What is the best desktop Email client for Windows 10?

Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux

Exchange Support:Yes

Mozilla Thunderbird has slowed down its development of features to only focus resources on security and stability. See More

Top Pro

Free (as in freedom with no ads!)

Top Con

Development slowed to only focus on stability and security

DiligentAsaruludu's Experience

INTUITIVE and FAMILIAR - Simple Easy GUI See More

Top Pro

Consistent and involving a moderate learning curve

The app design of Mozilla Thunderbird has not changed significantly since its beginning, making its learning curve almost non-existent. See More

Top Con

Serious bugs

Clicking on a subject line can bring up the wrong email. See More

AmiableAmechania's Experience

No good tracking for opened mails See More

Top Pro

Good filtering system

Mozilla Thunderbird offers a flexible filtering system with the ability to set flags and read/unread, as well as sort/assign to new mail directories. There are also numerous plugins available to assist in the filtering. See More

Top Con

Terrible search - could be better yet it works.

Ryan Harris's Experience

Thunderbird is growing every other day. See More

Top Pro

Available on Linux, OS X and Windows

Top Con

Terrible integration with macOS

Simple things - drag/dropping pictures doesn't work, for instance. See More

Top Pro

Free (as in freedom and beer)

Free to download on any operating system See More

Top Pro

Large assortment of plugins available

Mozilla Thunderbird offers a huge amount of extensions to expand the usability and options of the client. See More

Top Pro

Tabs for navigation

Top Pro

Lightning Calendar and Address Book integration

Top Pro

Great flexibility

More options and extended settings than most power users could dream of. Get it working how YOU want. See More

Top Pro

Send large files easily

Install pCloud plugin for Thunderbird and your files (upto 20 GB free storage provided) will be converted into download links. See More

Top Pro

RSS feeds

Lets you reads RSS feeds like streams of email with filter, search and labeling See More

Add to Chrome - It's Free Try now - it's free

Built by Slant

Find the best product
instantly.

Stop wasting time searching endlessly. Lustre recommends the best products at their lowest prices – right on Amazon.

4.7 star rating

score 82 · Answer 2

eM Client

Top Pro

Still actively developed

They've been developing and improving it consistently for years. See More

Top Con

Only two accounts unless you pay

PoliteAeolus's Experience

I have over 55000 emails in about 25 folders - plus my inbox which is always easily over 5000. eM Client, which I have used for many years now, keeps up with me and my overwhelming email without a hitch. See More

Specs

IMAP:YES

POP3:YES

Platforms:Windows, MacOS

Exchange Support:YES

No way to see 2 arbitrary emails at the same time. See More

Top Pro

Very fast

Top Con

Just one window available

ModestSunWukong's Experience

I wanted to switch servers to exchange and was planning on using Thunderbird. However, the add-on for TB to do this is no longer supported. Then I found eM Client. It seems to be the best of TB (On-the-fly color coding and simple interface) and some of the good features in Outlook. The code to use Exchange is written into eM Client. It is not an add-on that is always at risk of being dropped. See More

Top Pro

Beautiful interface, customisable to your needs

Top Con

Poor encryption support

If you regularly use PGP encryption for e-mail, you'll need to have another e-mail client available to rely on. eM Client frequently fails to recognize when messages arrive encrypted, and there's no way to manually call up the decryption menu if it misses one. See More

ConsiderateRaediengiedte's Experience

Hate Outlook. Used MailBird for a while. Not good. eM is great. Jim See More

Top Pro

Free and paid version

It is free for 2 accounts and as long as you don't use it commercially. Paid version comes with support and can handle more than 2 accounts. See More

Top Con

Only has one nice interface/skin

The other available skins has a 90s feel to them. See More

masoxs's Experience

The bottom line is, that i would highly recommend this email clinet to all my coleagues. See More

Top Pro

Many useful options

Such as sorting through categories, etc. See More

Top Con

Terrrible in handing unread emails

Sorting of unread emails is very useless when compared to other email clients. See More

ImmaculateKresnik's Experience

Has worked flawlessly and their built in integration with Fruux was a nice bonus. See More

Top Pro

Calendar inclusive

Top Con

Interface is too simple

Many options are too hidden and it takes at least 3 clicks to set them up. See More

Top Pro

Includes Quick Text

eM Client seamlessly integrated the Quick Text extension that was available on Thunderbird. This makes it easy to quickly auto-insert dynamic text, based on many variables, saving time and the need to tediously repeat manual text replies. See More

Top Con

Bloated

Huge size, high memory consumption, uses CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework). See More

Top Pro

It's simple to add new accounts

Top Con

It doesn't store all emails on the disc

Top Pro

A perfect companion to your Gmail or other webmail you might have

Works great with Thexyz email. See More

Top Con

Constant syncing errors

Top Pro

The only email client which synchronizes Gmail contacts properly

Top Con

Poor integration with Yahoo Mail

Integrations with a Yahoo Mail account doesn't always work well in eM Client. See More

Top Pro

It doesn't store all emails on the disc

It saves space, unlike Thunderbird. See More

Top Pro

Chat included

eM Client includes integrated chat, so you don't need another application for chatting with your friends. All common chat services supported (Google chat, Jabber and others). See More

All messages in one place. But you can select to show only messages from each account either. See More

score 32 · Answer 3

Postbox

Top Pro

One Inbox for all accounts

Top Con

No support forum

Support for paid product has no online forums. See More

Specs

Platforms:MacOS, Windows

Search:Yes

Postbox does not minimize to tray and does not run in background. If closed, no mails will be received or sent. Unless you keep the app running nothing works. See More

Top Pro

Handles 1,000's emails quickly

Top Con

Does not support minimizing to tray

Top Pro

Quick Bar for macros

Quick bar allows you to add a variety of content to your message. It will let you reuse URLS in your Sent folder, and autocompletes against canned responses, signatures, and topics. See More

Top Con

Not available for all 3 major platforms

Linux support is missing. See More

Top Pro

Thunderbird with more features

Postbox is based on Thunderbird but with more features and further development. See More

Top Con

Way too expensive

Currently the price is at 45€. That's ridiculous for an E-Mail client. The design alone is pretty but neither does that or the functionality in any way justify the pricing. See More

score 4 · Answer 4

Claws Mail

Top Pro

Traditional user interface

Specs

Platforms:BSD, Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, Unix, Windows

Search:Yes

Top Pro

Has many plugins for extra functionality

This allows you to easily import all your emails from your previous email client to Mailbird. See More

score 19 · Answer 5

Mailbird 2.0

Top Pro

Import feature

Top Con

Poor contact management

Only recently you can import from Gmail. But that's about it. See More

Yanis's Experience

Great, simple, and with a lot of options ! See More

Specs

Top Pro

Unified Inbox

This allows you to funnel all emails from all accounts into one unified folder, so you don't have to move between different accounts. See More

Top Con

Interface nags

The interface will often nag you to spam your contacts to spread the word about Mailbird. See More

Top Pro

Fast

It does the job fast. See More

Top Con

Search index isn't great

Top Pro

Free and paid version

Users who only need to use the basic features of the app have a free version available, though it does limit to only 3 sync'd accounts. There is a paid version that does extend functionality and allows for unlimited account but it does cost $1.00 a month or $45.00 as a one time fee. See More

Top Con

Can be slow

Top Pro

Apps that extend functionality

Mailbird 2.0 supports separate apps that can extend the programs functionality such as Sunrise Calendar, which allows one to add multiple calendars in one view or Evernote which allows for easy not taking and sharing. See More

Top Con

Loses messages

It seems not to catch all files when importing. Often they only arrive days later. Or do not appear in the shared IN-box at all! See More

Top Pro

Free and paid versions

Users who only need to use the basic features of the app have a free version available, though it does limit to only 1 account. There is a paid Mailbird Pro version that does extend functionality and allows for unlimited accounts but it does cost $1.00 a month or $45.00 as a one time fee. See More

Top Con

Fixed files

You can't move them from one account to another, as we could with Windows Live Mail and others. See More

Top Pro

Unlimited email accounts

There is no limit to the number of email accounts you can manage from Mailbird. See More

Top Pro

App side bar

This allows you to have one layout with your navigation bar, message list, email convos and productivity apps in view at once so you can work your email and productivity tools synchronously. See More

Top Pro

Touchscreen support

Mailbird 2.0 has touchscreen support for tablets and other touch screen Windows devices which makes it easy to control no matter what kind of Windows device is being used. See More

Tap the windows key, type mail. See More

score 11 · Answer 6

Mail and Calendar

Top Pro

Built in to Windows 10

Top Con

Attachment woes

Again like Apple, and other built in default mail applications;, attachments can be an issue. Some are not allowed outright and are never fetched. Such as executables. Compressed archives are scanned (zip/pk/etc) for viri while non compressed archives are not (tar, pak, etc) meaning false positives can block archives and malware can slip by depending on the format. Large files (over 5-10 MB) may not download in app at all. Files from non-Microsoft OSs may damage forks. Over simplified: Many Unix OSs still use ‘hidden’ file parts along with the principle file. Called forks and other names: if the sending app doesn’t properly accommodate the files you may receive multiple files that don’t work correctly, or one file missing all formatting and/or instructions. See More

's Experience

Windows Mail is simple to use and the typing experience is great. See More

Top Pro

Easy settings

Download attachments. Or don’t. Or just from specific senders. Auto display images or don’t. Settings options are easy to understand. Sync to your Microsoft account, or don’t. Up to you. See More

Top Con

Requires a Microsoft account

If you don’t already have one you will need a Microsoft based login. Be it Mail, Windows, Live, or Office. This could be a non-starter for some people. See More

lostinlodos's Experience

For a quick and easy solution, Mail, is easy to understand and set up. It’s even easier to use. Just tap the windows key and type mail. And hit enter or select the icon. Setting up new accounts is icon driven (in options). Click the provider, type in the user if and password, and click ok. On first run it supports most major choices easily and also supports most major fetch protocols like pop and ima. See More

Top Pro

Low memory usage

st is built to serve as a lightweight terminal emulator. It's very light and doesn't require many resources to run, making it able to run well on older and low-end machines. See More

Top Con

Poor spam filter

Much like Apple’s Mail software, Microsoft is an over achiever in spam filtering. You will find many OKd, accepted, and otherwise green lit mail will wind up in spam regardless of settings. So you still need to scan through your spam box regularly to catch legitimate mail and send it back to the in box. See More

Top Pro

Extremely simple architecture

st consists of a single C file that takes seconds to recompile. This also makes it very easy to understand and customize. See More

Top Con

No built in viewer

Mail is basic. As such email with formatting Microsoft doesn’t support can arrive garbled or unreadable. This is especially true of complex email such as news notices from web sources and mail with imbedded images or columns. Non-Latin email is also problematic depending on which encoding for the language is used. See More

Top Pro

Easy schedule

Fetch whenever you want. Every few hours, daily, at set times. See More

Top Con

Sync is not always accurate

Automated Sync may not always pull all mail. You will occasionally need to manually pull mail. See More

Top Pro

Supports everything

The included on clicks are: Microsoft (+live, office, hotmail), google, yahoo (+at&t, sbc, Ameritech, bell, Bcus, ...) Many more via other. Just type in the fetch address for your provider (almost always available from their setting or help) and click ok. See More

No tracking or logging of personally identifiable information Unlike competing services, we do not save any tracking information. By default, we do not record metadata such as the IP addresses used to log into accounts. As we have no way to read encrypted emails, we do not serve targeted advertisements. To protect user privacy, ProtonMail does not require any personally identifiable information to register See More

score 8 · Answer 7

ProtonMail

Top Con

Some sites don`t want to proceed with registration with this mail

Top Pro

Anonymous

CromulentIllapa's Experience

I am extremely impressed with the free version of the service. I would most definitely recommend Protonmail to friends , family and particularly my fellow crypto coin contacts. Never felt as secure opening my email and I do have experience in this field! See More

Specs

End-to-end encryption:Yes

Supported platforms:Android, iOS, Web

Free tier:Yes

Open source:No

Open Source Cryptography Time-tested and trusted encryption algorithms We use only secure implementations of AES, RSA, along with OpenPGP. Furthermore, all of the cryptographic libraries we use are open source. By using open source libraries, we can guarantee that the encryption algorithms we are using do not have clandestinely built in back doors. ProtonMail's open source software has been thoroughly vetted by security experts from around the world to ensure the highest levels of protection. See More

Top Pro

Open Source

Top Pro

ProtonMail 2.0 to the world. We are happy to announce that we are also releasing ProtonMail 2.0 as open source software!

From the beginning, we have been strong proponents of open source software and the core cryptography libraries that we develop and use have been open source from day one. Today, we are happy to take the next step and completely open source our webmail interface. This means all the ProtonMail code that runs on your computer is now available for inspection. We hope that by opening up our platform, we will encourage additional contributors to help us make ProtonMail the world’s most secure email service. Our move to open source has actually been coming for a long time. While it would have also been possible to open source ProtonMail 1.x, we felt that such a move was not appropriate given that the code was intended to be deprecated. By open sourcing ProtonMail 2.0, we are open sourcing the future of ProtonMail. As we continue to expand our private email service with mobile apps, you can look forward to more open source announcements as our code base matures. ProtonMail 2.0 can be viewed online on Github at the link below. As a nod to our CERN and MIT roots, we are releasing under the permissive MIT license. Let us know if you do something cool with our code. https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClient See More

Top Pro

Zero Access to User Data

Your encrypted data is not accessible to us ProtonMail's zero access architecture means that your data is encrypted in a way that makes it inaccessible to us. Data is encrypted on the client side using an encryption key that we do not have access to. This means we don't have the technical ability to decrypt your messages, and as a result, we are unable to hand your data over to third parties. With ProtonMail, privacy isn't just a promise, it is mathematically ensured. For this reason, we are also unable to do data recovery. If you forget your password, we cannot recover your data. Demo showing email cryptography End-to-end encryption means that no one but the intended recipient can read the message Open Source Cryptography Time-tested and trusted encryption algorithms We use only secure implementations of AES, RSA, along with OpenPGP. Furthermore, all of the cryptographic libraries we use are open source. By using open source libraries, we can guarantee that the encryption algorithms we are using do not have clandestinely built in back doors. ProtonMail's open source software has been thoroughly vetted by security experts from around the world to ensure the highest levels of protection. See More

Top Pro

Self Destructing Messages

With ProtonMail, emails are no longer permanent You can set an optional expiration time on ProtonMail’s encrypted emails, so they will be automatically deleted from the recipient’s inbox once they have expired. This technology works for both emails sent to other ProtonMail users, and encrypted emails sent to non-ProtonMail email addresses. Similar to SnapChat, we’ve added a way for you to have ephemeral communication. See More

Top Pro

Privacy respecting

User data is protected by strict privacy laws because all servers are located in Switzerland. See More

Top Pro

Built-in end-to-end encryption

Messages are encrypted at all times Messages are stored on ProtonMail servers in encrypted format. They are also transmitted in encrypted format between our servers and user devices. Messages between ProtonMail users are also transmitted in encrypted form within our secure server network. Because data is encrypted at all steps, the risk of message interception is largely eliminated. See More

The calendar includes agenda, day and three-day views. See More

score 14 · Answer 8

Microsoft Outlook 2016

Top Pro

Good built-in calendar

Top Con

The UI is outdated

Nico Tate Parker's Experience

I've found that Outlook is one of the simplest, best email clients to use. See More

Specs

Platforms:MacOS, Windows, Android

Exchange Support:Yes

Outlook does not support email aliases other then outlook aliases See More

Top Pro

Integrates with Microsoft services

Top Con

No aliases

Lynette Chia's Experience

Its search email function constantly DOES NOT WORK which frustrates the hell out of me. It just won't search no matter how I rebuild index and tried all the recommended suggestions. The only fix I found so far was to rollback to earlier versions which solved the email indexing issue but using that as a solution irks me. See More

Top Pro

Integrates with cloud storage services

Microsoft Outlook comes with built-in cloud storage browser allowing you to attach files directly from services such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive or OneDrive to emails and directly open attached files without the need for the main cloud storage app. See More

Top Con

Crashes frequently

The only issue with Outlook 2017 is that when the Mail folder increases in size, it sometimes crashes for no reason it, causing loss of data. See More

Peter J. Mello's Experience

Once upon a time this was the ultimate communication tool for computers, but after a decade of interface stagnation it's now inferior to most basic webmail interfaces. See More

Top Pro

Excellent notifications center calendar widget

Top Con

Rather buggy

ClassyAhBolomTzacab's Experience

paasword, paeword, paeword,,,,,,,, See More

Top Pro

Good built-in contacts

In addition to showing contact information, the People section of Outlook can show all conversations you've had with a person. Moreover, if you're looking for someone that's not in your contact's list, but is in your company's or school's directory, Outlook can pull that information through integration with Global Address List (GAL). See More

Top Con

Corrupted or incompatible configuration on updates

Top Pro

Helps prioritize email

The app will automatically attempt to figure out which emails are important to you and surface those. The priority emails will show up in your inbox in a tab called Focused, with other emails in a tab called Other. It aims to separate spam and promotional emails from the important emails. See More

Top Pro

Smart lookup

Smart lookup is a feature where the Bing search engine is bundled in the app to allow users to automatically search for relevant websites, information and images based on the word highlighted by users, without need to open external browsers. The results will be shown on the right pane of the window. See More

Top Pro

Integration with calendar and tasks

Quick conversion of a received email to a task with the deadline. See More

Top Pro

Priority messages

Microsoft Outlook comes with feature called "Clutter" to filter out incoming email based on the priority of the message set by user. User will be alerted when the high-priority message is incoming, whereas the low-priority message will be put in a separate folder. See More

Top Pro

Attach files from cloud

Microsoft Outlook allow users to directly attach an attachment directly from cloud services without need to download an entire file before attach to the intended e-mail. See More

The UI is very well designed and neat. See More

score 7 · Answer 9

Mailspring

Top Pro

Neat UI

LovelyTheros's Experience

EXTREMELY SLOOOOOOOOOOOOW! See More

ResoluteBassareus's Experience

No addressbook and no calendar See More

This e-mail client is free and very simplistic as it tries to only display the most necessary things (email list, labels, contacts, add attachments, and etc.). As it is lightweight it is quite fast and definitely shouldn't really slow down your computer.. See More

score 7 · Answer 10

Pegasus Mail

Add Video or Image

score 17 · Answer 11

Opera Mail

Top Pro

Lightweight

Top Con

No future updates

Looks like it is discontinued See More

Lokman Afandy's Experience

it is cluttered and unstable, the Stable release: 1.0.1044 (February 16, 2016; 3 years ago) See More

Specs

Top Pro

Fast and portable

Very convenient in my pen Drive (one has to explore the options during the setup so that this can be done). See More

Top Con

No HiDPI-support (4K-monitors with 200% zoom)

LovelyTheros's Experience

Mozilla Thunderbird and Opera Mail, NO LONGER ACCEPT Gmail passwords! See More

Top Pro

Automagic smart filtering

After a bit of use Opera learns what e-mail belongs in what folder just by previous usage. This makes for a convenient way to have e-mails filtered without having to manually mange every e-mail. See More

The Inbox Analyzer, which organizes your newsletters and contacts using folders and filters works quite well. There might be some mislabeling from time to time - a friend gets labeled as newsletter etc. See More

score 7 · Answer 12

The Bat! Professional

Top Pro

Inbox Analyzer does a fairly good job

Top Con

It's hard to use

Setting it up and then learning to use it can be a painful process. See More

Specs

score 2 · Answer 13

My To-Do List widget

Add Video or Image

score 2 · Answer 14

Hiri

Top Con

No longer being developed

The developer pushes for licence purchase, but the product has not seen updates since 2018-08-20 (source: I paid for the software and check the latest change log). There have not even been any updates on social media. See More

Specs

IMAP:No

POP3:No

Platforms:Linux, Windows, Mac

Exchange Support:Yes

Easy to add file attachments, take notes on meetings in OneNote, etc. See More

score 1 · Answer 15

Microsoft Outlook 365

Top Pro

Clean UI

Specs

Top Pro

Native calendar sync with Outlook for Mobile

Top Pro

Strong search feature and offline access

Top Pro

Integrated with Microsoft Office Products

Top Pro

Dark Mode

It's pretty much the same as the much loved, but obsolete, Outlook Express. See More

score 2 · Answer 16

Windows Live Mail

Top Pro

Basic, easy to use and configure

UnbiasedTyche's Experience

3 See More

CulturedManannanMacLir's Experience

duplicate emails See More