Emailing is probably the activity we do the most on our computers. Even if you don't work on a computer during the day, you probably sit down in front of it to check your inbox at the end of the day. If the Mail app that comes with your Mac doesn't provide the features you need, you're in luck. There are dozens of great email apps in the Mac App Store. I've tested many of them and these are my favorites. Each one has a little something special that makes it unique.
Simply put, Mailplane is a native Mac app that wraps around the familiar web interface of Google’s products. With Mailplane, you get Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts — all in the same application. You can use multiple accounts in the app, and you can mix and match the accounts &.
Polymail
Polymail for Mac has a fantastic interface with cute buttons everywhere so you don't have to think about what to do next. It actually looks like it belongs on a mobile device, except that you click the buttons instead of tapping them.
There is a fourth section that appears whenever you select an email, which displays all of the past correspondences you've had with that particular contact or group of contacts. It's great for quickly tracking down something you've talked about in the past.
You can set up new mail with a pre-made template, send calendar invites, get notifications when someone has read your email, and schedule an email to be sent at a later time.
You can also write or respond to emails with rich text formatting. So, if you want to change the font, add bold lettering, bullet point a section, or just slap an emoji in there, it's all available right from the toolbar at the top of your new email. The only thing it's missing is Touch Bar support, which would really make this app shine.
Polymail can be used for free, but you'll need to sign up for a subscription if you want all of the awesome features that make Polymail stand out, like read notifications, send later, and messaging templates. You can add these features for as low as $10 per month. If you are a heavy email user and these features entice you, give the free trial a run to see if it's worth your money.
If you want your computer email experience to look and feel more like a mobile experience, with big, easy-to-find action buttons, Polymail is the one for you.
Spark
Spark has this 'Smart Inbox' feature that separates mail into categories: Personal, Notifications, Newsletters, Pinned, and Seen. That is, any email that is from someone in your contacts or otherwise looks like a personal email will be filtered to the top of the inbox list. Below that, in a separate section, emails that look like alerts from companies you deal with, like your gas company or Amazon, that include some kind of alert or notification. Below that, you'll see a section called 'Newsletters' which is exactly that. Below that, there are emails you've flagged or tagged as important in some way. Lastly, emails you've seen, but haven't moved to another folder.
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Spark also allows you to snooze an email and come back to take care of it at a later time. This is invaluable when you regularly get emails that you need to respond to but don't have time for until the end of the day. I use it all of the time.
It also has gesture-based actions for getting to inbox zero. https://avatarlucky.netlify.app/quad-view-for-mac-apps.html. You can swipe to the right or left to delete, archive, pin, or, mark an email as unread.
And it has Touch Bar support, which I love.
Spark is best for people that like to have their inbox organized before they go through and move emails to new folders, address them, or delete them entirely. If that sounds appealing to you, try Spark.
Kiwi for Gmail
If you have one or more Gmail accounts, you should consider switching to Kiwi. This all-in-one triumph brings the look and feel of Gmail for the web to the desktop in the form of an app. With the service's unique Focus Filtered Inbox, you can view your messages based on Date, Importance, Unread, Attachments, and Starred. In doing so, you can prioritize your emails in real-time.
Perhaps the best reason to use Kiwi for Gmail is its G Suite integration. Thanks to the app, you now get to experience Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, as windowed desktop applications. Kiwi is available for Mac and Windows.
Postbox
New on our list for 2020, Postbox has been designed for professionals, but anyone with more than one email account should continue using it. Available for Mac and Windows, Postbox works with any IMAP or POP account, including Gmail, iCloud, Office 365, and more.
Postbox offers one of the fastest email search engines available, which is ideally suited when you need to find files, images, and other attachments. With the app's built-in Quick Bar, you can move a message, copy a message, switch folders, tag a message, Gmail label a message, or switch folders with just a few keystrokes.
Looking for more? Postbox comes with 24 (counting) themes, and much more.
Your favorite?
What's going to be your next email client for Mac?
Updated February 2020: Guide updated to reflect price changes and more.
macOS Catalina
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I've been on the hunt for the perfect cross-platform email setup ever since Mavericks made the native Mail app so awkward and unreliable. I've looked at the best alternative mail apps for Mac and done the same for both iPhone and iPad. As it turns out, Mailbox and Airmail play rather nicely together.. with a little help.
I've been using Airmail on and off since its release. Mavericks sealed Airmail's fate as my go-to Mail app when Mac Mail decided to eat my iMore account. I'm not talking a few emails here and there missing. I mean everything was gone. There was nothing left on Gmail's servers either. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So at that point I shut down Mac Mail and launched Airmail. Since then, I've been terrified to even open Mac Mail.
Where iOS is concerned, I can't say I've ever had a bad experience. I've just come across small annoyances that add up to large ones. My main being that I have to choose Archive or Delete, I can't just have both. Sure I can move items into my archive folder or trash but that's messy and complicated. Swipe gestures both ways would solve this but alas, Apple says no. So that led me on the quest to find a better alternative for iOS as well.
I knew Airmail was my choice where OS X was concerned. There's just too many features to pass it up. I've never found an email app for the Mac that I like more than Airmail. For Gmail users there are keyboard and swipe options for archive or delete, lots of custom folder mapping features, alias support, and most important to me, a send and archive option. It's also been the most accurate when it comes to syncing content inside folders. You can even rescan and build folders in the settings menu which has always immediately cleared up any discrepancies I've encountered.
I tried pretty much every mail app available for iPhone and iPad and always found myself coming back to Mailbox. It may not have as many options as its competition but my main goal is to triage mail as quickly and effortlessly as possible. With Mailbox I found myself being able to clear my inbox, compose messages, and reply to things in fewer taps and swipes than other mail apps. Eventually, that combined with the reliability of Mailbox's push notifications were what made me settle on it.
Now it was time to create a uniform workflow..
I started by launching Mailbox on my iPhone and thinking about what lists I needed. I knew I didn't want to get into a folder situation again where organizing them all took more time than actually reading emails did. So I created a few basic lists such as Receipts, Important, and Travel. You can always add lists whenever you'd like but my goal was to not make them extensive. I save things until they can be archived these days, that's it. To finish setup on my iPhone and iPad I disabled all notifications for the stock Mail app and enabled them for Mailbox. The only thing I left on were the sounds for VIP contacts. That way I knew if someone important was emailing. Mailbox chimes in too but it's a slight annoyance I'm willing to deal with, at least for now. In a future Mailbox update I'd really like to see more notification options especially for VIP contacts.
Next I cleared up both my iCloud and iMore accounts on the desktop by hiding folders in Airmail. If I couldn't see them in Mailbox they were no good to me anymore. Hiding them ensured all my folders are still there if I need to refer to something but they aren't distracting me and cluttering up my new workflow.
I also tweaked some Airmail settings and preferences to my liking, which may be different for everyone, but this mainly consisted of the following:
- Hiding anything that Mailbox didn't require
- Enabling Send and Archive
- Making sure the Delete key archived mail while Command + Delete trashed messages
- Tweak folder mapping to match what Mailbox recommends for desktop clients
The last step is the most imperative and the one I paid the most attention to. The Orchestra website gives a very good overview of the perfect mail setup so desktop mail plays nice with Mailbox for iOS. It will generally apply to any desktop mail app, including Airmail. The support article can be found here:
- Using Mailbox with Gmail and iCloud on the desktop and on the web
The link contains a nice chart that lays out how you should map folders in both places. I simply made sure iCloud was set up correctly on the web and then mapped them all in Airmail's settings the way Mailbox suggested.
I repeated these steps on both my iMac and my Macbook Air so both versions of Airmail looked the exact same. Once that was done, I tested my workflow to make sure things filed and behaved as I wanted. My only annoyance with this setup is that I can't delegate items for later as easily in Airmail as I can in Mailbox. For now my solution is to just deal with them on my iPhone or iPad when I can. If I'm in Airmail, I leave them in my inbox until I switch devices. It's not an ideal solution but it's one I'm willing to live with until I have a native Mailbox client for Mac. Perhaps there's a way to use Airmail's todo options but I haven't quite figured that out yet.
Airmail App Mac
Other than that, messages re-appear in all my inboxes when Mailbox puts them there, I can manage and view my lists across OS X and iOS and they're perfectly in sync. The whole setup took me an hour or two to tweak and get perfect. Almost three weeks later, I'm happy with this setup and I've found myself handling email a lot more efficiently than I ever have.
Your thoughts?
My setup won't suit everyone but it's the closest I've come to achieving complete email harmony outside of using stock Mail apps. If you've tweaked and toyed with email because you don't like the native options OS X and iOS provide, let me know in the comments what you're currently using and why!
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