You have an Inbox for new messages, an Outbox for sent messages, and a good composer. Doing the most common things are simple and follow decades of email conventions. Mail is one of the best basic email apps you can find. I was absolutely shocked at how nice and easy the built-in Mail app on Windows 10 and 11 is to use. If you haven't tried Windows Mail in the past decade, your expectations are badly out of line with reality. Since I was mostly looking for apps that did the basics well, just using them as part of my regular routine was a much better protocol than trying to stress test every corner and break every menu.įrom all the apps I tested, I selected eight-two for each platform-that I feel are the best for most people. I connected my accounts and, over a couple of days, used them to check and send email. From those 30+ apps, I excluded any that obviously didn't meet the criteria above, and then I got to testing. I wasn't looking for avant-garde apps that were pushing the boundaries of what's possible with software, but I did want up-to-date apps with modern design sensibilities and features. What this has meant has changed in the past few years, and it now sets a pretty high bar for inclusion.Īside from a few additions for the sake of comprehensiveness, I mostly considered apps that had already made one of our other best email apps lists. App conventions develop and change over time. Similarly, there are no ad-supported apps on this list (except Gmail, which hides them away). For a paid app to make this list, it had to offer a solid upgrade over the free apps at a reasonable price.

There are a lot of free apps on this list because a lot of free apps do email very well. All these apps do the basics, and do it well-though they almost all have loads of other nice-to-have features too. I didn't want apps that made a song and dance out of checking your inbox or sending emails. It's more about the eight least interesting ones that completely get out of your way. This isn't a list of the eight most interesting email apps. In short, if you use a normal email account and not something like HEY or Proton, all these picks should work for you. While I can't promise that these email apps will work with every single email service out there (they won't), I made sure they work nicely with the big ones like Gmail and Outlook, and that they enable other accounts through the POP3 or IMAP protocols. I was looking for email apps that were explicitly designed to work well with the device they were on, take advantage of platform-specific features, and generally just be nice OS citizens. PCs have different interface and usability conventions than Macs an iPhone doesn't work the same as an Android phone-and dedicated email apps should respect all that. Here's what I wanted the best apps to be and do: This means that if you're going to the effort of setting up a dedicated email app for desktop or mobile-and maybe even paying for one-it had better get a few things right. Really, the web apps for most major email services are, believe it or not, not that bad (the Gmail web app, for example, works well even on mobile web browsers and has a lot of powerful features). This also means I'm not considering any web apps for this list. If you like what you see here but want more niche options, like the best email apps for security or customization, check out our platform-specific lists. Think of it as kind of an email all-stars list.

This list is also focused on the best email apps for the four most popular platforms: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. Some apps on this list, like Outlook and Gmail, are the name of both an email client and an email service, but what I was testing here was the app itself. For example, all of the email clients on this list will work with your aol.com email address (AOL is an email service). We're looking at the apps that run on your devices and enable you to check your email service. email apps), not the best email services. Let me start here: this is an article about the best email clients (a.k.a. Outlook for an alternative to Apple Mail for iOSĮdison Mail for a Gmail alternative for Android Outlook for an Apple Mail alternative for macOS Windows Mail for the best free Windows email app I spent time with all the top email apps on every device, and here are my picks for the eight best desktop and mobile email apps for all the big platforms. I've tried nearly every purported fix, system, or solution available (you should see my Gmail labels), and I've long since concluded the best fix is to take a deep breath and accept that email will never be amazing, but that with an app you like, it won't be a burden.

I've spent more time tinkering with email than any person should. I've used email since 1995 (my dad set up the account for me because I was five years old), and I've worked fully remotely since 2012.

Edison mail does it auto sync