Thunderbird

I've always been interested in this open source email and chat client and decided to give it a try recently. Anything open source is a gift and free in every sense of the word so it's hard to complain about this much value but in terms of functionality it did have it's pros and cons. The feature set is quite solid. There are spam controls, an address book, news groups, message filters and more. There are several free add-ons available as well which add value such as a mail redirect, mail merge which allows you to send mass email, compact headers and adblock plus integrates into it as well. The spam filter is self learning while you can filter results by contact, date and other filters. The security is decent with message encryption, digital signing with certificate and security support. I like the IMAP/POP compatibility so you're not limited to syncing your current free email client but can utilize branded email. There are HTML email capabilities, quick search, address completion, labels and import tools. The chat client integrates with Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter and a couple of others. It can be run from a USB drive which is perhaps the feature which differentiates it most.

I don't believe it's currently in development feature wise, though there are security updates. The design is a bit old school but that's minor. And it lacks in terms of advanced customization compared to Gmail, for example. It doesn't relate contextual content such as message, documents or sites which could make it more versatile. They offer to provide you a new email account upon initially logging in though when I searched for several name none were available, and I do believe at least a couple of these should have been available as they were quite random. It would be a more seamless experience to remove this redundant service if it's no longer relevant. I had to shut down the software and reload it in order to gain access to the options tab. It worked initially but somehow got hung up or became disabled when clicking the three horizontal bars which indicate this option. This would be frustrating in some cases as reliability is perhaps what I value most in an email client.

I like the ability to create or integrate multiple emails accounts within a centralized system including POP/IMAP email accounts. All together there is a lot of value offered freely here and I appreciate that a lot. However, the reliability in my limited test wasn't the best and the features don't compare with a browser based Gmail account in my case, so I won't be switching over to it but it may be worth it for some who want multiple email account access from a central system which you can access via USB hub certainly.