Why I'm not purchasing eM Client

emClient is very feature-rich.  It’s 95% able to replace Outlook or Thunderbird.  However, there are two issues that prevent me from spending $100 for a perpetual license.  In fact, these two issues are important enough that I don’t even use it for free.

  1. The reply/forward headers look like a throwback from the '90s.  They’re not just plain/ugly, they’re unpolished.  I consider Outlook’s reply/forward header to be the bare minimum, and am very pleased that (with an extension) Thunderbird can top it.

  2. emClient has very good Exchange support, except that it does not correctly view the mail headers from my company’s Exchange server.  This is occasionally very important for my duties, and incomplete/inaccurate mail headers makes emClient a non-starter.  I’ll post a sample, below

  3. This isn’t really a major cause preventing me from purchasing emClient… but it feels slower / more sluggish than either Outlook or Thunderbird.  I’m not a heavy email user, so this wouldn’t be a problem for me.  I only mention it as it seems an area where more time needs invested.
    Here is a sample mail header (sanitized of revealing data).  First, from emClient:

    From: “John Doe” To: “ltwally”
    Subject: subject
    Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2016 23:47:05 +0000
    Message-Id: <<[email protected]>>
    In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
    References: <[email protected]>
    Reply-To: “John Doe”
    Mime-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="------=_MB97C2B798-4B3E-4988-950A-A6FB27065557"

Next, from Thunderbird (using the ExQuilla extension).  It should be mentioned that ExQuilla uses the same method (https) to communicate with Exchange as emClient.  This information is also shown in OWA using the “Message Header Analyzer” add-on from the Microsoft Store, and from Outlook.

Received: from EXCHANGE.company.com (10.0.0.105) by&nbsp;EXCHANGE.company.com (10.0.0.105) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id
&nbsp;15.0.1178.4 via Mailbox Transport; Tue, 7 Jun 2016 16:47:08 -0700
Received: from EXCHANGE.company.com (10.0.0.105) by
&nbsp;EXCHANGE.company.com (10.0.0.105) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id
&nbsp;15.0.1178.4; Tue, 7 Jun 2016 16:47:08 -0700
Received: from barracuda.company.com (1.2.3.4) by
&nbsp;EXCHANGE.company.com (10.0.0.105) with Microsoft SMTP Server id
&nbsp;15.0.1178.4 via Frontend Transport; Tue, 7 Jun 2016 16:47:08 -0700
X-ASG-Debug-ID: 1465343226-08fc77108d261d60001-WC6pmj
Received: from resqmta-po-09v.sys.comcast.net (resqmta-po-09v.sys.comcast.net [96.114.154.168]) by barracuda.company.com with ESMTP id rP20NVq7DQefDRgb for <ltwally>; Tue, 07 Jun 2016 16:47:07 -0700 (MST)<br>X-Barracuda-Envelope-From: [email protected]<br>X-Barracuda-Effective-Source-IP: resqmta-po-09v.sys.comcast.net[96.114.154.168]<br>X-Barracuda-Apparent-Source-IP: 96.114.154.168<br>Received: from resomta-po-13v.sys.comcast.net ([96.114.154.237])<br>by resqmta-po-09v.sys.comcast.net with SMTP<br>id AQhsbwvJlrlQrAQiAbreD7; Tue, 07 Jun 2016 23:47:06 +0000<br>DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=comcast.net;<br>s=q20140121; t=1465343226;<br>bh=4Mghj+VqKyMBfA4/aUprvp1JWCzwnRD399TUAaSLE4Q=;<br>h=Received:Received:From:To:Subject:Date:Message-ID:MIME-Version:<br> Content-Type;<br>b=SANITIZED==<br>Received: from johndoePC ([4.3.2.1])<br>by resomta-po-13v.sys.comcast.net with comcast<br>id 3zn51t00K0lf9gq01zn5Zy; Tue, 07 Jun 2016 23:47:06 +0000<br>From: "John Doe" <johndoe><br>To: "'ltwally'" <ltwally><br>References: &lt;[email protected]&gt;<br>In-Reply-To: &lt;[email protected]&gt;<br>Subject: subject<br>Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 16:47:05 -0700<br>X-ASG-Orig-Subj: subject<br>Message-ID: &lt;[email protected]&gt;<br>Content-Type: multipart/related;<br>boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0011_01D1C0DC.39F76DF0"<br>X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 15.0<br>Thread-Index: AQEsdgSPA2i+4AAUKL63a+jR5NlmLqEpQGzA<br>Content-Language: en-us<br>X-Barracuda-Connect: resqmta-po-09v.sys.comcast.net[96.114.154.168]<br>X-Barracuda-Start-Time: 1465343226<br>X-Barracuda-URL: <a href="https://1.2.3.4:8443/cgi-mod/mark.cgi" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="Link https//12348443/cgi-mod/markcgi">https://1.2.3.4:8443/cgi-mod/mark.cgi<br></a>X-Barracuda-Scan-Msg-Size: 6948<br>X-Virus-Scanned: by bsmtpd at company.com<br>X-Barracuda-BRTS-Status: 1<br>X-Barracuda-Spam-Score: 0.00<br>X-Barracuda-Spam-Status: No, SCORE=0.00 using global scores of TAG_LEVEL=2.5 QUARANTINE_LEVEL=1000.0 KILL_LEVEL=5.0 tests=HTML_MESSAGE<br>X-Barracuda-Spam-Report: Code version 3.2, rules version 3.2.3.30258<br>Rule breakdown below<br> pts rule name              description<br>---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------<br>0.00 HTML_MESSAGE           BODY: HTML included in message<br>Return-Path: [email protected]<br>X-MS-Exchange-Organization-Network-Message-Id: 16c1178c-b550-4ecf-6019-08d38f2e09b6<br>X-MS-Exchange-Organization-AuthSource: EXCHANGE.company.com<br>X-MS-Exchange-Organization-AuthAs: Anonymous<br>MIME-Version: 1.0
</ltwally></johndoe></ltwally>

The dearth of mail headers, in contrast to what is available using Thunderbird, OWA or Outlook means that emClient is not a suitable replacement, as it is simply not showing me the details that I occasionally need for my duties.

So, to any emClient representatives or developers:  These are the areas that you need to focus on in order to make me a user of your software.  If you take care of these areas, then I will gladly purchase a perpetual license, as I truly dislike Outlook and am not terribly fond of Thunderbird + ExQuilla.

Thanks for your consideration.

ps.  The version of emClient used was 7.0 RC, released June 7 2016.

Here is the reply/forward template that I use for Thunderbird (w/ the SmartTemplate4 extension).  It looks very similar to Outlook’s, but a little nicer (imho):

**From:** %from% **Sent:** %X:=sent% %A%, %B% %d%, %Y% %l%:%M%%p(3)%  
[[**To:** %to%]] [[  
**Cc:** %cc%]]  
**Subject:** %subject%

The ability to do something similar to this would be the minimum standard before I would consider paying for it, when there are alternatives such as Thunderbird that can do it for free.