Hi. New here.
New job. New email.
I’m a long time Thunderbird user having only grudgingly moved over from emacs rmail decades ago when it became too difficult to manage all the mime mail I was receiving.
New job uses exchange, no access to imap so I’ve been making a round of email clients that can do exchange.
Thunderbird, with Exquilla ($10/year), can do it, but it seems to authenticate oddly. Sometimes I can’t send. I can’t even authenticate without VPN. Note that thunderbird also runs on linux, which is a win. (It runs on windows too, but I’ll never use windows, so…)
Apple Mail does exchange and has actions so I can automatically file mailing lists away, but a) it uses a lot of screen real estate to show me junk that takes me a longer time to visually sort through and b) it requires multi-hand chording for common actions like “Archive”. There doesn’t seem to be a fix for either one. The iOS version is similar, which is perhaps a win, though I’ll probably never read my work email on a personal device.
Spark does exchange and it’s display is more akin to Mail but not so bad. And it can remap command keys so it can do single keystroke commands for common items. But it has no actions whatsoever and no way to sort on arbitrary headers. I’m finding it a useful adjunct with Apple Mail. The two together give me most of what I want though I really miss the ease of Thunderbird. Without actions, Spark is still just a toy, IMO.
Spark does cache all of your config, including your accounts, so that Spark running elsewhere, like other macs, other ios, etc, only need one login and they’re configured. I admit that’s a major nuisance with a dozen devices and a few dozen email accounts. But the lack of actions is still a killer here.
I also recently tried Airmail. I’ve been a purchaser of Airmail for years, one of those, “I’ll buy you now in hopes that you’ll develop into a useful tool”. But they’ve recently given me the finger by switching to subscription. :(. And they don’t have single keystroke commands, though they do have actions, and they’re the old Apple Mail style display. All in all, not much of a win.
Most of the other options I’ve seen listed in this thread are IMAP/SMTP only and for that, Thunderbird is, by far, the biggest winner there. Nothing else can come close to managing the volume of email I deal with or of displaying the info I need to see from the email, (like headers).
If anyone knows of another exchange capable MUA that can do automated actions and has single character keystrokes, I’d be interested to hear about it.