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Add to SafariWhen comparing Evolution vs Alpine, the Slant community recommends Evolution for most people. In the question“What are the best native e-mail clients for Linux?” Evolution is ranked 5th while Alpine is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Evolution is:
Evolution is one of the few Linux desktop e-mail clients that's supports exchange servers.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Supports exchange servers
Evolution is one of the few Linux desktop e-mail clients that's supports exchange servers.
Pro Great integration with Gnome environment
Pro Manages contacts, tasks, calendar and memos as well
Pro Excellent GPG support
The integration with GPG is excellent. You can sign, encrypt, decrypt, authenticate and verify GPG signatures and GPG signed/encrypted email messages. All of that is just a setting away.
Pro Good support for Google's services
Pro Clean interface with 2 layout variants
Going to View > Preview has the option of switching between "Classical View" and "Vertical View".
Pro HTML rendering is great
Of the many email clients available on GNU/Linux, Evolution has the best HTML renderer. It renders HTML and the entire email content exactly like it would appear on a full blown web browser. Not many email clients are capable of doing that.
Pro Extremely user-friendly
Pro Can use the built-in text editor or can be integrated with another text editor
Alpine comes with pico, a lightweight text editor which can also be used as a standalone tool. It can also be integrated with vi, vim, emacs, etc... if the user prefers to do so.
Pro On-screen contextual help
Alpine has contextual help that can be displayed on-screen. Removing the need to consult the man pages every time you forget a command or how to do something inside it.
Cons
Con Can't choose different settings for each mail account
Settings have to applied to all mail accounts.
Con Limited configuration options
Cannot format date as preferred.
Con RAM heavy
Very heavy on RAM usage.
Con Poor integration in any non-GNOME desktop
It is written with GNOME in mind.
Con No configuration messages
Although base functions like bullets, numbered, or pre-formatted text are possible, you can't select or set the font for your messages. Not even serif or sans serif. Which is a bit spartan TBH.
Con Can be wobbly with EWS
Don't be surprised if you have to reboot it a couple of times during a working day, because error messages are piling up (e.g. connection lost, can't sync, can't store appointment, read only). Then again, is this Evolution, or what it connects to? And since such an occasional reboot is dwarfed by the fact that MS365 seems to make full IMAP/ SMTP access (close to) impossible (nice meeting invite, THX, but when is it?), just reboot and get some work done...
Con Only available on Linux
If you have to switch to another platform for whatever reason, you will need to search for a different email client.
Con Updates are not frequent
Alpine is not updated frequently. This means that new features, bug fixes or security updates come much later than in other email clients.
