No single app ticked all the boxes, at least not in the same ways. For the more advanced options, I dug through the settings and preferences and played around with things to see how they were to use. In the past decade, I've picked up an absurd amount of experience with email apps, so it was often clear pretty quickly which were great options and which ones had the potential to make the email experience even worse (yes, it's possible).Īny apps that passed the initial sniff test I then used for a few days for normal email-y things. In practice, this meant logging in with one of my (sadly, many) email addresses and using it. I tested any mail client for Mac that seemed like it met most of these criteria. There are simple tweaks, like being able to snooze emails so they reappear in your inbox later or built-in reminders to follow up with someone you haven't replied to, that make using an email app just, well, nicer. While this wasn't strictly required, some kind of email automation, filtering, and customization was considered a big plus. One of the advantages of having a dedicated email app is that you get access to more advanced features and integrations with other apps. For Mac apps, this means they have to run natively, take advantage of macOS-specific features like the menubar and notifications, and respect things like default keyboard shortcuts.Īdvanced features and integrations. If you're going to use an actual app, it had better be nice.

The Gmail and Outlook web apps aren't dire. I was looking for apps that supported major services, like Gmail and Office 365, as well as the IMAP and POP3 protocols so you could use most other options.Ī great user experience.

Email apps should, where possible, be service agnostic. Apps that just added Gmail notifications to your menu bar and other similar features weren't included. You need to be able to read, write, search, and sort your mail.

To put together this list, I reviewed dozens of Mac email clients (and skinned web apps purporting to be Mac email clients). For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site-we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software.

Mac mail client alternative