I’ve been busy preparing for a transition of many co-workers to a Microsoft Exchange service lately. Until that migration occurs, we use a web interface and/or Thunderbird to interact with the IMAP mail server. For context, I am a big fan of Thunderbird and prefer it over other similar desktop clients. Much of my time recently has been spent figuring out Outlook instead of using Thunderbird and keeping my ear to the ground for related mail applications. That being said, I still managed to catch Postbox in the beta stage and I have to say I’m quite impressed with the modifications they’ve made over Thunderbird.
[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com].
You setup your accounts inside of Postbox just like you would Thunderbird, except Postbox has a number of preset accounts to make it even easier for you to connect to popular mail clients like Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail. Postbox can import settings and configurations from other clients just like Thunderbird and including Thunderbird. Migrating my settings and local folders to Postbox from TB was very simple and very quick.
One thing Postbox brings with it is the To-Do list. You can just create a new entry for the To-Do list and it will put it at the top of your e-mail stack. Just put in a Subject and body and it will get added to the task list. If you look at your e-mail in another client, these to-do list entries simply look like standard e-mails. This is a fast replacement for those of us who e-mail ourselves notes and reminders.
Thunderbird has the next feature already, but Postbox really brings it to the forefront. This makes it more useful, more visible, and really more likely to be used. You can assign Topics to e-mails and you can create your own topics along with the default ones like Important, Work, and Personal. This tagging helps keep things organized and also aligns things with the To-Do list mentality of many e-mail clients.
Postbox uses tabs near the top of the client window to show different categories and inboxes. One very cool use of the tabs is the way Postbox can make the content of your e-mail available to you in different ways. For an example, look at the screenshot below. There are multiple tabs for images, attachments, and links, as well as two tabs for different folders. Under the images tab, all the images in your e-mails for the account selected will be displayed. (This would be more impressive if I had more than one image…) The same is true for the attachments and links tabs; all attachments will be listed plainly under its own tab, and all links from your e-mails will be listed with a little bit of accompanying context under the Links tab. This can be very helpful in getting to the meat of your e-mails and looking through archived (historically sorted) messages.
The compose window for Postbox really has a lot to be exploited for the e-mail power user as well. The compose window brings with it a small version of the attachments, links, and images tabs seen above, as well as a few other cool features. Integrated into the sidebar for the Postbox compose window includes: Google Maps, Yelp search, Thesaurus, and an easy signature selection.
Postbox also has a great search feature, the ability to archive messages at the press of a button (puts a message in a folder under your inbox called Archive), conversation views, contact panes, and quick links to help you find related messages to the one you’re looking at in the Reading pane.
Postbox is based off of Mozilla’s code and has a lot of the great features you’re already used to with Thunderbird. With similar accounts setup, Postbox had a little bit bigger footprint (40MB) compared to Thunderbird (27MB) as a running process. Your mileage may differ depending on your accounts, messages, and e-mail habits. The beta has been perfectly stable in my experience. Check it out now and provide some feedback to the developers to create the ultimate e-mail client.
Version tested: 1.0 beta12
Compatibility: Windows XP or Vista. Mac OS X (Tiger 10.4 and Leopard 10.5)
Go to the Postbox homepage for more info and to download the latestoar version (approx 7.73 megs).
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I use it many months now and have to say that I’m very happy with it.
But I miss a few extensions from Thunderbird.
Specially Nostalgy.
It is still difficult in Postbox to move mail to the folders if you have a lot of folders.
The greatest things of Postbox is the search and the usability of the whole interface.
However, it is not sure if the official release will be free.
Postbox creators don’t answer this kind of questions so I suppose it will not be free.
The best feature of Postbox is the ability to edit RECEIVED mail.
As far as I know, only Pocomail and Becky currently share this ability.
This looks like a very cool e-mail client, with great features. I am using Thunderbird right now, I consider switching to Postbox.
Thunderbird is nice but still needs work my opinion. For example, inserting pictures in a mail should be much easier. And what about the really strange feature you can have multiple address books, but only one can be appointed as a safe-list for the spamfilter???
I use Postbox on both my XP and OS X machines. On the XP machine, watch out because it’s a HUGE memory hog. Nice, nice app but it can gobble up your RAM pretty quickly.
yes it is still memory eating but from beta 11 the memory usage is much better as before this beta (but not so low as Thunderbird with extensions).
I’ve looked at Postbox, but I have to have a portable client. ATM I’m using Thunderbird, but if this were usable on a portable hard drive it would be my client of choice
Portablility is essential to me too. You can make post box portable very easily:
http://stadt-bremerhaven.de/2009/02/10/postbox-selber-portabel-machen/
you ll need to translate the page using google tools. I did it, and am using postbox portably … very nice indeed.
As far as I know, only Pocomail and Becky currently share this ability.
You can also do that in Outlook.
A very interesting article!
Thank you for posting it!
I am very surprised for how difficult it is to find an email composer that admits images and styles…
Now, Gmail labs admits inserting images on every email. But, until now, there where very few javascript email agents that would do so.
The sad thing about this Thunderbird alternative, I guess is that there seems to be no Linux version yet…
Let us now cross fingers for two future options to come with this final version: 1) to be free or at least a freeware, and 2) to include a Linux version. And then, it would be unbeatable!
Well I have used postbox through 2 beta builds, took the survey today and found they are going to charge for it either via subscription or fee, and the free version will be ad supported.
Dumped postbox. Too bad, I liked it. In this economy opensource gets my vote.
I have been trying Postbox for a week now (with Gmail on 2 laptops & a desktop))& have uninstalled it. Its so buugy & crashes far too many times. Thunderbird blows it into oblivion, as far as usability / stability are concerned. If they plan to “sell this” they’ll have make gigantic improvements. Not to be recommended at any price. That’s my 2c worth!
I’ve been using Postbox since its first beta (switched from Thunderbird) and definitely prefer it over Thunderbird. The search feature is fast and makes it extremely easy to locate messages/info/attachments quickly. I have not had any problems with crashing, despite the fact that I’ve got about 20,000 messages in Postbox, across two different email accounts. I’ve found the team to be responsive with updates and fixing reported bugs (go to their support site on Get Satisfaction).
I used thunderbird for a while but it started crashing alot, one day it just died. Then I tried loads of mail clients till I found post box, and it was ok till I tried sending newsletters. Plain emails with little info and links.
Guess… postbox with its brilliant interface, nice plugins etc started crashing…so I guess I’ll keep on trying more and more options.