Ask HN: Good IMAP Email Clients?

#1

Post by pudgywalsh » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 10:49 PM UTC

I'm looking for a good, simple desktop IMAP email client for Windows and Linux and coming up empty handed.

Thunderbird absolutely sucks now, it is borderline unusable (it would not connect to our internal email system, and I had no patience with its incomprehensible UI to figure out why).

New Outlook is just a web wrapper.

It feels like there are far fewer options in this space than existed 20 years ago.

Does anyone still use Seamonkey?

Re: Ask HN: Good IMAP Email Clients?

#2

Post by ggm » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 11:11 PM UTC

I use mbsync, to Maildir and then NMH Maildir to folder/file format.

I step over the OAuth with email-oauth2-proxy.

There are X frontends to NMH like Sylpheed or claws. They make sense.

Re: Ask HN: Good IMAP Email Clients?

#3

Post by g8oz » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 12:12 AM UTC

Before giving up on Thunderbird I would suggest asking AI to help you debug the configuration.

Re: Ask HN: Good IMAP Email Clients?

#4

Post by scorpioxy » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 2:34 AM UTC

Thunderbird has been great for me. With internal email systems, connection issues were usually due to proprietary protocols doing things in weird and undocumented ways that was the problem.

I've had a few issues with it for sure but still on it as nothing compares. Definitely not for the price. You didn't say what's incomprehensible about the UI, it seems fine to me. I don't need my email client to look slick(subjective anyway), I just need it to work and work well.

Re: Ask HN: Good IMAP Email Clients?

#5

Post by sleetdrop » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 5:34 AM UTC

Have you tried claws mail.

https://www.claws-mail.org/

BTW: It’s GTK based, so it looks not very native on windows.

Re: Ask HN: Good IMAP Email Clients?

#6

Post by sleetdrop » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 5:41 AM UTC

If you liked the all in one solution like Seamonkey, You can also try Vivaldi Browser which created by people who built the original Opera Browser.

https://vivaldi.com/download/

Re: Ask HN: Good IMAP Email Clients?

#7

Post by sandreas » Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 8:49 AM UTC

There is nothing like Apple Mail in my opinion, but here are some alternatives... I use Evolution in Linux, but since you explicetely need Windows, I only listed cross Plattform...

Vivaldi

MailSpring

Pelton

BetterBird

Aerion

Self-hosted:

Kurrier

NextCloud

Re: Ask HN: Good IMAP Email Clients?

#8

Post by Kushvinth » Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 4:38 AM UTC

sandreas wrote: post #7

There is nothing like Apple Mail in my opinion, but here are some alternatives... I use Evolution in Linux, but since you explicetely need Windows, I only listed cross Plattform... Vivaldi MailSpring Pelton BetterBird Aerion Self-hosted: Kurrier NextCloud

Mhm, I would not suggest anyone to selfhost SMTP; you will most probably be flagged as bots

Re: Ask HN: Good IMAP Email Clients?

#9

Post by sandreas » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

Kushvinth wrote: post #8

sandreas wrote: post #7

There is nothing like Apple Mail in my opinion, but here are some alternatives... I use Evolution in Linux, but since you explicetely need Windows, I only listed cross Plattform... Vivaldi MailSpring Pelton BetterBird Aerion Self-hosted: Kurrier NextCloud

Mhm, I would not suggest anyone to selfhost SMTP; you will most probably be flagged as bots

These are self-hosted clients... It's a web interface for multi-mail (many accounts) not tied to one provider. This is not about hosting a DIY mail server.

Also see https://roundcube.net/