Email client for seniors?

April 16, 2024 2:04 PM

Yet another "please help me find an email client for a senior" question!

My wife is staying with her mom and stepdad for a few weeks, helping them navigate some long-term health care issues. One of the other things her mom has asked for help with is email, particularly finding an easy-to-use email client that works on both Android and Safari (she uses an iPad as well as an Android phone).

Her mom is eighty...something? I want to say 82, but let's just call it early 80's. She's in reasonably good health, has decent-with-glasses vision, and isn't necessarily tech-phobic. But, like a lot of folks her age, she also doesn't really want to spend a lot of time either futzing with her tech or climbing up any particularly steep learning curves.

Her email needs are fairly straightforward - send, receive, and be able to attach (and also easily open and use) attachments people send her (mostly videos, but also photos). In other words, she's a Very Average Email User. She has a Gmail account that is her regular email, but she "detests" the regular Gmail UI. Leaving Gmail is not an option.

The complicating factor is that she can't really articulate, in particular, why she hates the Gmail UI. She just "doesn't like how it works". So, my general, admittedly vague question is, have any of you had experience with an email client that is particularly easy for seniors to set up and use? What is it about your suggestion that makes it so senior-friendly?

posted by pdb to Technology (9 answers total)

Is the Gmail client relatively new to her? As you nodded to, often people don't like things because they are hard, and if she's been used to desktop email, any mobile client will be different and annoying because of the learning curve. I wonder whether there are some tweaks your wife can make to the Gmail client settings (larger type, fewer menus, idk) that could make it easier to use.

But obviously if that's the case, then a whole new client isn't going to be more satisfying.

I think when you said Safari you meant iOS, but maybe using a browser rather than an email client will actually be easier? Especially on the ipad.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:20 PM on April 16

Response by poster: @chesty_a_arthur: Not to threadsit, but I said Safari because I'm unfamiliar with the Apple world (I've always been Android), and wasn't sure if iPads ran on iOS or not. I think she's been using Gmail for a while, and just sort of been living with it while hoping something easier existed, and when my wife came down and said "how can I help right now?" this is one of the things that came to mind.

I'm not 100% sure whether she uses the Gmail app or the browser on either platform, and the aforementioned health issues in the family make this not really the time to dig deep into her tech use cases. I was just hoping there might be something out there that someone had used or recommended to someone that would be easy to point her to.
posted by pdb at 2:30 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the followup! I am the AOL mail admin for my own 80-year-old mother across several devices, so I have spent a ton of time wrestling with these things. (AOL is terrible, as you'd imagine, although it does the job.) Good luck to your wife and mother-in-law! I wish I had a good easy solution.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:54 PM on April 16

The Mail app in iOS (and iPad OS) is pretty easy to work with, and can be set up to access Gmail. Someone might have to do the initial set-up, but I expect that will be the case regardless. Thankfully, Mail.app is a relatively easy client to set-up.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:15 PM on April 16 [7 favorites]

I'm senior, competent with technology, and don't love the gmail interface. Gmail wants you to be comfortable with search. I'd prefer a click-to-sort approach. You can buy an affordable license for MS Office and set up outlook for gmail. Be cautious about where email is stored; you probably want it to remain on gmail's servers. I haven't used the Mac email client, and I'm not a fan of the Windows mail client. Outlook has a large userbase, making support reasonable. Thunderbird is also still around and popular.
posted by theora55 at 6:20 PM on April 16 [1 favorite]

Long-time gmail user! I hate their standard layout of emails, something about it makes it feel cluttered which overwhelms my senses. I'd experiment with the settings in particular both the layouts and the themes. Having a beautiful theme image that enhances the emails rather than being distracting can work really nicely. I once even changed it to something so beautiful I got obsessed with checking my emails...
posted by london explorer girl at 6:20 AM on April 17

I used Aqua Mail as a unified mail client on my Android phone for a long time, and it also supports iOS. Like the iOS Mail app, it will let you access Gmail accounts or any other email that lets you connect via SMTP. I used the paid version to be able to get rid of the "Sent from Aqua Mail" sig, but you can use it for free.
posted by briank at 9:08 AM on April 17

Outlook supports Gmail accounts. There is a free version to download.

I think it would be preferable to use one client across all devices to have as much consistency as possible.

Also... are you confident that the email client is the issue? I have noticed that sending email attachments in general can be difficult for less tech savvy folks... no matter what the client/platform. I believe that at least part of the difficulty can be ascribed to not having a conceptual understanding of where the file to attach can be located. This issue is compounded by different platforms handling file storage differently.
posted by oceano at 10:57 AM on April 17 [2 favorites]

I think this is a really hard question to answer without knowing exactly what it is she doesn't like about Gmail. I use Apple mail for one of my adresses, but after tinkering with Gmail so that I like the layout better and have words instead of icons, it's my preference just because it handles conversations better IMO. Gmail is incredibly customizable so if her issues are anything to do with inbox layout, icons vs words, that I'd look into it.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:11 PM on April 17