Nate Hanson
We polled our AppleInsider audience to vote for their favorite email application for the Mac. The winner is Airmail, with Outlook coming in as a close second.
Last week we asked you to vote for your favorite email application for the Mac, other than Apple's own Mail app. You nominated Polymail, Airmail, Postbox, Nylas N1 and Unibox. We received enough write-in votes for Outlook and Thunderbird that they were included in our poll.
The results are in
After thousands of votes, the winner of the AppleInsider Reader's Choice Award goes to Airmail. While Airmail supports many POP3 email services, it feels specifically designed for Gmail. It has a unified inbox and alias support, making it a sound option for advanced users.
Airmail takes advantage of many of Apple's features like iCloud sync, iCloud attachment upload and share, and Multi Touch gestures.
It sells for $9.99 in the Mac App Store, or you can brave the free beta version on Airmail's website.
Other notes
Even though we specifically excluded Apple's Mail app from this poll, it received over 400 write-in votes. Outlook was a write-in nominee and yet it still managed to climb to second place. Nylas N1, which came in third, is an open-source, extensible application available here.
Final Results
1. Airmail (23%)
2. Outlook (17%)
3. Nylas N1 (10%)
4. Postbox (8%)
5. Polymail (8%)
6. Thunderbird (6%)
7. Unibox (5%)
8. MailMate (1%)
Other's receiving votes:
Mailplane, Eudora, Boxy, Kiwi
Malcolm Owen
Andrew O'Hara
William Gallagher
19 Comments
It's a shame Sparrow was killed by Google. It could have easily topped the list.
Come on AI. You make a statement about the best Mac email app then specifically exclude Mail. What kind of poll is that? What's worse is all the people who included Outlook. I don't even remember seeing this poll and Outlook would have received a negative number from me. What's worse if I've never heard of the majority of these.
Ok, I agree with rob53, I use Apple's Mail on the Mac and it's perfect! It should've been included in the poll, which I also did not see, had I seen it I would've definitely voted. The other thing, though, that's actually comic is that on iPhone I use Outlook! Apple's native iOS app is not as efficient as Outlook so I had to ditch it in favor of Outlook's client. So as funny as it may sound I'm working with Apple's Mail on the Mac and Outlook on the iPhone and, oh boy, do they sync well! Much better than Apple's own on both devices!
None of them hold a candle to Mail.app.
"Even though we specifically excluded Apple's Mail app from this poll, it received over 400 write-in votes. Outlook was a write-in nominee and yet it still managed to climb to second place.”
What purpose does this survey serve other than paid advertising? So these third party email apps can claim “Chosen as top email program by AI readers?” As one commenter replied these apps were never heard of by the vast majority of users.