves a lot of hassle in other areas/turns it more into a business grade thing with some more redundancy and programmable fun.
Do also note you have the option to have little mail watchdogs and notifiers if say thunderbird's new mail is not in the taskbar or something and that bothers. If one of the clones (and I don't think there are many worth noting these days compared to Firefox) does not do it for you then you should be able to sandbox something easily enough if you need parallel clients for some reason.

 

[tech3475]

Maybe look at some of the Android options like K-9 if it’s available?

 

[HarveyHouston]

You've already ruled out the #1 suggestion people were going to give you without giving an explanation for why so I'm not sure what you're hoping to get out of this thread.

Let's just say that I have had bad experiences with the popular ones. I don't mind a less popular option if it's still good.

As above if you have snubbed thunderbird and its clones then most things in the open source world are far less shiny/far more utilitarian/usually leaning into the running super lean aspect where thunderbird went for user niceties.

Thunderbird has always done well for me, and if you jazz it up with the likes of http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ and other tools on the back end it saves a lot of hassle in other areas/turns it more into a business grade thing with some more redundancy and programmable fun.
Do also note you have the option to have little mail watchdogs and notifiers if say thunderbird's new mail is not in the taskbar or something and that bothers. If one of the clones (and I don't think there are many worth noting these days compared to Firefox) does not do it for you then you should be able to sandbox something easily enough if you need parallel clients for some reason.

I ditched Firefox for the same reason I ditched Thunderbird, so that's not really helpful, I'm afraid. I'm willing to accept a fork of Thunderbird, though - as long as it isn't being developed by Mozilla.

Maybe look at some of the Android options like K-9 if it’s available?

Is that also available for Windows? I already have good email apps for Android; that's not the goal I'm trying to achieve.

 

[HarveyHouston]

Vivaldi Mail solved this for me a while back, but this thread is still open for suggestions if you guys want to give it a shot, still.

 

[Joom]

I'm quite partial toward Evolution, the GNOME mail client. It can be ran on Windows through WSL2.

 

[Marc_LFD]

I tried going back to Thunderbird, but when connecting my Hotmail account it'd just error despite following the manual config.

I'm now using eM Client and works formidably! I even turned off email notifications on my Android phone as I'd rather see them on the PC.

https://www.emclient.com/

There is one caveat... If you use Protonmail, there's no free Protonmail support. You'd need to have a paid subscription.

https://forum.emclient.com/t/protonmail-bridge-and-new-account-configuration/37579

https://proton.me/mail/bridge

I have a free 1GB Protonmail account so I'll just use as it is.

Edit:

There's an unofficial Protonmail Windows client - https://github.com/unofficial-protonmail-desktop/application

And there will be an official Protonmail Windows client free of charge sometime soon in the future, I read on XDA.