When comparing gnus vs Mu4e, the Slant community recommends Mu4e for most people. In the question“What are the best native e-mail clients for Linux?” Mu4e is ranked 10th while gnus is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Mu4e is:
The UI is designed to allow for quick keystrokes to get around and is pretty clean. Header View: ![](http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e-2.png) Message View: ![](http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e-3.png)
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Pros
Pro Everything is customizable
Yep, really. From Outlook-mode, where Outlook-typical TOFU mails are “repaired”, up to a high-sophisticated scoring and SPAM filtering, footer lines with quotes, rules depending on the recipient, MIME formatting, boxquotes, etc.
Pro It supports IMAP and POP3
… but you can use DavMail to connect to Exchange server via EWS.
Pro UI optimized for speed
The UI is designed to allow for quick keystrokes to get around and is pretty clean.
Header View:
http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e-2.png
Message View:
Pro Asynchronous
Heavy actions never block emacs, unlike most other emacs email clients.
Pro Fully Search Based
Mu4e has no folders or other organizational tools, rather it relies on very fast search queries to help you find your mail.
Pro Can write rich text emails
Using the (beta) org mode, Mu4e can compose fully rich text emails.
Pro Built-in Autocomplete
Doesn't require you to import address books for autocomplete, learns from your emails just like Gmail.
Cons
Con Difficult documentation
Originally a newsgroup reader, so its documentation uses Usenet terminology for everything -- which is confusing.