Emailer Software QuickTopic: The Bottom Line

Here's the "bottom line" on our recent Email Software QuickTopic: Three programs garnered nearly all the comments on our email client QuickTopic: Qualcomm's Eudora Pro, Claris Emailer, and Microsoft Outlook Express. Venerable Eudora first debuted on the Macintosh in 1988, and has remained popular though versions as freeware, shareware, sponsorware, and commercial software. Long-ago orphaned Emailer remains wildly popular, even though development ceased nearly four years ago. Outlook Express, which in large part was written by a number of former Emailer engineers, rounded out the top three. Almost all of the comments about Eudora were for the commercial or sponsored version of Eudora Pro 4.3. Kathy Morgan said she uses both on two different machines: "The price for the Paid mode is well worth it to me, but if you prefer not to pay, you can have all the same features in the Sponsored mode, where you receive ads in a small window which you can position off to the side, out of the way." One of Eudora's most beloved features is the extensive preference set; nearly every aspect of Eudora can be customized. Several users strongly recommended that Eudora users explore the manual in order to fully harness Eudora's power. About the only negative comment about Eudora was about its interface. Several users thought the interface was ugly, however, those comments seemed focused on visual appearance, not usability. Claris Emailer is probably the most versatile email program ever available on any desktop computer, because of its ability to collect mail from America Online, CompuServe, and the Internet. More than several users said that if Emailer stopped working with AOL, they would drop their AOL account altogether. In addition to its versatility, users liked its elegant interface, and several even preferred that it stripped HTML and presented all the mail as plain text. Nik Friedman added that if set up properly, "Emailer would work with Mac OS X's Classic environment." Opinions about Outlook Express were somewhat tepid. A large number of users were very happy with its features, but expressed concern that Microsoft's free distribution hurt the email marketplace overall. The other big concerns were its large memory requirements, sluggish performance, and that the mail is stored in a single extremely large file. However, it received praise from users for its outstanding scripting capability, its visually attractive interface, and its handling of multiple accounts. Seven other programs received the balance of the recommendations, QuickMail Pro (for being well designed), PowerMail (praised as the most Emailer-like), Nisus Email (for integration with a word processor), Netscape (for light email use), Mulberry (for its outstanding support of different protocols), Mailsmith (for its search capability and support), and a newcomer, Green. Despite the giant marketplace presence of several programs, email is one of the broadest software categories on the Mac, and users have their pick of over a dozen well-engineered, feature-rich applications. The best choice is personal, based mainly on features and price, as there appear to be no truly "bad" programs that should be avoided.