Rating: 5
Version tested: 4.4.1.0
[Note: this review was co-written by Freewaregenius contributor Pcfreakske2000 from Belgium]
Dreammail is an E-mail client that can handle SMTP, eSMTP, POP3, and web mail (Hotmail and Yahoo). Offers a wide range of advanced functions including multi-user and multi email account support, advanced email search, RSS feed aggregation, viewing email directly from the server, spam filtering, and others.
If you’re looking for a solid email client that is an excellent alternative to Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird, then you’ve found it. Dreammail covers a lot of ground and what it does not do very well it nonetheless does quite adequately. Here are some notes on this program:
- The user interface: The user interface is clean, easy to use, and looks good. Employs a navigation pane on the left of the screen reminiscent of MS Outlook that’s used to access the different parts of the program (mail folder, contacts, search, webmail, and RSS feeds).You can customize the columns to view in your email view.
- Multi-accounts and Multi-user feature: You can set up different e-mail accounts in the program for multiple POP3 and webmail accounts. You can also check for new emails for all accounts simultaneously.
- Multi protocol management: POP3, SMTP, and eSMTP supported, as well as Yahoo and Hotmail web mail (yes Gmail is supported as POP3). However, it does not support IMAP email accounts.
- Anti-spam filter & blacklist and whitelist: DreamMail has a built-in spam filter and also allows you to create blacklists and whitelists in order to automatically flag down spam and/or allow trusted email sources. However, although these lists work well the automatic spam detection that Dreammail offers leaves a lot to be desired, and I recommend using a third party Spam filtering program such as K9 Antispam which works very well with Dreammail (although it takes a little bit of initial seting up).
- Send to multiple recipients: you can send a mail to as many people as you would like (unlike other clients that restrict recipients to batches of 50 or so).
- Built in Templates: one of the most notable features about this program is that it includes dozens of pre-existing templates that can be used to create custom-looking emails. There is a wide range or themes to choose from (from business to a ’cartoony’ look to technology, etc). If this feature appeals to you you will likely love Dreammail (not my cup of tea, personally).
- Preview online or offline: a very nice feature where you can preview mails before downloading them, with the option to delete them off the server. Actually comes in quite handy.
- Email search: this is one of the features I like the most. Dreammail can perform searches within an email account (or across accounts) that can be filtered by multiple parameters (e.g. from/to/subject/content of email/comments/type/dates/attachment). Tithis is a feature that I really missed when I used to use Thunderbird a while back, and Dreammail does it without requiring the installation of a top heavy desktop search program (as is the case with Outlook).
- Finding emails: Dreammail is interesting in that it can find messages related to any specific contact easily.
- Encryption: it is possible to encrypt your email folders such that a password is required for access.
Wish list: (or how this program can be even better)
- Dreammail currently only supports language encoding in US-English and Chinese; other characters turn into gibberish. It would be great if more language encoding options were provided.
- Support for tagging and/or virtual folders would be a very welcome addition.
- Sending/receiving faxes is supported for Chinese only. We want English support as well!
The bottom line: If you are looking for a free e-mail client (and, like me, are not satisfied with Thunderbird) then Dreammail just might be the program for you. It is light on resources and has a wide range of features, including interesting ones such as advanced email search, remote viewing of email on the server, and webmail support (amongst others). Check it out for sure.
Compatibility: Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista.
Go to the download page to get the latest version (approx 5 megs). Also visit the program home page.
I would like the ability to archive Yahoo email locally.
Is the filtering as powerful as that of Eudora?
Can the webmail be configured to work with other interfaces (such as your own host)?
Is it portable?
Jespard: you can archive Yahoomail locally with Dreammail.
Fred,
You’re always a step ahead
I don’t think it can be configured for other webmail than what’s mentioned.
I haven’t tried Eudora, so I cannot comment (is it free now?), but I’d be curious to know from people who have tried both.
There is a portable version. I will change the review to reflect this.
I don’t know about being a step ahead. I’m an addict and this is my fix. Some of the things I find here are new to me, some aren’t. This is my favorite software site now, second to SnapFiles then Download Squad.
Yes, Eudora went full freeware around May or so. The development team is working on a UI for Thunderbird and they say they’ll have full functional compatibility but progress is slow. I tried moving to Thunderbird months ago but the filtering isn’t as nice as Eudora and there’s too much whitespace on their UI.
DreamMail does a lot which Eudora won’t do so neither is the uberclient…
For some reason this will not log into gmail accounts. Has anyone else found similar problems?
Ken,
It worked for me. (Screenshot taken using Dreammail logging into my Gmail account).
Really? Thank you very much. It will send using the accounts, but it will not receive. I will keep trying.
Thank you Samer
Several problems…
(Yahoo Mail account)
1) The mail client is set to display HTML style but it displays source (lotsa HTML tags) not a browser view. This makes it hard to find the body of the email in all the Yahoo embedded junk.
2) It does not display the sender or subject. There is a column for both of these but it does not seem to pull this info.
3) The legacy mail does not include other folders (if you organize rec’d mail into folders)
It seems like a promising app but it looks like basic functionality is missing…at least for Yahoo.
Am I missing something or does DreamMail not have a spell checker??? I can’t imagine an email program without one, but there is no site of a spell checker in DreamMail. I would consider making a switch to DreamMail, but until there is a spell checker, I’ll stick with Thunderbird.
I never said that I wasn’t satisfied with Thunderbird, though.
It just didn’t want to update and therefore I was looking for another e-mail client and then I found DreamMail.
I discovered an interesting thing using DreamMail with Yahoo!. Same case as Jespard mentioned earlier, DreamMail acted strangely when I tried to download messages from my Yahoo account. I only received what appeared to be an HTML code of some web page instead. I copied the entire code and pasted it into MS Frontpage and guess what!! The preview on Frontpage showed the web interface of yahoo mail, specifically the page when the virus scan result is shown in green and the attachment is ready to download ONLY This time the status was displayed in red and the message is displayed was this:
File name: File.bin
Virus “Malformed container violation” found.
The file attached to this message was infected with a virus that we were unable to clean. You should not download this attachment.
Any Clue?
how can i compse an new email
Is the site no longer available?
Sadly it does not work under Vista, when clicking create mail it tells me some files are missing then attempts to download them but fails each time, pretty much junk sadly.
A me funziona tutto perfettamente, a mio avviso è molto meglio di Outloock, unico neo non trovo il controllo ortografico.