After years of using Outlook in its various forms on Windows and macOS, I decided to move over to using eM Client this Black Friday (2024), when the commercial pro lifetime deal for this app was on offer.
How I use Outlook
I live by Rules in Outlook. I use them to help folderize everything. Outlook search was/still is absolute garbage so the folders help me more easily track down what I'm looking for.
I use MS Teams for creating and managing my meeting so I no longer do this within Outlook.
I also don't bother with any other side of Outlook like managing contacts or anything outside of basic emails.
I'm also a sucker for a good UI and while Outlook isn't bad...it's not a great macOS app in the looks department in my opinion.
Email Clients I tried out
macOS isn't short of highly rated mail apps. There's Spark, MailMate, Missive, MailSpring, Airmail, Apple's own stock Mail.app and a bunch more.
I tried most of them out on my journey looking for a new mail client. They all have their own take on how best to manage email. While some of these apps are good, they can come with their quirks that would take some time to get used to but I wasn't really looking for something 'groundbreaking'.
I just wanted something functional. Something that would give me what I liked about Outlook but give it to me with some additional bells and whistles.
I also wasn't looking for a subscription service. Ideally I wanted to purchase the app once.
So eventually, I came across eM Client and I decided to give it a go.
Features of eM Client that interested me
Right out the gate, I liked the UI. It's not earth shattering but it's familiar, modern and meant I could probably start using it without much of any training.
I also noticed that search was a lot quicker after I had my accounts all setup. eM Client would bring me back search results faster than Outlook was.
There was also a really nice feature that instantly won me over - clicking to view an email would also bring up a History and Attachments tab to the right of the email. No more tracking down that email you remembered you received from this person - eM Client just lists them all for when you need it. This was heaven to me.
Migration process
The migration process for moving my M365 account over to eM Client was painless once I logged in and approved the app via the on screen controls.
Within a few minutes my emails were visible within the app. However, it did take around 12hrs for all my emails to sync across. I was expecting this so it wasn't a major hardship.
Pain Points
It wasn't all plain sailing unfortunately. Because I have Server Rules to manage putting the emails into folders, eM Clients works a little different to Outlook.
From my understanding, and I could be wrong, eM Client only knows if there is new email if the email goes into it's Inbox first before being moved by a rule to a subfolder. The meant that I was not being notified of emails unless I was clicking into each folder to trigger it to load the emails inside it.
At first I thought this was a deal break until I realised that I could remove all my server rules, let the emails go to my mail inbox and then put into folders on the local rule side. A pain? Sure. But a workable solution at least.
Another thing that was interfering with my New Mail notifications was Categorizations within eM Client. There were on by default and make sense for Gmail. The popular Primary/Promotions/Social categories are great for Gmail but with my M365 account they just didn't work at all and got in the way for when new emails were coming into me so for everything email account, other than Gmail, I disabled them and just left the Primary category.
Configuring eM Client
By default eM Client doesn't mark an email as read until after it's been opened for 3secs. I must read fast because this felt like an age to me. I toggled this option down to 0 so emails are instantly marked as read the moment I click onto them.
I also turned off Conversations as I didn't like how they were grouping my email threads.
Feel free to skip this next bit, but I thought it might be useful to share what I configured here so you can see exactly what I changed and why.
eM Client Settings Updated
Notifications
I turned off notifications. Personal preference. I check my emails on my own time so no need to be notified of emails.
Backups
I configured a backup every 3 days for peace of mind.
Turned on All Inboxes in the UI
I use multiple email accounts to avoid the need to go in and out of each one I use the global inboxes option.
Mail settings
Mark emails as read instantly. If I select the mail, that’s good enough. Don’t wait any longer to mark it as read.
I also updated the font type (so long Calibre) and font size.
Turned off Conversations
Some people like grouping emails into conversations but because I folderise everything this isn’t required
Categories
Showing in Categories is fine for Gmail but for Outlook, as mentioned previously, this caused major headaches when it came to notifications. Once I disabled the feature for outlook and just used 1 category - Primary - everything worked as expected
Send Mail Options
I find a 10s delay before sending an email is an extremely useful feature. Waiting 1min to send an email can be tedious when someone wants something right away.
Compose Email Options
For composing emails, I like having the cc/bcc just there in the UI without the need for an additional click to show this.I also don’t want EM Client resizing images to be helpful. I prefer using the original size I supplied and resizing as neccessary.
Replies
Again, when sending many emails, I want to cut down on the extra clicks needed. If I have a mail window open, I want to close it once I decide to send a message.
Signatures
Added my signature from Outlook and set it as the default option. I can’t remember if the “sent from eM Client” was ticked by default but this is where you can turn it off!
Other layout changes made
Just because I didn’t like the clutter. I removed the top panel buttons. I didn’t see the point of them when I can access all these options within the mail itself
Wish list items for the eM Client
Better notification for sub folders when they receive emails.
It can still be a little flaky around this. I can see emails that the rules moved into a subfolder but the main Account Name won’t display a +1 in red to highlight there’s a new message.
Being able to default to Reply All.
In my business, I have to do this all the time. Right clicking and selecting Reply All is annoying. Luckily the rather simple mac keyboard shortcut of Shift + CMD + R will do this. You can see what it is, and change it, on your computer under Shortcuts within the Settings menu.
Summary
I'd recommend using the application for a few days before jumping straight in with a lifetime deal. How people use their email apps can vary wildly. For some people, eM Client will be too basic, for others it might be too complicated or different. Use the trial and give it a few days to see if you warm up to it.
The app offer around Black Friday was great this year so it might be worth checking back to see if the app is on offer if you're not in a rush to migrate your mails to a new app.
Member discussion