If you are a Mac user, you have Apple Mail, the default email client pre-installed on your computer. While this native solution from Apple suffices the needs of most users, it is far from an ideal choice for those who need more control over their emails. Because, despite offering a set of all the essential features, Apple Mail’s functionality is limited in terms of advanced email management features when compared to most third-party email clients. As a result, if you want to manage multiple email addresses or you need to organize emails, set up smart inbox rules, set up responses, and much more, you need a feature-rich third-party email client on your Mac. When it comes to finding a good email app, there are plenty of options to choose from. But since the selection process often becomes tedious, we have curated a list of some of the best email clients for Mac to simplify this process for you to a certain degree. They also double up as the best Apple Mail alternatives.
What a good Email Client for Mac looks like?
Before we list down our recommendations for the best Mac email clients, here are some key points you should keep in mind when selecting an email app.
- Clutter-free UI – having a clean user interface allows for quick and easy operations on any app, and email clients are no exceptions either. You see, if your desktop email client of choice offers a range of features, but its interface is cluttered and involves navigating through different (nested) menus before you can perform an operation, it has anything but a good user experience.
- Basic features – as much importance as you give to advanced features, you should also make sure that the desktop email app you are about to choose provides all the basic features such as the ability to read, compose, and organize emails, add multiple email accounts, and support for different email exchanges, etc.
- Privacy and security features – something that a lot of people don’t take into account as seriously as they take functionality is the privacy and security aspect of an app. A good desktop email client should employ secure encryption protocols to protect your email and communications. Not just that, it should refrain from indulging in unethical practices like snooping on user activities or collecting personal data to mint money off of it. Lastly, another security element you should look for in an email app is some sort of authentication mechanism to verify user identity.
- Third-party services integration – if you collaborate with your teammates and want to keep your workflow organized, you likely use services for cloud storage, calendar, task management, and similar use-cases. In which case, if your desktop email client supports such third-party productivity apps, managing your meetings and tasks becomes a lot easier. So, when selecting an app, check out the list of services it supports. However, all that said, it is not always possible to find an app that meets all of these requirements. So, in such scenarios, you need to prioritize what features and functionalities matter to you more and choose an app accordingly.
Best Email Clients for Mac
1. Spark: best email client with clean inbox
A relatively new email app on the block, Spark, with its impressive feature set, has managed to garner the attention of a lot of users in a short period. Not just that, it has been lauded as the best email app for Mac by numerous publications for its beautiful interface and functionalities. Spark’s highlighting features include the likes of smart inbox, Smart Search, smart notifications, and email delegation. It’s counted amongst the best alternatives for Inbox by Google. If you plan on linking multiple email accounts on Spark, Smart Inbox and Smart Notifications are two features that can help you keep up to date with incoming emails that matter to you the most.
Sparks’s scope of functionality can be further extended thanks to the integration feature that lets you integrate services such as Evernote, Wunderlist, Trello, Bear, and a few others on the app so you can improve your workflow, and in turn, increase productivity. You can also use templates for quick replies and create emails together with your teammates. As for other features, Spark allows you to schedule your emails to send them later, get reminders to follow up on important emails, and create links to emails or threads to share with your team.
Spark Feature Highlights
i. Elegant design and clean interface ii. Smart inbox and smart notifications iii. Email delegation iv. Integration with third-party apps v. Email Templates vi. Email scheduling vii. Link sharing with teammates viii. Supports Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo, Exchange, iCloud, Microsoft Outlook, mail.ru, IMAP, and more. Free, Premium ($6.39), Enterprise (on inquiry) Get Spark
2. Thunderbird: best free email client for power users
Thunderbird comes from Mozilla: a non-profit organization that also happens to have developed the free and open-source browser, Firefox. The app is open-source and offers an array of powerful features and customization options, which is something that attracts a lot of power users. Setting it up and getting started is fairly easy, thanks to the quick mail account setup wizard that involves a quick and simple process. If you’ve used the tabbed browsing feature on Firefox, you might enjoy a similar experience with your emails on Thunderbird. Since now, all your emails are loaded into separate tabs so you can have multiple emails open at once and jump between when required.
Oftentimes, finding an email can be a tedious task, and the lack of better filtering options on email clients tend to fail to target and pull up the emails against your query. But, with Mozilla Thunderbird’s filtering tool, you can pinpoint and find the exact email you’ve been looking for pretty much every time. What’s more, you get the ability to transfer large documents by uploading them to an online storage service and sharing its link via message. That way, you can send large files without running into file size issues. Smart folders is another helpful feature on Thunderbird. It lets you manage multiple email accounts at once by combining them into special folders so you can see all of them in one place. Last, but certainly not least, is support for add-ons — quick utilities that you can add to the email client to increase functionality.
Thunderbird Feature Highlights
i. Open-source ii. Tabbed email iii. Robust search (with quick filter) iv. Smart folders v. Transfer large files vi. Add-ons integration vi. Advanced junk mail filters Free Get Thunderbird
3. Microsoft Outlook: best email client for Office 360 users
If you use Microsoft’s services, you would be familiar with Outlook. It’s their all-in-one app that offers email, calendaring, and task management functionalities in a single place. The service requires you to have a Microsoft 365 subscription before you can use it. Microsoft 365, for the uninitiated, includes a subscription to Microsoft’s Office apps suite, extra cloud storage on OneDrive, and more. So, if you happen to have a subscription, you can start using Outlook and get access to all its features. The app is easy-to-use and offers quick access to your emails, calendar events, contacts, and files across all your accounts. Moreover, it has a personalized inbox and calendar to help you stay up to date on your tasks.
Despite being Microsoft’s offering, Outlook for Mac supports a host of email providers such as Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and the likes. Considering you have an Office 365 subscription, it is likely that you use other services for your work. And with Outlook offering support for these services, you can now better collaborate with your team members and chat with them in real-time. One of the best things about Outlook is that it also features accessibility features to help people with disabilities to use the platform effectively and get their work done.
Microsoft Outlook Feature Highlights
i. Easy-to-use ii. Personalized inbox iii. Built-in calendar (with multiple calendar integration) iv. Team collaboration (with real-time chat with team members) v. Accessibility features Free (requires Office 365 subscription) Get Outlook
4. Newton Mail: best mac email elient for clean experience
Newton Mail is yet another notable email client for Mac. It has received numerous design accolades over the years, thanks to its beautiful, clean, and minimal interface. However, that said, the minimal approach pertains to the app’s interface only, as the feature set offered is quite extensive. What’s worth mentioning, though, is that, despite being so feature-rich, Newton tries to cut down on the complexity involved in operations with its minimal interface. When you get started, you get support for a wide range of major email services like Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Office 365, and more, which allows you to set up multiple email accounts across different services. Similarly, if your work revolves around using third-party productivity services like Evernote, OneNote, Pocket, Trello, and Todoist, you can integrate them on Newton to streamline your workflow.
In terms of other features, the app provides read receipts, send later, and undo send options, which are some common features you can find in common among most of the apps on this list. Similarly, the smart inbox functionality, found on other email clients as well, is covered with the tidy inbox feature in Newton. Tidy inbox focuses only on emails that matter to you to keep your inbox clean and clutter-free. Moving right along, one feature that separates the app from others is Recap. Recap automatically brings back conversations that await your reply or need following up, so you do not miss out on important tasks. As for other key features, Newton offers two-factor authentication, one-click unsubscribe, HTML signatures, remote wipe, and unified box, among others, to aid you with better email management.
Newton Mail Feature Highlights
i. Clean and easy-to-use interface ii. Third-party apps/services integration iii. Send later and undo send iv. Tidy inbox v. Recap vi. One-click unsubscribe vii. Remote wipe viii. Two-factor authentication Free, Paid ($49.99 per year) Get Newton
5. Edison Mail: best email client with advanced features
Edison Mail is a popular email app for Mac, and it recently got a free version, with access to a lot of features. The app has a clean interface that is fast and easy to navigate. Unified Inbox lets users combine their inboxes from the most popular providers like Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Yahoo Mail, and the likes. The best thing about using the app is how fast it feels and makes accessing different functions and sections easier. Not just that, Edison Mail is also smart and has an intelligent personal assistant built-in. The assistant automatically categorizes all your emails around important travels, receipts, entertainment, and purchases, so you do not have to worry about doing it manually.
Having access to all your emails in one place is another useful feature, and it is something that adds to the experience and makes checking up on important emails effortless. Moreover, for times when you need to lookup emails, the platform has an AI-powered search that allows you to sift through the email galore and find the right one. Edison Mail also takes care of your privacy with its built-in anti-tracking technology. As its name suggests, this blocks your read receipts so no one can see and track activities in your inbox. Finally, there is the one-tap unsubscribe functionality that lets you unsubscribe from spam with a single click to help you declutter your inbox.
Edison Mail Feature Highlights
i. Clean interface ii. Built-in intelligent personal assistant iii. AI-powered search iv. Built-in anti-tracking technology v. One-tap unsubscribe vi. Templates vii. Dark mode Free Get Edison Mail
6. Mailspring: best mac email client for professionals
If you like how the Apple Mail app looks and feels and wish it offered more functionality, your request is answered by Mailspring: a minimal and clean Mac email client that adds to your productivity while keeping things simple. When you get started with the app, you are greeted with a fresh and tidy interface with all of the different functionalities listed upfront. If you want to change its interface, you have a few options for themes and layouts that you can try out and set. Talking about core functionalities, Mailspring allows you to set up multiple accounts (including IMAP and Office 365) and have them organized in a unified inbox for quick and easy access to all the important emails. In addition, it also provides read receipts and link tracking functionality to help you know your emails well and keep a tab on when the recipients have read your mails.
Similar to other email apps on the list, Mailspring also gets you advanced search functionality. That way, you can find emails quickly and effectively. What’s more, the platform offers message translations into different languages, so you can read and understand emails sent to you in foreign languages. Similarly, there are also quick-reply templates, which come in handy when you need to respond to multiple emails at a time quickly. Furthermore, to aid with responding to emails, Mailspring comes with a built-in spell-check utility. As you can guess, this feature identifies incorrect spellings while you compose emails and messages and corrects them instantly.
Mailspring Feature Highlights
i. Minimal and clean UI ii. Customizable with themes and layouts iii. Unified inbox – combine inboxes in a single window iv. Advanced search functionality v. Email and message translations vi. Built-in spell-checking vii. Support for Gmail, iCloud, Office 365, Outlook.com, Yahoo!, and IMAP/SMTP. Free, Paid ($5 per month) Get Mailspring
7. Spike: best mac email client for productivity
Spike has a slightly different proposition than some of the other Mac email clients on the list. It markets itself as an all-in-one service that offers the best of email, chat apps, note apps, task managers, to-dos, calendar, and video call apps in a single place. What this means is that, with Spike, you can have conversational emails, which bring the best of email and messaging together to offer a conversation-based communication. In addition, you also get to make voice and video calls within the app, so you can have more engaging conversations. And, for times when you need to collaborate with your team, Spike has got you covered with its team collaboration feature.
The app supports email providers like Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, iCloud, and more, and it offers a priority (smart) box, similar to other email apps, to show only the important emails. Adding to the experience further is the advanced search functionality that offers quick and accurate results for your query. Integration with services like Google Calendar, iCloud, and Outlook is another useful feature, and it provides you the ability to manage your events, set up reminders, add tasks, and do a whole lot of other operations. Besides, Spike also has the send later feature that lets you schedule messages, along with a few other features like instant email unsubscribe, bulk operations, and undo send.
Spike Feature Highlights
i. All-in-one service with the best of email, chat apps, note apps, task managers, etc. ii. Messages, and voice and video calls iii. Advanced search iv. Send later and undo send v. Collaboration features Free Get Spike
8. Canary Mail: best secure email client for Mac
Canary Mail builds on the notion that not at all email clients ensure your personal data and activities remain private. And this is quite apparent with what it has to offer. To begin with, the app has a sleek and uncluttered interface that is easy to navigate and does not feature ads. It supports a host of email services like Gmail, iCloud, Office 365, Yahoo, and more, so you can add your email address on the platform easily. Besides, the platform also comes with read-notifications, one-click unsubscribe, and snooze features, which are quite useful and can come in handy at times.
Moving on to advanced features and functionalities, Canary Mail gets you smart notifications, read receipts, templates, attachments browser, custom thread actions, and contact profiles. So, for instance, you can use templates to set a default format and use it to create other emails, turn on smart notifications to only receive notifications for important updates to your inbox, and use attachments browser to easily preview all files in a conversation. Lastly, the most highlighting feature of Canary Mail is its robust encryption and strong privacy features, which promise to keep user data private and secure.
Canary Mail Feature Highlights
i. E2E encryption ii. PGP support iii. Natural language search iv. One-click unsubscribe v. Smart notifications vi. Strong privacy features vii. Email templates Free, Paid ($20) Get Canary Mail The aforementioned are some of the best email clients for Mac (and alternatives to Apple’s default Mail app) that you can install on your macOS-powered computer to organize your emails and better manage your multiple email accounts. Most of these apps are available on multiple platforms and come with cross-platform sync support, which means you can use them on all your devices to sync your emails across all of them.
