Gyaz mail, the best imap client for OS X?
After a few months of using Apple’s Mail I recently decided to have another go at using IMAP for my email rather than POP. IMAP has several advantages not least of which is the ability to synchronise your messages between your local computer and the remote email server. This gives a full backup of your email and allows access to your email from any computer.
In my experience Apple Mail falls down quite badly in it’s imap intergration, particularly when using a slower connection as I am normally forced to do.
There are several alternatives available for OS X including Entourage, Thunderbird, Mailsmith, Eudora and many more. After trying most of these I narrowed my main requirements to four:
1. Full OS X Address book integration.
2. Multiple account and multiple SMTP servers support.
3. Plain text & HMTL.
4. Quick and efficent on and offline imap support.
In the end all of the email clients above fell short in one area or another. I had tried Gyaz Mail in the past but it had lacked imap support until version 1.5 was released.
After giving Gyaz 1.5 a go for the 40 day trial I was happy to cough up the US$18 for the full license and a month or so later I am still using it as my main email client.
There are a few annoyances. No unified inbox for one (all accounts have a seperate inbox). Secondly there is no built in spam filter, there is the option to integrate Spam Sieve, a third party filter but that costs an extra US$30. In my case my primary email host fastmail does an excellent job of reducing spam so I don’t miss it too much.
Overall Gyaz mail works well and most importantly the imap connection is fast and works flawlessly. No hanging up as Apple Mail used to, quick checking of all the imap folders and sub folders and full OS X Address book integration. Have a look and see what you think.