What's a good email checking-and-handling program for Windows?

October 4, 2013 1:08 PM

I use Digsby for checking a bunch of old and secondary email accounts on my Windows system, but that program seems to be defunct and several email accounts no longer work with it. Anyone know a good alternative?

Handling as in being able to archive, delete, mark as read, mark as spam, etc. from within the program.

posted by aerotive to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Seems like you need a full-featured email client like Thunderbird. You can use add-ons like this one or this one to keep the program running and checking your mail after it's been closed.
posted by zsazsa at 1:27 PM on October 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

Would a full-featured email client like Mozilla Thunderbird work for you?
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 1:27 PM on October 4, 2013

Yeah, Thunderbird would be my first suggestion as well; it handles multiple logins so you should be able to have all your email funnel into one inbox, or set up multiple different inboxes depending on your need.

It's also free, which is nice.
posted by quin at 1:29 PM on October 4, 2013

You can also skin Thunderbird to look more or less like Outlook which most people are familiar with. I use it for checking secondary accounts and it's a pretty predictable program.
posted by jessamyn at 1:34 PM on October 4, 2013

Response by poster: I have Thunderbird and use it to back up my main account, but that's not really what I'm looking for...would like something that sits in the tray and runs in the background.

Any other ideas?
posted by aerotive at 3:21 PM on October 4, 2013

Outlook handles multiple accounts...
posted by KokuRyu at 3:54 PM on October 4, 2013

I'm afraid I'm not understanding exactly what you don't like in Thunderbird (which I personally don't use but would also be my first suggestion), so perhaps Sylpheed or its fork Claws Mail?
posted by Bangaioh at 5:37 PM on October 4, 2013

Response by poster: I'm not looking for a full email client, rather a small program that always runs in the background and notifies you of new messages via popups in the Windows tray. Ideally, it'll also do basic email handling as described above.

Kinda like what Android and iOS do as a basic part of how they work. Growl on the Mac is also similar...I think.
posted by aerotive at 7:39 PM on October 4, 2013

Thunderbird with one of the add-ons I mentioned above will do the notification part. But I do see in this screenshot of Digsby that it has a quick popup-like interface, which Thunderbird certainly doesn't have. One probably could be made as an Add-on but I'm not finding anything.
posted by zsazsa at 11:25 PM on October 4, 2013

Oh, I just noticed that Trillian can do the same kind of mail notification/marking/deleting. It's under active development so give that a try.
posted by zsazsa at 12:14 PM on October 24, 2013