Howdy! Today I will share with you the first software recommendation in my blog. The starred product is, as its advertisememt says, the best email client for Windows – Mailbird.
You may visit their official homepage here. (You could check the URL, I swear that this is NOT my promo link lol)
A little comment here, as you may notice, mailbird.com will lead you to the same site as well, so I do not quite understand why they intentionally make their home URL longer.
Up to now, I will say that Mailbird is the best email client in the entire universe. Of course that is a bit personal, but I will try to convince you why it is well worth the money (if you are determined to purchase Pro version). I am a great fan of Windows but I have also used iOS and, frankly speaking, the stock email application in iOS is not ideal at all, or at least I think so, in terms of user experience, not even as ideal as Windows Mail. As for Android, Mailbird does not support that OS yet, and I will have another email application recommendation for you later on for Android.
You may notice that the home page says get Mailbird free, and that is true. If you are not convinced by what I am going to tell, you may download the free version (called Mailbird Lite) for a 30-day pro trial (and if you do not want the Pro version, Lite is free lifetime) . For me, I think the double version strategy is indeed a plus in their marketing – get a huge user base first, and develop Pro version customers while gaining testimonials (like what I am doing now) and invitations, at the same time.
Well, after all these words, if you are still reading and not sleepy enough to hit the cross upright the next moment, here comes why Mailbird is excellent, and why the Pro version worths the money.
- User Interface: Mailbird, although its developer says has full touchscreen support, in my view it is originally designed for touchscreen use and then migrated to computers. There is no complicated interface like Outlook (his interface inherited the entire Office family, has powerful functions but complicated and looks a bit scary for newcomers). Instead, everything you see in Mailbird looks friendly, clearly labelled and categorized into function blocks (that is a term I made up myself to describe that interface – English is still my second language, and if you are confused, just try the app yourself). It is exceptionally easy to find what you need, even if you are new to the software (and for advanced users, there are a list of shortcuts to make you even more productive). There is just one menu, and it contains everything you need. All the options available are categorized into 11 subjects, and you easily get the idea what you are doing.
- Still user interface: The layout is fully customizable and you can create your own preference based on different templates – there is a wide range in which you may modify the width and height of your rows and columns, until you are comfortable with it. When I bought it, backgrounds are still all pure colors, and they recently added some pictures and patterns. Some of these look quite good, and I am using one.
- Functions: There are not a lot of advanced functions available in Mailbird, customizable proxy as an example. But it contains everything you need to handle emails – and that is what an email client is meant for – to concentrate your limited effort available on productivity rather than setting stuff up and dealing with errors. Easily save your preferred text appearance and signatures in settings and they will be added automatically in a way that you can still see and modify in the composing window. Accounts and identities are concentrated together so that you modify them all at a time. It is very easy to organize your emails as Mailbird offers five system folders, which are largely compatible with mailbox folders – emails starred, as an example, appears in the “Starred” system folder, rather than have another folder named starred in your custom folders. If you are using Gmail, Mailbird has a special configuration for Gmail (I am not quite sure what are the adjustments made especially for Gmail rather than regular IMAP addresses, but things appear differently, and Gmail shortcuts also work).
- Addons: there is a wide variety of addons for Mailbird, and the list is constantly growing. Some of the addons could be quite useful, like the contacts addon, it interacts with Mailbird itself quite well, and you do not have to remember addresses – the addon does that job, once you send an email to somebody or replies somebody’s email, that address is remembered. You can name the person and later on, several letters in his name will do. Imports and exports are also available so you do not have to build the entire list all over again, which is indeed painstaking. Other addons are mainly popular Internet apps, like Google docs, Facebook, Twitter and so on. Mailbird kinds of contains a browser itself (I do not know the proper English term to express that) so you can access the webpage client of those sites in one click, and your credentials are saved.
- Other highlights: Mailbird is blazing fast, after it has downloaded all your emails after adding an account, during which it seems to be sluggish. It usually reminds you of your new incoming email within fifteen seconds after it is sent (I have did that experiment between different accounts, and that does not take a manual refresh). Downloading email content and attachments is also fast, especially the attachments, since they are cached while you read through the content. Mailbird has a rather fat size for an email client, like 57 MB for the installation program, but I think it is well worth it, and its size does not seem to affect runtime speed at all. And if you choose to reinstall Mailbird, your settings could be kept during removal, so that you save the effort getting things going again
Of course, Mailbird has its drawbacks, but they does not affect the fact that it is an awesome software. I will list some cons for Mailbird here, some of which you may notice during your first several days with Mailbird. If by chance any staff of Mailbird sees the following words, please do consider making some improvements.
- Mailbird takes a rather long time to start – several seconds on my computer but my machine is quite high-end. On regular computers it may take longer. I think it needs some optimization.
- Sometimes the synchronization is not behaving as expected. Like I trashed several emails from my inbox and when I presses F5 to refresh, they appear again. But that only happens with one of my mailboxes, and I suspect it has something to do with server settings.
- Mailbird is not offering detailed error messages or error codes when something unpleasant happens. I understand you are trying to make things user-friendly and avoid frightening anyone, but that increases my effort in locating the problem. I suggest you offer an advanced option whether to display the log entries or not, in case the software malfunctions.
- I do appreciate that Mailbird is providing several language options, but I am native in Chinese and I feel that Mailbird in Chinese is quite weird. The translation seems to have been done by machine or by someone who is not quite good at Chinese language, or lacks knowledge on our culture or way of thinking. I suggest the language pack to be released in communities and let the users polish them a bit.
- Could promotion be removed from the menu for a copy which have been activated by a lifetime serial? I do not really like it, it is just not understandable to send somebody an email just to tell them I got a really awesome software to share with you, even the software itself is indeed magnificent. I think sharing it in my blog is a more proper way, and that’s why I am writing all these.
I know that no talking is a match against your own experience with that software, so I strongly recommend you to give it a try. First thirty days for free, and once that expires, you get the Lite version available lifetime. I decided to purchase Pro version after like three to four days, and I believe some of you will do that too.
A little bit about pricing. It may seem a little high at the very first glance, but you always see a banner at the top of their homepage saying you are getting a 50% discount for your first visit, no matter how many times you have visited their site before. Subscriptions ($6 for a year) and lifetime ($22.5) are both available options, but do remember to click on the banner to get discount, the pricing page in their main menu will not work. The Mailbird team is a small one, so I suspect that is one of the reasons why their price is kept down.
After the article:
I do not know why spelling check is disabled on this WordPress client, so sorry for any typo (I know there must be plenty), though I have done all I could, having a collegiate dictionary beside when I wrote all these. Again, English is still my second language, and writing takes practice, which I think I lack. If you like this article, or you like the software I recommended today, you are welcome to leave a comment, or subscribe to my blog via email or registration.