Mr. Postman, look and see, is there a client, a client for me?
May 12, 2010 9:26 AM   Subscribe

I really like the gmail interface and the way it's organized, but I also like having a desktop mail client to manage multiple accounts. Is there a sollution that lets me have it both ways?

I have a mac, and I've used MacMail and Thunderbird in the past, and have liked them quite a bit. But during a recent stint of not having my own computer for three months, I've come to really appreciate gmail's features, especially stacking conversations and Gchat. But I have three Gmail accounts and one AOL account, and it's annoying not to be able to use them all simultaneously.

I'm open to suggestions for both web-based and software-based solutions.
posted by Jon_Evil to Computers & Internet (10 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
The Zimbra desktop client is pretty close.
posted by COD at 9:29 AM on May 12, 2010


Best answer: Why not forward two of your Gmail accounts and your AOL account to the third Gmail account? You can send and receive from multiple accounts within Gmail.

On the desktop side of things Thunderbird 3.0 does a fairly good job threading conversations, if you haven't used it in a while it might be worth trying again.
posted by ChrisHartley at 9:30 AM on May 12, 2010


Have each of your "other" accounts forwarded to one, primary gmail account. Set up your filters in the primary account such that all mail addressed to each of these multiple accounts gets its own label, and archive it such that it's not cluttering up your inbox as well.

Soon, gmail is going to allow multiple levels of labels (ie something like 'Work/Todo', and Work/Done', etc). This will help in organizing multiple email accounts.
posted by cgg at 9:30 AM on May 12, 2010


Best answer: How about setting up all the email addresses to forward to a single GMail account, and then using multiple inboxes feature to display and manage each address in its own inbox?

You can tweak your GMail settings so that when you reply to a message your return address is whichever one to which the original email was sent, so to your respondents it will still look like you are using four different email addresses.
posted by sanitycheck at 9:31 AM on May 12, 2010 [2 favorites]


Best answer: A few notes:

- Use gmail's forwarding to consolidate some of your accounts. This will make life simpler. You can even use one account to send mail from one of the other addresses. Life's too short to deal with that many accounts and logins.

- Thunderbird allows for threaded conversations. Use IMAP and it'll sync up everything, including read/unread status.

- It's a good idea to use a client to download all of your email locally anyway. What happens if Google decides to shut down Gmail tomorrow? There's nothing preventing them from doing so (other than a massive loss of goodwill). Protect yourself by keeping your own copies.
posted by chrisamiller at 9:32 AM on May 12, 2010 [1 favorite]


Quick note with regard to Gmail. In the account you'll be logging into, go to Settings, Accounts and Import. Then add the other GMail accounts as POP3 accounts and Send Mail As...options.

You don't need to set up forwarding from the other accounts. You'll actually be popping the mail off them.
posted by idb at 11:06 AM on May 12, 2010


Here is the problem I have with forwarding everything to a single Gmail account. Every time you reply with your Jon_Evil@Gmail within the Consolidated@Gmail the recipient will see

From: Consolidated@gmail.com on behalf of Jon_Evil@gmail.com


I have not yet figured out how to stop that from happening, so I stopped doing it because it defeated the purpose, for me, to consolidate. I wanted it to only say from Jon_Evil@gmail...
posted by iurodivii at 11:25 AM on May 12, 2010


Mailplane.
posted by rbs at 11:39 AM on May 12, 2010


Thunderbird has good integration with gmail
http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/
The extensions option in thunderbird makes it good alternative.


As far as the Consolidated@gmail vs Jon_Evil@gmail . Register your John_Evil @GMAIL in Consolidated@gmail. In the compose windows, you should be able to select which email its coming from .. as in exclusive John_ Evil@gmail .
posted by radsqd at 9:00 AM on May 13, 2010


Here is how you do the consolidated to john_evil
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=22370
posted by radsqd at 9:02 AM on May 13, 2010


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