emclient vs outlook

here is a fresh idea: make emclient at least as functional as MS outlook before you offer it as a “Professional replacement for Outlook” because it is not.
the statement “eM Client provides organizations with all the features users need and expect” is utterly incorrect
semblance of interfaces does not mean that it is on a level with outlook in terms of features
I downloaded a trial version and used it for about 10 minutes only to unistall it as I realized that many crucial features present in outlook are absent from emclient
some neat capabilities of emclient do not compensate for the lack of core functionality of such type of product
I personally cannot consider emclient as an option until it matches oulook

Max, I’m looking to replace Outlook as well and was considering EMClient. Which features that are crucial to you are missing?

I’m looking to replace Outlook because I’m having trouble accessing iCloud mail all of a sudden.

EM Client is free to try, and free license (2 account restriction) are available. Whether the software is good or not is one’s opinion. I can also turn around and say the core functionality Mr. Mikheev mention above are bloated and unnecessary, and the ‘neat capabilities’ of eM Client are more useful. If you read over the forum, they’re plenty of user migrate from Outlook 2010 and are very happy. You won’t know for yourself until you tried.

As regarding to your iCloud problem, it unlikely for a software to ‘stop working’ all of the sudden. It can be a communication or server error. If you are happy with Outlook, I would suggest you to find out the real cause of the problem first. If you’re unhappy with Outlook, than try eM Client.

exactly, you won’t know until you try.
if you don’t use some of the advance features of outlook you might not even notice the transition.
also to some extent it’s the matter of habit: if I’ve got used to something in Outlook (even a minor stuff) and I try this in emclient and don’t find this feature I feel a bit frustrated. one would think that developers would take it into consideration but apparently it requires too much work (no irony here)
whether a feature is “bloated and unnecessary” depends on your usage. necessity is in the eyes of the beholder.
to be more specific when I tried and rejected emclient in 2010 I’ve noted the following:

  1. was unable to import my data from my pst file https://discourse.emclient.com/emclient/to…
  2. no luxury of ms word editor https://discourse.emclient.com/emclient/to… (important if you need on-the-fly a spellchecker for different languages)
  3. rather lame RSS support https://discourse.emclient.com/emclient/to…
  4. accounts for sending and receiving SMS. the whole protocol is missing from eM client! http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/out…. We use it extensively and were very surprised that there is no support whatsoever in eM client
  5. I have hoped to see more flexible recurrence pattern in eM client for tasks and meetings. contrary to my expectations it is even more primitive than for outlook. for example there is no possibility to set relative term (such as regenerate the task 74 days after the task is completed), which is a great advantage of outlook as certain type of tasks require such approach
  6. associate contacts with tasks, appointments and other elements
    in outlook you have a bottom bar where you can link an element with contacts related to this elements. a great time aver especially we you work on a task repeatedly and need to get in touch with someone
    there were much more but the above mentioned problems had been sufficient enough to deter me trying further

It been awhile since you last tried. I agree the time you try eM Client, the program is incomplete as a PIM. But time has changed.

  1. Version 4 now support direct import of .PST file with out the need of Outlook, which were a closed format. https://discourse.emclient.com/emclient/to…

  2. This is something eM still need to work on. It is odd eM allow translation when composing a message, but not reading. But you don’t need to rely Word as a translator.

3/4. This is indeed depends on the user. RSS feed for me should be on the browser side. While I promote better integration with mobile sync, SMS for me is going beyond the duty of a PIM. And I got admit, I didn’t even know the feature exist, since I’ve never look at Outlook again after version 2000.

  1. The recurrence pattern feature is there since version 3.5 of eM.

  2. Though eM doesn’t associate contact with task/appointment, eM does associate e-mail by sender (which Outlook doesn’t offer). And the Agenda on the side-bar has been praised many times by migrate Outlook user. Which again something Outlook lacks. This is again personal preference.

EM Client also has some great feature that Outlook don’t support. EM Client support iCal/CalDAV (frankly I can’t believe it still not implemented in ver. 2011). And is the only PIM program support Google Calendar with it native API, along with Google Task (as far as I know eM is also the only PC programs support Google Task). It also support Jabber, which allows instant messaging to any chat protocol, including Yahoo, Facebook, etc. It not only limited to MS’ own MSN/Live service. Down to the bottom line, it really depends on the user. I just think it a bit unfair to call some of the feature from Outlook as ‘core functionality’ based on your need.