Email client like Thunderbird?

[Mike-Linux-Mint]

I've heard about some email clients on Linux and am wondering if there are any advantage of using such a program?
Actually, I tried to install it but quickly stopped when I was prompted with a message telling me that all my emails would be transferred into the email client but I don't know if this program would erase all my emails from my gmail address. It's not something I'd like since I'm also using gmail on my phone and I wouldn't want my emails to be erased. Do you know if that is the case?

Do you believe that thunderbird is the best email client for Linux or are there any interesting alternatives?

[HaveaMint]

If you set up imap in the client then it won't delete them. You have to click on them and select delete. You can setup local folders and "copy" all of them to your selected local folders and leave them on the google server.

[Moem]

I don't know if this program would erase all my emails from my gmail address.
Do you believe that thunderbird is the best email client for Linux or are there any interesting alternatives?

Whether or not it removes your messages from the server is a matter of settings. In the server settings, be sure to tick the 'Leave messages on server' box.

It's very good, but some people prefer something else. A friend of mine was used to Pegasus Mail, and now used Claws Mail because it feels similar to her.

By the way, what were you installing? Thunderbird comes pre-installed as far as I know.

[Mike-Linux-Mint]

Indeed, you're right, Thunderbird is already installed on Mint.
But I'm not convinced Thunderbird might be advantageous in my case.
Thanks, though, for your help

[MrGrimm]

get yourself zoho mail. it has a installer and online interface. nice, cause once you set it up top your liking and use the appimage file to add it to linux if you rerun your os and add zoho again all your settings are imported so you don't have to reset it up.

[Mike-Linux-Mint]

get yourself zoho mail. it has a installer and online interface. nice, cause once you set it up top your liking and use the appimage file to add it to linux if you rerun your os and add zoho again all your settings are imported so you don't have to reset it up.

Thanks dude.
I haven't heard of zoho mail. Actually, at the moment, I'm running gmail but I'd like to find a more private alternative, possibly under EU privacy laws to restrict the use/access to my emails. I've heard some names but I haven't heard about zoho so I'm gonna have a look and see if privacy is sth that they take seriously. Thanks for sharing.

[Schultz]

Mike-Linux-Mint wrote:
Do you believe that thunderbird is the best email client for Linux or are there any interesting alternatives?

An interesting alternative is Interlink Mail & News. Here's a link if you want to check it out:

http://binaryoutcast.com/projects/interlink/

[MrGrimm]

get yourself zoho mail. it has a installer and online interface. nice, cause once you set it up top your liking and use the appimage file to add it to linux if you rerun your os and add zoho again all your settings are imported so you don't have to reset it up.

Thanks dude.
I haven't heard of zoho mail. Actually, at the moment, I'm running gmail but I'd like to find a more private alternative, possibly under EU privacy laws to restrict the use/access to my emails. I've heard some names but I haven't heard about zoho so I'm gonna have a look and see if privacy is sth that they take seriously. Thanks for sharing.

cool here is eu and com, saying cause policies may vary. here's eu

https://www.zoho.eu/mail/

[Mike-Linux-Mint]

get yourself zoho mail. it has a installer and online interface. nice, cause once you set it up top your liking and use the appimage file to add it to linux if you rerun your os and add zoho again all your settings are imported so you don't have to reset it up.

Thanks dude.
I haven't heard of zoho mail. Actually, at the moment, I'm running gmail but I'd like to find a more private alternative, possibly under EU privacy laws to restrict the use/access to my emails. I've heard some names but I haven't heard about zoho so I'm gonna have a look and see if privacy is sth that they take seriously. Thanks for sharing.

cool here is eu and com, saying cause policies may vary. here's eu

https://www.zoho.eu/mail/

Oh that's cool, thanks!!

[Tater]

A suggestion for a mail client is Opera's M2 client. On Linux, you can install the old Opera v12 browser from the repository and use the mail client that is part of that. The browser part works, but is not supported anymore and may not work on some websites. For Windows, Opera released M2 as a stand-alone program when it moved on from Presto to Chromium.

I like M2 quite a bit and have been using it since 2000, or so. You can set it up as pop3 or IMAP and it uses TLS encryption. The set up is straight forward, there is no wizard to automagically misconfigure your account for you. As someone said above: Configuration is key to what the program will do. Look and see what the controls are and look up what they do. "Leave messages on server" and "until I delete them" are two of the settings that usually exist in a mail client in some form or another. So is "Keep a local copy of all messages".

I have many email accounts and most of them are set up in M2 where they all appear in my consolidated in-box, as well as their individual account in-boxes. You can control whether certain emails show or not and group/thread/sort to your heart's content.

It can seem a little "too much" at first as you learn how these programs handle things. But that is true of anything you are learning. A thing you should know about using a mail client is that you can have a local copy, and backup, of all your emails. The email provider isn't completely in control of your access unless you let them be. I like that M2's mail cache is in plain text, so my archive is readable and searchable without proprietary software or translators.

Another point to consider is that you can be your own email provider, if you want. You can get a domain and web hosting for less than the cost of a fru-fru coffee drink per month and use it for unlimited email accounts for you and yours. You don't even need to make an index.html page if you don't want to. Or, your homepage can just be the login page for the open source webmail application that your hosting service provides.

I set up email accounts for different purposes, such as newsletters, retail, selling, personal, banking, etc. That is a nice thing about having your own domain and virtually unlimited email addresses (and storage). I find it makes it much easier to tune out when I need to. My phone only has a couple of the email accounts on it, because I don't need to know right now that Bill's Bargain Emporium is having an awesome sale on left handed metric Crescent wrenches. That is something that can wait until I want to look at the ads. Or, never. Never's also good.

I actually use a Hotmail account as my spam address. Any time I "have to" give an email address that I know is going to result in a ton of emails that I do not want, I use the Hotmail address. I check it once a month, maybe. Mailinator.com is also useful for anonymous burner email needs. Just give the person a name at mailinator.com and you, and anyone else!, can see what is in the mailbox at any time. Not secure at all, but a useful anonymous email.

[MrGrimm]

Tater and probably completely insecure if it's outdated and no longer supported.

[AZgl1800]

if you want secure, encrypted email,

investigate https://protonmail.com/

they have apps for phones and PCs.

[t-bone]

I use Evolution and am quite happy with it. Fast, connects nicely to my Gmail calendar and contacts. Gets the job done.

[fabien85]

There are two questions here: the client (software), and the provider (service).

For the client, many exotic ones have been proposed, but what about staying standard ? Thunderbird works really well. To set it up to use an existing gmail account is dead simple: when you open thunderbird for the first time, it will propose to set it up either by creating a new mail account or using an existing one. Select existing one, fill in your name, email address and password, click next and thunderbird will automatically find the good configuration and propose to use either IMAP (default, keeps messages on the server) or POP3 (which deletes email on the server and keeps them on the computer). Choose IMAP, which is the default anyway, and click "Done".

For the provider, I put a +1 on protonmail.
It has strong security and encryption. The consequence however is that you have to jump through some hoop to use it with a local mail client (thunderbird or other) : you have to install a bridge software, which they send upon request.

[Joss]

There are two questions here: the client (software), and the provider (service).

Right.
Sticking to the thread title Email client like Thunderbird? I'd say there's nothing like Thunderbird, it's a unique combination of features, stability and ease of use; plus, as usual with Mozilla apps, it's very configurable.
As to the provider you should open a new thread and start by stating if you're willing to pay or want exclusively a free option.

[phd21]

Hi Mike-Linux-Mint,

I just read your post and the good replies to it. Here are my thoughts on this as well.

You can use Thunderbird (TB) and still keep your emails on the Gmail servers using either "imap" (recommended and the default) or "pop3" because there are settings in TB for this. "imap" by default keeps your emails on the email provider's servers whereas "pop3" usually does not, but if you bring up TB and click "File" in its toolbar right-away, click "work offline", you can then change its settings to keep your emails on the mail servers, or on both your local computer and their servers, restart TB, then go back online. There are also a couple really good system tray mail notification indicators available as well, "Birdtray" and "Firetray".

Re: Thunderbird mail notification: [SOLVED] Requesting package from Bionic & Cosmic PPA be added to Xenial repo
viewtopic.php?f=47&t=280631&hilit=birdtray

"ProtonMail" is really nice, but its main security features only work with other "ProtonMail" users and there is no "ProtonMail" Linux desktop software client; you cannot use 3rd party email clients like TB with "protonmail" accounts yet as far as I know. I did find this though:

protonmail-desktop/application: Unofficial Electron wrapper for ProtonMail
https://github.com/protonmail-desktop/application


Hope this helps ...

[PerfectGlass]

protonmail-desktop/application: Unofficial Electron wrapper for ProtonMail
https://github.com/protonmail-desktop/application


Hope this helps ...

This app worked really well for me but in the end, I went with Posteo. After spending 2 days reading the Terms and Privacy statements for all the email providers listed on privacytools.io, I went with Posteo.
Integrates nicely with T-Bird and PGP.
Their website is very comprehensive when explaining your options and their processes.
All emails can be encrypted on their servers and you can setup outgoing to only go out if the receiving end supports TLS.
Price is right as well!

[Mike-Linux-Mint]

All of your suggestions sound good.
I wasn't aware of the possibility of hosting your own email address. Is it something difficult to do? Why should you pay to do that and who?
It's funny because I choose to replace Gmail with GMX mail which is located in Germany and privacytools.io lists it as a country where key disclosure laws don't apply. Well, I don't intend to go criminal but it's interesting to be able to choose the most private solutions

[phd21]

Hi Mike-Linux-Mint, & Everyone Else,

I do not see why someone would pay for an email provider when so many great free email providers are available. Not that there is anything wrong with paying for an email provider.

As for truly secure email, IMHO, users can use GPG/PGP encryption and other encryption options with whomever they communicate with using any email provider free or not and any email application or through a browser's webmail. If an email application already has GPG/PGP encryption (Thunderbird with Enigmail addon) then that is easy to use, but anyone can use various encryption tools to encrypt text with a password that only the sender and recipients have and paste that into any email message or attach it as a file.

I love Google's Gmail because of all the superb integrated services they offer. Thank you, Google!

I do not like anyone monitoring my activity, although I can understand their desire to do so for advertising revenue, and there are various options to reduce or eliminate that from adding browser extension add-ons (no tracking, fingerprint blockers, etc..) using a VPN, changing local ISP DNS servers, etc...

While researching many posts on email and security to help others, I did come across another email application (client) "Confidant Mail" that provides secure email communications using your current email address (or a new one) as long as the senders and recipients are using this email application also provides for sending large files (large attachments). This application wants to create a new GPG encryption key pair which is fine, but I already have GPG/PGP encryption keys that I would want to use, and I have not figured out how to use existing GPG/PGP keys with this application yet?

Confidant Mail
https://www.confidantmail.org/

Demo
https://www.confidantmail.org/slideshow-debian/

Hope this helps ...

[PerfectGlass]

It's funny because I choose to replace Gmail with GMX mail which is located in Germany and privacytools.io lists it as a country where key disclosure laws don't apply. Well, I don't intend to go criminal but it's interesting to be able to choose the most private solutions

I'm sure GMX mines your data as much a gmail. Read their Terms/Privacy policies.