Can eM Client Really Replace Postbox for Power Users?

Postbox
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As long-time Postbox user, I really thought I’d be using it for life. The “lifelong” subscription sounded like a great deal—until I learned it only covered the life of the app, not mine. Now that Postbox is ending, they offer 50% discount on eM Client as replacement. So, reluctantly, I decided to try eM Client again.

I had tried eM Client before on Windows, but as Mac user, I always preferred Postbox for its clean layout and practical features, even when updates slowed down and support became hard to reach. Now Postbox says eM Client has new features that make it good alternative (link to Postbox FAQ). But I wish they also mention everything that eM Client doesn’t have because I quickly noticed many important features are missing.

First, the big frustration for me was that eM Client does not have profiles. In Postbox, I had set up different profiles for personal, work, shopping, and an “all” view, so everything stayed organized and easy to find. But in eM Client, all accounts are just put together during import, and some are even copied twice with no option to deselect all at once. Also, it does not bring over passwords for accounts, assuming users have a simpler setup than some of us do.

Then, the missing feature of grouping accounts. This was something Postbox users could always count on, and eM Client users have asked for it for years, but still it’s not in version 10. For those of us managing many accounts, this is a big loss.

I also miss the “Responses” feature in Postbox, which let me set up quick replies with custom details. eM Client has similar thing with “Quick Text,” but it does not support custom variables, so it is a lot less useful. And pinning messages? This is also missing in eM Client. They do have “follow for replies” option, but it’s not same as pinning emails to keep visible until I am ready to reply later.

What in eM Client can really make up for these losses? What are the features that make long-time power users like this app?

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See the following eM Client post link regarding bringing Postbox features to eM Client.

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It’s sad that there have been people asking for directional delete for the past 10 years. I have been onboard for 2 years now and have requested it several times. There has been no interest shown in implementing this very necessary feature that is standard on most email clients.

Now that PostBox has gone belly up and acquired by emClient, all of a sudden, Directional Delete gets mentioned in the referenced announcement.

Did it have to take an acquisition like this to finally consider a feature that was brought up nearly 10 years prior?

On a positive note, to the original author of this post, I was once a licensed PostBox user and I agree that it was one of the best email clients ever. Know why I stopped using it? The developers refused to add the OPTION of turning on identifying avatars that show up next to an incoming message. These avatars help you to immediately recognize who the message is from without reading any text. The developers at PostBox argued that the avatars appeared in the message body, which they did, but were of no help to anyone wanting them in the message list.

It’s funny. eMClient has the best use of Avatars in the message list I have seen anywhere. Apple Mail’s avatars are not from the same source. However there is no directional delete. On the other hand, PostBox had directional delete but no message avatars.

The developers here at eMClient are very good. I have seen great progress from version 9 to 10. They are always refining this client and for that reason, I believe it will become more power-user intensive. It’s a shame it took the fall of PostBox for eMClient to wake up and even consider adding their best features. I feel as if it would never have happened otherwise.

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We’ll implement directional delete soon, you have my word.

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Michal, you made my day!

That is great news, and I am certain I speak for many that we are ecstatic that this feature will be implemented at some point.

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I don’t get this. When I delete an intem in a list in eM Client, it does exactly what I expect it to – it moves to the next item. Isn’t that what it is supposed to do?

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And yes, I’m a recent immigrant from Postbox.

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With directional delete, when you delete a message, it should move to the next newest message. This allows you to stay in the reading pane, delete a message, and have the next message in the receiving order appear. You essentially start at the bottom of your message list, and as you hit the DELETE key, it automatically moves you up the list to the next message.

I hope I explained that correctly.

The short explanation: When you delete an email from the incoming list, it should move to the next newest email (up the list from bottom to top).

Currently with eMClient, the delete doesn’t move in any desired direction. If I need to delete emails I have read, I need to wait until I finish reading all of them, then highlight all the messages and hit the delete key.

Here is what the setting looked like in PostBox, and the best thing is, it’s an optional setting. If you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to.

By default, Postbox selects the next message after a delete command. If you would like Postbox to select the previous message, then you can set this preference in:

previous-next@2x
previous-next@2x1356×932 99.7 KB

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After coming here from Postbox, I’m giving up on it. I’ve found it unstable.

  1. It deleted of its own free will about a half dozen financial emails.
  2. Its connection to iCloud is basically broken, especially with regards to contacts. It’s not emClients fault, but iCloud will not let you modify contacts if they are cloud based and not local.
  3. It frequently applies rules incorrectly. For example, one rule has finanacial documents tagged purple, except when emClient decides to tag them green.
  4. It refused to delete two emails. The only fix is to delete the map account and reload load it, and then fix all the rules that reference folders in that account.
    5.Uploading largish files is slow, slow, slow.
  5. Coming to it from a Mac, I find the interface bizarre. For example to change the order of email accounts, instead of dragging and dropping, you have to open the accounts window and press arrows to move the location of the account.

I can live with most of it, but losing emails is a killer. Not being able to delete emails is a killer. If you can’t trust its stability, it has not usable.

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Is it possible to import my Smart Folders from Postbox into eM Search Folders? What about my filters? my templates?

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emClient cannot replace Postbox. This is now my conclusion after trying it for a week.

  • Standard Postbox license was usable for a single user small business owner. emClient forces me on the business license which is more expensive and supports only one device compared to 3 with the Personal license
  • Responses Replacements are missing. Quicktext is a much inferior concept. And you can’t even reassign or change the shortcuts in emClient
  • Postbox’ Templates was a much more flexible and usable concept to have a set of canned email responses which were quick to setup and use. Emclient templates are a different thing and not really suitable for canned messages
  • Placeholders are missing
  • uuencoded attachments don’t work A lot of my clients send email attachements uuencoded.
  • Filter/rules are limited to receive and sending. Archiving is missing as it a “Every 10 minutes”. The Archiving rule was quite useful for me.
  • Aliases cannot have their own outgoing SMTP server. This makes it challenging to send replies with the alias email address, in my case impossible.
  • Archive folder cannot be configured. In Postbox I filed into an archive subfolder folder named after the current year.
  • Postbox allows flagged messages to show at the top of the list regardless of sorting. This is missing in emClient
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Lotta truth in these, but I’m sticking with it for the tagging. But fix these!

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Previous to PostBox I used Eudora, it did everything I needed really well in that era. Then PostBox worked well for what I needed but again I needed to move on. For me em client is doing the job. em client could use more keyboard shortcuts so I can stay on the keyboard instead of needing to reach for the mouse. One thing I like about em client is its implementation of avatars in the message list is great. Having seen how avatars work, I even created my own avatar which I hope pops up in other recipient’s email client.

The other plus of em client is the extensive customization of the interface. I have unread messages colored with a different background so they stand out as unread. For now, em client is going to replace PostBox for me. I tried other clients but I haven’t found anything that does the job better.

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I’ll bitch and complain from time to time about features that still need to be implemented, but emClient is the best mail platform out there.

I also come from Eudora (that takes me back) and PostBox. The developers at PostBox refused to put avatars in the message list. I think it’s essential as you can immediately identify who the incoming mail is from based on the photo.

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What do you mean by replacements?

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We are already working on a lot of improvements of keyboard shourtcuts based on the feedback of Postbox users.

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What do you mean by replacements?

Hi Michael, sorry my mistake using the wrong term. They are called “Responses”. A very useful and time saving feature for users having to write a lot of emails which have similar content. Great people for sales and also tech support users.

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We are already working on a lot of improvements of keyboard shourtcuts based on the feedback of Postbox users.

Don’t get me wrong, emClient is a good piece of software and I discovered features Postbox does not have. If you pick the gems out of Postbox (and I listed some of them in my post above), emClient will shine.

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We plan doing just that (picking the gems of of Postbox). We just need to prioritize, so that’s why it is so important to vote on Sleekplan. Something similar to responses will highly probably be implemented soon.

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You say emClient has the best avatar use, but it’s actually really buggy:-

  1. It gets avatars mixed up between your own e-mail accounts.
  2. It can swap avatars on your own account on a whim.
  3. It sometimes displays the wrong sender avatar if you are in conversation view. E.g., person 1 has person 2’s avatar, etc.
  4. It doesn’t pull avatars very well from domain, Gravatar, etc.

All of these have been reported to support and never addressed.