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When comparing Geary vs Mailspring, the Slant community recommends Geary for most people. In the question“What are the best native e-mail clients for Linux?” Geary is ranked 4th while Mailspring is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Geary is:
Setting up accounts is a simple as putting in the users e-mail address and password.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Straightforward and simple UI
Setting up accounts is a simple as putting in the users e-mail address and password.
Pro Native GNOME application
It looks and works like a GNOME application should, so it Just Works™.
Pro Fast and responsive
Geary is faster than most e-mail applications, upon starting the program or even just browsing in folders.
Pro Beautiful UI
Everything about the look and feel of Geary is a breath of fresh air after the clunkiness and ugliness of it's competitors.
Pro Lightweight
Pro Threaded conversations
Threaded conversations means all subsequent replies are view-able underneath the initial e-mail.
Pro SQLite DB for email
It uses SQLite DB for storing email messages from all accounts in one single DB file.
This makes it portable as in you can just copy one SQLite DB file and move your offline mail content to another PC/location. Also, one SQLite DB file for all messages means it is incredibly fast.
Pro Work in background
Pro TNEF support
Support for Outlook-specific email attachments (TNEF).
Pro Great integration with Gmail
Mailspring has great integration with gmail features and tags.
Pro Neat UI
The UI is very well designed and neat.
Pro Read receipts and link tracking
Activity tracking is built into Mailspring so you get notified as soon as contacts read your messages and can follow up appropriately.
Pro CPU / battery efficient
Mailspring uses a C++ sync engine designed to be as efficient as possible, so you can leave the app running and not see your laptop battery life drain away.
Pro Unified inbox
Using a single inbox for all of your email accounts helps you get more done in less time. Mailspring supports every major mail provider—Gmail, iCloud, Office 365, Outlook.com, Yahoo!, and IMAP/SMTP—so you have a single, streamlined command center for all your messages.
Pro Snoozing support
You can swipe to archive / snooze messages and specify when you'd like them to resurface in your inbox.
Pro Unlimited number of accounts
Only in the paid version though.
Cons
Con No PGP
No encryption available.
Con No horizontal layout
There is no optional horizontal layout for those that want to be able to view their emails headers across the full screen.
Con Made for Gnome 3
It may look out of place in any other desktop environment.
Con No incoming message rules
Con Too basic
Very Basic, cannot format date, cannot create new folders - What!!
Con Not seen as a secure app by Gmail
Con No native Exchange support
Whilst possible if your Exchange server and account are using Davmail as a proxy, at the moment you can't natively add an Exchange account.
Con Development is pretty dead
No real development since October 2017.
This should be changed from a "Con" to a "Pro" as the Librem 5 smartphone has Geary as the default email application. There is ongoing development happening as can be seen at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/geary/commits/mainline
Con No Pop3 support
Con Bad HTML rendering
The HTML rendering of email messages is not full fledged. Some messages can appear a bit off compared to their appearance on browsers
Con No images in HTML signatures
Whilst it is possible now to add a HTML or plain text signature per account, there is no support for per images in the signatures. This is a must for when an employer imposes a set signature with images.
Con Its bloated
IT requires many GNOME dependencies or it will be unusable on the most non other X11-desktops
Con No proxy support
Seems like it can't retrieve email from behind proxy.
Con Can't use without creating a Mailspring ID
There is no need to create a third party ID for an email client. What if the Mailspring closes in the future - can't install a previously downloaded Mailspring software any more to continue using it or access your stored emails?
Con Slow updates and bug fixes
It takes months to fix some simple bugs. For example, they can't fix bug with notifications on mac OS from April 2019! Upd: they fixed it after 6-7 months
Con Unstable, have to keep fixing passwords
You have to keep "updating the password" because it continuously finds it hard to sync with multiple Outlook accounts.
Con Pro subscription model
To use some features, like contact profiles and link tracking more than a few times a month, you need to pay for a Pro subscription.
Con No addressbook
Con No way to see messages as plain text
And HTML is only optional.
Con Does not support Microsoft Exchange
Con Very limited user interface
No way to see the messages as a list, no way to rearrange views.
Con No portable windows (.zip) bundle available
Con Does not support POP
Just IMAP.
Con Does not support multi-user installation (Windows)
But instead installs to the user's home directory.
Con UI is sluggish (Windows)
Click and only after a tiny delay (~half second) something happens.
