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Add to SafariWhen comparing Geary vs Evolution, 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 Evolution is ranked 5th. 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 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.
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 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.
