Ask HN: What email client do you prefer?

I use evolution, as I've used it for almost decades now, and have it customized exactly how I like it.

I heavily use IMAP flags and evolution's virtual folders to nicely group/tag things, rather than IMAP folders. I also use imapfilter to automatically add IMAP flags to messages, and only add 'inbox' to important emails. This keeps my inbox small and tidy, and all my automated stuff goes to other virtual folders.

Unfortunately, I am not aware of any mobile email clients (at least on iOS) that support this workflow, so I do very little email, other than some passive reading on my mobile device.

As a heavy emacs user, mu4e has intrigued me, but I haven't experimented enough with it to move my workflow. For work, I unfortunately have to deal with a lot of html email, calendar invitations, and other non-sense, that evolution handles quite well.

Huh, this seems quite pleasant, just added both of my google accounts. Having touch controls to archive emails (which is most of what I do anyway) is great, and I find the noises enjoyable as well. Maybe I'll mute them eventually.

No love for Outlook?

I use Outlook at work and Mail (Microsoft Store app) at home. I suppose the main reason is that they have basically foolproof compatibility and functioning with their respective O365 and Outlook.com (formerly/via Windows Live Custom Domains) server counterparts.

Functionally they have what I need. I turn off the Focused Inbox feature in both as I have no problem with a little tedium. The rules system in both is good, though that runs server-side technically. I turn off conversation view nowadays, but have used it extensively in the past with massive threads and found it quite good (Outlook). Outlook's list views can be customized quite extensively, and the dark theme is good. Search works fine in both clients.

I have taken Outlook to somewhere around 100GB and over 1,000,000 emails back in the year 2013 and that worked fine. IIRC the OST was always 30-40GB, and I would shuffle things off to yearly archive PSTs.

I have a few requirements for an email client. My primary email is through the same company I use for webhosting (Opalstack in my case). I'd prefer if other companies didn't read my email, so I don't use gmail/outlook/similar via IMAP/POP or forwarding or anything like that.

I also only send plaintext email. This sounds like it should be easier than sending HTML, but many mobile email clients only send HTML or "rich emails". This includes the gmail! (This used to be possible in earlier versions of google's phone email apps. Maybe it was Inbox? I don't remember now. But being unable to send plaintext email from gmail on mobile is what caused me to move away from gmail).

Now I use mutt on my own computer, K9 on mobile, and if absolutely necessary Roundcube webmail. (I do not particularly like Roundcube, but I almost never actually have to use it).

Mutt is wonderful, though I found it highly nontrivial to initially use. K9 is fine. One feature of K9 I like is that it has a surprisingly capable search capability given that I use it purely over IMAP --- it dispatches a search to my mail server and parses the results.