good, free, open source email client with IMAP and POP

January 27, 2004 8:10 AM

What is a good, free, hopefully Open Source email client which can handle both Pop and Imap protocols. Have been using Thunderbird, Mozilla and The Bat!, not too happy with any of their Imap implementations, though I love Mozilla/FB's bayes filtering.
posted by signal to computers & internet (10 comments total)

What specific needs do you have for your IMAP implementation? I've been using Mozilla Mail quite heavily for IMAP stuff for the past two and a half years and have never found it particularly wanting.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 8:58 AM on January 27, 2004

You might try checking out Pegasus - I'm not sure about the IMAP, although I THINK it's in there, but it's definitely free.
posted by thunder at 9:25 AM on January 27, 2004

DrJohnEvans: my main problems have to do with folders, not being able to rename/delete them, etc.,mostly in FB. In the bat, I can see the folders and message headers, but not message bodies (though i suspect I'm doing something wrong). Have Mozilla installed but haven't tested it extensively.
posted by signal at 9:35 AM on January 27, 2004

Thunderbird IMAP has a few minor flaws, especially in the performance area, but it really does work well for reading. Its ability to organize folders is, admittedly, not too hot.

KDE's KMail is a little goofy to configure for IMAP but it's been working great for me. I like it more than Thunderbird because it's actively hostile towards HTML messages. And yes, KDE does run on Windows, if that's your OS of choice.
posted by majick at 10:57 AM on January 27, 2004

Why can't you rename/delete the folders? The options are in the right-click menus. Did they just not work? I'll second DrJohnEvans' endorsement of Mozilla's IMAP; I've been using it for about as long on three to four accounts with lots of folders and have never been let down.
posted by zsazsa at 11:03 AM on January 27, 2004

Also far be it from me to let a mail client thread go by without mentioning Mutt, pretty much the best MUA of all time, which does indeed run on Windows as well.
posted by majick at 11:13 AM on January 27, 2004

Yeah, Mutt rocks. The level of configurability is amazing.
posted by Galvatron at 11:59 AM on January 27, 2004

signal: Have you used The Bat 2.0? The 1.X IMAP implementation was terrible, but the main addition to 2.X was full IMAP support.
posted by Jairus at 12:23 PM on January 27, 2004

Mozilla has served me well for a long time now, and I have 100 or so IMAP folders, sometimes nested as deep as 5 levels.
posted by badstone at 2:04 PM on January 27, 2004

I can't seem to nest folders using Thunderbird -- would that be its fault, or the IMAP server's fault?
posted by namespan at 7:22 PM on January 27, 2004