The Next Generation of Mail Clients [LWN.net]

February 25, 2004

This article was contributed by Kristian Eide

E-mail is the "killer app" of the Internet; an enormous number of messages are exchanged every day, and while web-based mail has become very popular in recent years, many people still prefer the added speed and flexibility of a stand-alone mail client application.

The mail client is in principal a very simple application which allows the user to read and send mail, but all modern mail clients include a host of features to help better manage the ever-increasing number of messages we have to deal with. Graphical mail clients allow for easy sorting of messages into folders, easy searching on a number of criteria, address book management and automatic filtering based on custom-defined rules.

The development of new features does not stop there. The next generation of mail clients include features such as virtual folders (also known as search folders), faster and more flexible searching, easier creation of filters and lots of small things to make common tasks quicker. This review is a comparison of the features available in the next generation of mail clients and their usability in dealing with large numbers of messages.

Reviewed mail clients:
(click on icon to jump directly to review)

	Evolution 1.5.2 (unstable)
	KMail 1.6 (part of KDE 3.2)
	Opera 7.50 (preview 2)
	Mozilla 1.6 / Thunderbird 0.5
	Microsoft Outlook 2002 SP-1 (part of Microsoft Office XP)

Except for Evolution (the latest stable version is recommended over the tested development version), all of these mail clients were quite stable. I did not encounter any problems which would preclude me from recommending them for daily use.

Note that Outlook has been included for completeness, both because of its popularity and for use as a reference. I did not include Eudora, even though the latest version does include unique features such as a Content Concentrator, Contextual Filing, MoodWatch and Email Usage Stats. Eudora is both closed source and not available for any UNIX platforms.

Quick overview of supported features:

	Evolution	KMail	Opera	Mozilla	Outlook
Mail import	No	Yes	Only Windows	Only Windows	Only Windows
New mail notification	Only beep	Yes	Only beep	Only beep	Yes
Encryption	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Follow-ups	Yes	No	No	No	Yes
Forward attached/Inline	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Only inline
Write HTML mail	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Multiple accounts	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Customizable keybindings	No	Yes	No	No	No
Full index search	Yes	Disabled	Yes	No	No
Advanced searching	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IMAP search	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
Search folders	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Spam filter	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Handle mailing lists	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Do not download mail rules	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Labels for e-mail	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Create filter from message	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Emoticons	No	No	No	Yes	No
LDAP	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes

How I reviewed

In order to get a feel for how each mail client handles daily tasks, I conducted my review by performing a number of tasks:

Download a reasonably large amount of messages, about 2100 in total
Create some additional folders and set up filters for sorting messages to them
Add some contacts to the address book
Perform several searches
Compose and reply to a few messages
Set up some virtual folders (for mail clients which support this)

To provide a way to compare the different mail clients, I then divided the review into the following sections:

Mail import from other mail clients
Account setup
Filters
Address book
Searching
Reading messages
Composing messages
IMAP
Virtual folders
Encryption

Note that I did not actually test the encryption features, and I just comment on whether they are present or not. Also, while several of the mail clients now include integrated support for detecting spam mail, I did not test this feature as I plan to take a closer look at this aspect in a future review, and also perform a comparison with external spam filters such as SpamBayes and POPFile.

Final words

This review is extensive and I might have left out something important from your favorite mail client or have written something in error. I very much appreciate any feedback.

(Log in to post comments)

Evolution mail import

Posted Feb 26, 2004 8:10 UTC (Thu) by kreide (subscriber, #4708) [Link]

Thank you for the comment; I only considered the 1.5 version in my review, and I'm sure the stable 1.6 version will have better mail import. I will add this to my notes section.

Kristian Eide

Evolution mail import

Posted Feb 26, 2004 13:39 UTC (Thu) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link]

1.5 does import as well; I just used it last night :) It also has limited emoticon support, but you have to turn it on in the prefs. Otherwise a generally nice review. One other thing you may want to consider is that evolution supports MS Exchange (via a proprietary plugin) and in the next release Novell's Groupwise server (code in gnome cvs.) Additionally, in 1.5/1.6, evolution is becoming a desktop-wide calendaring and addressbook server, so that, for example, your panel calendar can view your appointments or gaim can use the same addressbook as evo. It's going to be very cool.

Groupware functionality

Posted Feb 26, 2004 15:16 UTC (Thu) by kreide (subscriber, #4708) [Link]

Since I was reviewing the mail client functionality in this review, I did not put a great emphasis on groupware functionality. However, I should mention that KOrganizer also supports viewing your appointments, and todo-items, in its different calendar views (day, week, month etc.).

Kopete (KDE IM client) also already uses the address book in KDE and KWallet for managing passwords.

Reply quotation on kmail

Posted Feb 26, 2004 15:22 UTC (Thu) by kreide (subscriber, #4708) [Link]

This feature can also be somewhat annoying as I frequently mark some text, switch to another window for pasting it (e.g. doing a Google search) and then return to reading the mail. When I hit reply only the marked text will be quoted. This is a small annoyance, however, and I agree it deserves mention.

Reply quotation on kmail

Posted Mar 4, 2004 14:18 UTC (Thu) by bilou (guest, #19959) [Link]

> This feature can also be somewhat annoying as I frequently mark some text,
> switch to another window for pasting it (e.g. doing a Google search) and
> then return to reading the mail. When I hit reply only the marked text will
> be quoted.

What would be cool is a "reply with selected text as quote" menu entry in the context menu when you right-click on the selected text.

Newer version of Outlook

Posted Feb 26, 2004 15:28 UTC (Thu) by kreide (subscriber, #4708) [Link]

I'm not sure I agree. Most people will still be using Office 2000/XP and some even older versions, and upgrading costs hundreds of dollars (or more!). All the other mail clients, however, you can download and use today at no cost.

Also, I only had Office XP at hand when writing the review, which only helps to better illustrates my point I think.

Newer version of Outlook

Posted Feb 26, 2004 15:36 UTC (Thu) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link]

Your comments are all true, however you do talk about the "next generation" of email clients. In such a comparison, the latest (supposedly much improved) version of Outlook would be interesting. I do understand the reason that Outlook XP/2000 is included. I also understand the lack of interest in paying a lot of money for the latest version of Outlook just to be able to include it in this article ;)

Newer version of Outlook

Posted Feb 26, 2004 15:51 UTC (Thu) by kreide (subscriber, #4708) [Link]

Your point is also valid, however, the only reason Outlook was even included was to serve as a reference with what is commonly available for the majority of users (which still run Windows unfortunately) today.

Using the latest Office 2003 would not have done most of them any good, as upgrading is not an option and might not be for some time. After reading the review they can, however, immediately decide it is time to try out one of the alternatives, several of which are multi platform.

Polarbar: a good Java based mailer

Posted Feb 26, 2004 15:30 UTC (Thu) by blaz (guest, #3591) [Link]

We use Polarbar Mailer here. It's a Java based mailer that has had pretty much all the features in your table and more. And has had them for some time. It runs on our Windows and Linux boxes and has a good mailing list where you can talk to the developers. See http://www.polarbar.org/. It's free but not gpl as it apparently still has some copyrighted code from its old origins.

Polarbar's main problem is that it doesn't use swing but the older awt java interface. This means that it looks good on Windows and OS/2 but the fonts and layouts can be really ugly under Linux; dunno why Linux and AWT don't mix well (swing does though), and I haven't been able to fix it, although IBM's Java 1.3 tended to look better than Sun's 1.4.1

So I've been looking for alternatives and so far only Evolution seems to come close. When 1.5.2 moves into Debian Sarge, we may give it a whirl.

Or maybe by then polarbar will have migrated to swing.

Bruce

Key feature: threading

Posted Feb 26, 2004 17:00 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link]

kmail tries something like this, if I understand you correctly. In my case (old version, KDE 3.1.5) it does not get the threads quite right, though. I did not delve into the details of this, just considered it a curiosity.

Key feature: threading

Posted Feb 26, 2004 17:10 UTC (Thu) by mmutz (guest, #5642) [Link]

> kmail tries something like this

Indeed. KMail 1.6 (optionally) uses a threading-by-subject algorithm
similar to mutt's.

Key feature: threading

Posted Feb 26, 2004 22:32 UTC (Thu) by stephenjudd (subscriber, #3227) [Link]

Evolution can do threading. I personally dislike it though ;)

Key feature: threading

Posted Mar 1, 2004 22:39 UTC (Mon) by Hawke (subscriber, #6978) [Link]

Mozilla can do threading. It's just non-obvious.
In thunderbird it's a bit better...in any case, it's (by default) the leftmost sort column on the message list.

Mozilla Mail != Thunderbird

Posted Feb 26, 2004 19:11 UTC (Thu) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link]

It's unclear if you actually reviewed Mozilla Mail 1.6 or Thunderbird, but based on the entries on the table, you may have just done Thunderbird, as a number of the features you list as missing/limited are incorrect for Mozilla Mail 1.6 (on Windows in my case, but I'm pretty sure this all applied to the Linux and other versions as well):

I can have any sound I want associated with new mail notifications. The default is NOT just a beep, but a nice series of tones.
It's unclear what you meant by Follow-Up's but Mozilla has Reply-To and it properly handles message ID's and thread IDs so things get threaded properly.
I don't know precisely what you mean by "full index search", or "Search Folders", but Mozilla 1.6 Mail can do two different kinds of searches:
- a quick search that allows you to just search the subject and other header fields in the currently displayed folder (View->Show/Hide->Search Bar)
- an extensive search dialog that lets you do full searches over a wide range of fields, folders, sub-folders and so on (Tools->Search Messages)
It's unclear what you mean by "Handle mailing list" - do you mean that it can receive a digest and then split out the individual messages? If you mean something other than that, it's unclear. AFAIK, Mozilla Mail can't do this, but there may be a plug-in that does.

As a final note: the next generation "feature" you mention, virtual folders, is something that the Emacs/XEmacs VM mail reader has been doing for at least 8-10 years now. The whole thing is based on the concept of virtual folders. For people who live in Emacs, it's a really good way to do mail.

Pete

Graphical clients via dialup

Posted Feb 27, 2004 8:43 UTC (Fri) by djao (subscriber, #4263) [Link]

I routinely use graphical clients at dialup speeds and have been doing so for quite some time. The secret is to view your mail using IMAP so that the graphical client runs locally and only the actual mail message data is sent over the network. Many years ago I wrote a Linux Gazette article on this topic, which is still mostly valid today.

The best part about IMAP is that you don't have to give up mutt over ssh! The two can coexist quite happily. I often ssh into the mail machine and run mutt to access the local IMAP mail store. Other times, I use evolution or mozilla mail or pine or even IMP Webmail. All your mail lives in the IMAP repository and you can use any IMAP compatible program to connect to your repository at any time.

The Next Generation of Mail Clients

Posted Mar 1, 2004 2:30 UTC (Mon) by leonid (guest, #4891) [Link]

I have broadband almost everywhere where I go, but I am still a happy mutt user and no way that this will change in a hundred years to come. ;)

I've built (that's actually a process) a very custmized system with mutt, procmail, vim, spamassassin, perl and exim. It is easy to replicate on other machines that I use, and I really doubt that any other MUA can replace it.

...still I am reading all these reviews looking for new ideas in mail processing. ;)

The Next Generation of Mail Clients

Posted Feb 27, 2004 20:06 UTC (Fri) by asbjornsabo (guest, #6310) [Link]

Thanks for the review! I have read parts of it, and found it interesting. There is one thing I seem to miss, however (I may have overlooked it, though), and that is information on how (i.e. in which format) mail is stored. This is vitally important, at least to me. I want to have my mail in a format other programs can access. (For the time beeing, maildir is my preferred format.)

I had to use Outlook for some years, and as we know, Outlook stores the mail in a proprietary format, and have very limited (read: practically none) facilities for exporting mail. It is possible to recover mail lost to Outlook, but due to the work and difficulties involved, it is not practical. So I still have 300MB of mail only accessible from Outlook. I do not want to get into that situation again.

Asbj.S.

TheBat!

Posted Mar 5, 2004 20:26 UTC (Fri) by busigia (guest, #15461) [Link]

Having used RITLab's email product TheBat! for a number of years, I have discovered the community of "Bat" users to be quite large - numbering in the millions! With penetration like that, TheBat! should also be considered for inclusion in any future mail client reviews.

TheBat!'s basic version is excellent, and very responsive. It imports the mail from a variety of other clients, and has encryption built-in, as well as the capability to interact with external encryption software, such as PGP, or GPG.

TheBat! also has a corporate version that has a hardware key, without which the message store is unusable. These guys have security pretty well figured out. The software works with LDAP servers well, and the speed with which it handles large mail stores, as well as large address tables is excellent.

TheBat! has an excellent record of being immune to the virus, and trojan hijacks, and other problems so typical of Windows mail applications. It also integrates with a wide variety of virus scanning products, enabling it to be a safe network citizen, for both sending, and recieving.

While theBat is currently only a win32 application, it reportedly works fine with Linux, under the Wine compatability environment.

I too, have experimented with quite a number of mail clients, and most recently, spent a great deal of time focussing on Evolution, which is passable, though the speed with which it operates leaves much to be desired.

If TheBat! had a native *nix, or Linux version, then I would be very happy, but for companies with a predominantly windows deployment, TheBat! is probably the best mailer available, with a near-zero track record of vulnerabilities normally associated with Outlook, or other Windows mail products.

One more feature worth noting - TheBat! is fully capable of operating, and supporting multilingual correspondence. When I last looked, it supported most languages using roman. greek, and even cyrillic alphabets. I am uncertain as to whether it supports Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, or other Asian languages. Nevertheless, TheBat! would be excellent in a personal, or business deployment, for environments in the America's, as well as Europe, and western Asia.

It took a lot of research for me to discover this product a few years back, because I wanted a product that could support multi-lingual, and very secure correspondence, where the encryption, and language support were simple to employ. The many other fine features that I found in TheBat! made it a pleasure to use, for the many years I worked in a Win32 environment, before abandoning MS products.

This product is best known in Europe, and has tremendous penetration in Eastern Europe, with a mammoth market share there. If you have a Microsoft environment, then TheBat! is worthy of consideration - especially to support confidential corporate communications with its built-in PGP capabilities - that can operate almost transparently - once address book entries are marked for encrypted communications preferred.

Check out www.ritlabs.com

Written by an enthusiastic customer.