Postbox Discontinued
Adam Engst (Hacker News, MacRumors Forum):
Sad news. The longstanding email client Postbox has been acquired and shut down by eM Client, described by the announcement as “a leading email platform for Windows and macOS that combines email, calendars, tasks, contacts, notes, and chat into a single, easy-to-use application.”
[…]
On the other side of the equation, I’ve never heard of any Mac users relying on eM Client, despite its cross-platform status. I was going to say that I’d never heard of it at all, but searching my email reveals that I tested it briefly in February 2022. I suspect it’s a Windows app that has been clumsily ported to macOS. (Ironically, I was just encouraged by a PR person to look at Mailbird, another Windows email client that just released a version that runs on the Mac but bears little resemblance to a true Mac app.) eM Client gained iOS and Android clients only this year.
There’s a migration guide. I know that eM Client has some dedicated fans, and I’ve received requests over the years for SpamSieve to work with it. Unfortunately, eM Client does not support plug-ins or have any meaningful AppleScript support. Some customers are running Apple Mail in the background to filter their mail with SpamSieve. They can correct any mistakes from within eM Client by moving messages to special TrainSpam and TrainGood mailboxes. I’m open to working with eM Client if they would like to add direct integration.
Postbox was based on Mozilla’s cross-platform, open-source code Thunderbird email app, which does provide native Apple Silicon code, along with timely development and updates, security fixes, and additional features, including calendars.
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Not going to pretend I’m surprised — I’ve waited four years for Postbox 7 to become a universal app, never mind Apple Silicon native — but what a bummer. Postbox in its prime was the best, and even though I’ve switched primarily to Thunderbird, I still occasionally open Postbox because its message search is light years better than Thunderbird’s. Were it not for the constant crashes, I’d still be using it primarily, because Thunderbird has a lot of paper cuts that annoy me regularly. Alas.
Was very disappointed to hear this. I’ve been using Postbox for about a decade and have referred many people to it. Em Client is okay, but it’s clunky and doesn’t feel native. I tried Mailbird and stopped within about 10 minutes. Feels even less native than Em Client and lacks any meaningful customization.
Another dead MacOS email client—the true harbinger of platform death imo. Sparrow and Airmail are long dead and their guts plundered by the jerks who bought them out. I considered Postbox after the fiasco where Spark when subscription and added useless garbage, but decided to suck it up and think about it. Whether that was a good or bad choice doesn't matter now as Postbox is dead too.
Why must the only players be broken (Apple) Mail or bloated Thunderbird?
Don't recommend me your app; odds are it only does IMAP and I still like POP3 for somethings and partially because I don't want my email sitting on a server, I want it archived on my own fucking hardware in my own fucking house.
I'm using Canary Mail on my Mac. It's a paid client that is in active development and has a bunch of neat features, like Markdown support. It also has a bunch of AI features, some of which (like email summary) are actually useful.
It's not cheap, but imo currently the best option on Macs, so I'm willing to pay in hopes that it won't die. OTOH it's funded by Sequoia Capital, so it'll probably die at some point, given that it is an email client on Mac OS that has investors expecting unlimited revenue growth.
For now, though, it's a good option.
Sad for fans, but Postbox was out of the ring for me because #a11y. I'm surprised it had the following it did, given Thunderbird seems to be all that and more, but perhaps the polish was notable. EmClient looks interesting, as a possible option on Windows.
But yeah, as things stand, seems MailMate is where it's at, with the only other real native option being Apple Mail, which slides ever further into mediocrity with each passing release.
On Windows, you've still got Pegasus Mail ...
Is MailMate even receivcing updates anymore? Last release note I see on the website is from January 2023.
@Drew MailMate hasn’t had an official release in a while, but there are new experimental builds.
I initially read the announcement email as Fastmail being acquired and became very sad — thankfully not the case. Postbox was nice while it lasted, though.
For all the Postbox users that don't want to pay for emClient (because they purchased before Sept 22nd 2024), Mailbird came up with a special Free deal for Postbox users.
More there : getmailbird.com/postbox
We also just launched of Mac version
