Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don’t like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don’t like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That’s all, thank you in advance.
Thunderbird on Linux and FairEmail on Android. I don’t like Thunderbird’s opt-out telemetry, I just haven’t found something that works better for me at the moment on Linux. I have zero complaints about FairEmail. I like Thunderbird’s fast and frequent updates, FairEmail’s respect for privacy. I think both have the features I want. I just check my email on either when it is most convenient.
Thunderbird
Search Index constantly breaking (fuck outlook)
Good themes
I am too removed from services to have too much an opinion
Email always sucks. It is no longer what is was.
I would like my client to fully support m365
My inbox is kept tiny. Dont let it get big. Theres no reason for that.“All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.” — http://mutt.org/
Thunderbird
What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
Mail on iOS, macOS
What is something you don’t like from the client.
Searching is difficult because you have to keep fighting with it.
- What is something you like from the client.
The UI, its ability to block remote content.
What is something you don’t like from the email service.
I’m confused by this part, are you talking about the email client or email provider?
I use primarily Gandi, and I don’t like their pricing model.
What is something you like from the email.
I love their spam headers and Sieve filtering.
Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
Not really, most my problems with email come from how it’s implemented on various servers (lack of encryption) and its support for HTML rather than something more sane, like Markdown.
Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
Not really, I just quickly work through the emails.
Technically, email supports markdown, it’s just not used by anyone. Email was invented many years before markdown, so it’s probably just more of a legacy thing than anything else.
Oh, I understand all that. I just don’t like it.
It does support markdown??? I always thought it didn’t.
The protocol supports anything. You can send an email in PDF format. And I don’t mean with a PDF attachment, I mean the email itself is formatted as a PDF.
The default that’s required to be supported by every client is
text/plain, and the standard on top of that istext/html, but you can providetext/markdowninstead if you want. If the client doesn’t support displaying markdown, it will probably let the user save it like it was an attachment. But, since you don’t really know what client the other user is using, the only really safe thing to send istext/plain.You can also provide both markdown and plain text (and even just use the same text, since markdown is perfectly readable) inside a
multipart/alternative. Then every client should be able to display it.Thank you for sharing this knowledge.
Outlook classic for work. Outlook for iOS for work. Sometimes I use the iOS calendar for both work and personal. Personal is Gmail workspace web and iOS app.
No complaints for outlook. Gmail isn’t snappy.
Interesting, I’ve heard so many people complain about Outlook, I guess its a matter of preference.
I use Outlook for work and personal. I’ve gotten used to it and old habits die hard I guess.
Outlook has literally decades of continuous improvements while remaining backwards compatible. It’s also catered exclusively to enterprises. It’s also a money maker on its own and not adware supported.
It’s old style software.
The new modern outlook might force some other startup to be birthed into existence that maintains that classic interface.
I actually look forward to modern outlook as it dump so much legacy code bloat. I can’t wait to be running ARM or even risc-v and letting it all run in a browser or PWA. We’ve reached the end of x86 and Outlook classic is one of the few apps preventing its transition.
My ISP mail with a personal domain name in front. A self hosted roundcube web client for desktop use, thunderbird on my android phone.
In case of client failure I still have the ISP web mail as a backup. With my own domain name and mail alias I can change provider at will.
Oh yes and I run dovecot as an email backup on top of that.
I use https://port87.com/
It’s great, because all my email is sorted into labels by address, and everyone I’ve given my email to has been given a different address. So basically, I’ll go into each label I care about, set it to show only unread and in reverse order, then click each one.
It really works well for me, because mode switching is hard on me. When all my emails are placed in one inbox all mixed up, I get overwhelmed really quickly. So, having to only switch mental modes once I’m completely done with one sender’s emails is something I can manage a lot better.
It also has labels that require a challenge, so when you give a real person your email, they can email you, but robots can’t.
Full disclosure, I invented the delivery system for Port87, and I run the service.
Outlook with a 365 account.
Like about the application: The close button actually closes the application not minimising it to a tray icon.
Dislike about the application: Vaguely gestures at it
Dislike about the provider: it’s run by M$
Like about the provider: I don’t have to deal with Exchange anymore.Edison Email on Android for now.
Don’t like combined Inbox being default. Do like how fast it loads up and the rest of the GUI doesn’t annoy me. Good dark theme.
Betterbird on Desktop. Marginally better GUI options I care about over Thunderbird. Multi-line View. Linux/Windows. I like everything, no negatives.
I use Runbox who’ve existed since 2000 out of Norway and a separate service for a domain name as my backend. Runbox has a comically outdated web GUI. Very web 1.0. Very slowly replacing it with Runbox version 7. I don’t care as I never use the website except for creating sorting rules and email aliases.
Mobile I mainly just use for 2factor on mobile so the app matters less since I infrequently use it. Main usage I’m still primarily a desktop user when it comes to dealing with my email. Runbox I set up to sort my email for me so Betterbird isn’t doing much advanced stuff besides flagging Junk/Not Junk. Aliases are themed and I sign up for stuff with them, autosorted into dedicated folders for each alias. This also makes setting up on a new machine quick and simple.
I use Thunderbird on both desktop (Linux) and mobile (Android). I currently have five accounts in a unified inbox:
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Gmail (2 accounts): ‘professional’ one I give to people and the other one for generic account signups - currently migrating away from both of these.
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Mailbox.org: the replacement for both my gmail accounts as mailbox.org allows aliases. They are completely EU based and don’t sell your data. Costs a small fee of €15 a year.
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Zoho: for my own domain which is public and attached to my various projects as a developer contact address
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Microsoft 365 🤢: Had to add this one literally today because I’m going back to uni in September. Hate that they use microsoft, but thankfully the uni enabled IMAP/SMTP instead of only allowing Microsoft’s proprietary OWA protocol.
As for general usage, I treat my inbox like a to-do list. Once I’ve completed all tasks relating to an email, it gets deleted if it’s not important or archived (usually if it’s anything to do with money like a receipt or invoice). I usually only have at most 3-4 emails in my inbox at once.
The only thing that annoys me about Thunderbird is that occasionally if I delete a message, it will leave a blank ‘ghost’ message where the old one used to be that has a date of 01/01/1970 which only goes away when the program is restarted.
I feel you, I also had to use either gmail or outlook in university. At the moment I’m trying to clean the mess of all the accounts I have signed up for.
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mu4e with Emacs
It’s great because:
- process a big bulk of emails quickly
- renders emails in a consistent format, lowering mental overhead
- can link to individual emails in my notes
- many mail providers through the same interface
- custom views crossing many (or some) mailboxes and providers
- emails available offline
- tracking pixels and the likes don’t work
- can search/filter through many mails quickly
It’s bad because:
- requires Emacs, high learning curve
- first setup was cumbersome for Gmail
- rendering emails as text loses some information (rarely a problem, can view the email as html)
- no backlink from email thread to my notes yet (should be ok to write)
- I use another interface on mobile
- I send emails as plain text which is weirdly rendered in some clients (mostly fine, emitting html possible)
- Thunderbird Stable on Desktop (want to figure out nightly tho), TB Beta on Android.
- Hard to say, as I only ever used gmail as “alternative”. On that, the TB search on a gmail is worse than gmail’s own client’s search.
- Compared to gmail, that it’s much less corpo and much more customizable.
- My provider (me) has no password reset flow. I have to manually generate a new pw for an account with doveadm (postfix uses saslauth with dovecot for auth) and edit /etc/dovecot/users.
- Basically, I’m the most privacy preserving and flexible provider you can think of. Except that the gov and pigs now just have to question my domain to get my address for any email I send. But oh well.
- Skins. So it can eg. look like Outlook. Would help me switch my grandparents from M$ to FOSS. My grandpa is of the “it doesn’t work, so an immediate screaming meltdown follows”-type, and my grandma survives solely on knowing which button is where, because she’s almost blind.
- All services have their own address, so I can block whole services and default others to eg. spam. Helps me keep the traffic low, and know where an email slipped to spammers/scammers. Though, that never happened in the 1-2 years I’m using it. The only spam is PayPal and Twitch (will change that) telling me that one of my 10 or so subscriptions is going to renew soon.
I use Outlook - I have an M365 account. Actually, I have several, since I have accounts for all of my clients and they all use M365.
New Outlook is terrible. It is like Microsoft asked themselves, is there a way to remove the most useful parts while poorly trying to mimic Google with a cartoon flair? And they were able to achieve this lofty goal.
I use the old Outlook as a result and have figured it out well enough. I have several accounts in the app, which is nice. The search is terrible, but can be improved if you ask Copilot for search formulas. I can setup .oft templates so others can send mails I write. I can easily set up branded colors and fonts. So it is fine.
Androids version of Outlook is shameful, but I have to use it.
In terms of email management. I get somewhere between 75 and 150 each day, so I just tackle them as they come in. It I can’t take action right away, I mark it unread so I come back to it later.
i use seamonkey mail. it literally just works.
