Thanks, Bob, that does look interesting. I’m taking a close look at Thunderbird, although I have to say it does feel kinda clunky and old-fashioned, and just not that coherent in the UI. Like it’s been assembled from a box of bits. I actually think eM Client have done a fine job with the UI.
I think they have done a good job with the UI and also other features. But the question now are they going to keep eM Client updated and supported. They are not acting that way/
I’ve just taken a look at Mailbird. It’s rather good. However, it’s not as good as eM Client.
In terms of the UI, the way eM Client integrates Mail, Calendar, Tasks and Contacts is much cleaner than Mailbird, where it feels like they are “bolt-ins”.
Also, Mailbird can’t show that nice Agenda sidebar on the right. The closest you can get is to show the Calendar as a month grid. However, no events are visible on the grid, and you can only see the events for the selected day in the list below the grid. So there’s no way in Mailbird of seeing forthcoming events from the next few days in the right hand sidebar.
There are other weird shortcomings in Mailbird. For instance, you can’t sort your emails by the columns. By way of example: I prefer new emails to appear at the bottom of the email list. On every other client I’ve used you can sort by date, either ascending or descending. But not Mailbird - emails arrive on the top whether you want that or not.
Talking of sorting by columns, it’s sometimes useful to sort by sender name so you can see every email in your inbox grouped by sender. It appears that none of that is possible in Mailbird.
Finally, Mailbird has a slightly “stroppy” policy towards feature requests:
“The rule is actually quite simple, once a new request is posted our support team will review it each week for 4 weeks. A feature request will have to accumulate 7 votes from the users within 7 days of it’s creation. If it does not reach 7 by the end of the 7th day the request will be deleted. If a feature request has enough votes by the end of the 4th week it will “passed” and will not be deleted.”
So, I’m sticking with eM Client for now.
I like Em Client, my concern is future support. What happen to the support and new releases that were happening a few years ago?
Yep, me too. Paid for a lifetime sub a few weeks ago. :-(
Wow…not sure where all this is coming from but EM Client is a great mail client. I was using WLM 2012 which I really liked but MS is slowly abandoning it so I thought I would look elsewhere. Downloaded TB and it is brutal in regards to importing contacts and storage folders. What is even worse is trying to export them back out if you are successful in getting them imported in!!!
Tried Mailbird and found it to be very clunky and not nearly as nice as EM. I see no indication that EM is no longer being supported?? The fact that the old announcement is still on the website …so what??? I will agree that it seems answers re a few problems are quite tardy lately however I am using the Beta Ver 7.1 and it has been for the most part very stable. The new import features work great and the calendar included is very nice.
Sure hope you guys are wrong as this is a good alternative to others out there and with a little attention this could be a great client.
Don’t misunderstand me - I agree about how good eM Client is.
However, the extremely long time between releases and the absence of any announcements for almost a year (plus forgetting to update that old one), strongly suggests that the product is receiving at best only a part-time effort from its developers, and is not being treated like it is important to them.
I’m a software developer myself, and if I wanted to make a living from some software I’d written I’d be far more engaged with my customers in order to keep them interested; I’d be putting out far more betas to get feedback on the new features; and new releases would be far more frequent.
That is why I’m certain eM Client is somebody’s part time job, or as Peter Funken suggests, perhaps it’s used as a project for interns.
I use two very substantial programs which are both produced by one-man bands: Autotrax DEX (a 3D electronic circuit board design program) and WYSIWYG Web Builder, which is a web site development program.
Both are at least as complex as eM Client (almost certainly more so, I would think), and both get betas every few weeks and major releases every few months (DEX actually gets new builds delivered every couple of weeks). Both of their developers engage continuously with their customers and make announcements at frequent intervals.
They show what can be delivered by just one person. Hence my strong suspicion that eM Client gets less than one person’s effort.
My concern is that as eM Client moves more towards someone’s “hobby” status, the rarer will be new releases. I don’t mind about that so much - I like it enough already - but it’s wrong of them to keep taking people’s money for lifetime upgrades if there aren’t going to be any.
A couple of points-- first, it has not been a year since any announcement. Version 7.0 was released on July 1, 2016 and the latest release of 7.0 was released in October. The 7.1 beta was released in March. I don’t think that is particularly long between versions.
Also, I know they are working on a Mac version, so I’m sure that is demanding resources. Additionally, they are trying to get the 7.1 version out. I think this gives the appearance that they are not doing anything and are not concentrating on the forum. Also remember that the forum is primarily a user based forum and pro support is available for pro versions. My experience with pro support has always been good.
I see nothing that makes me believe they are winding down.
Well, Jay, I hope you are right. For me it’s still the best email client.
I would love to have my concerns proved groundless.