The BEST email clients for Linux

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00:00 Intro
00:35 Sponsor: Monitor and secure your internet connection with Safing
01:30 Thunderbird
04:14 Geary
05:49 Kmail
07:45 Evolution
09:36 MailSpring
11:11 BlueMail
14:13 Sponsor: Grab a device running Linux from Tuxedo!
15:32 Don't let me end up like Bradley Cooper in Nightmare Alley

Thunderbird is cross platform email client that was initially developed by Mozilla using the same technologies as Firefox. Thunderbird does a LOT. You get a calendar and tasks list, and a complete address book.Thunderbird also has plenty of configuration options to let you tweak how it looks and works, manage tags, offline use, spellchecking, and how your email actually displays.

It also has plenty of hidden, features, like a complete RSS Feed reader, that you can access by adding a new Feed account in the settings, and you can even use it a chat client for Google Talk, IRC or any app using the XMPP protocol.

You also get access to extensions! You can add, for example, sticky notes, or integrate Thunderbird with Nextcloud to upload your large attachments to your storage and send them via a link in the email, you can add a conversation view, you can turn your favorite folders into tabs in the interface, you can add Google calendar support, or even add Exchange support.

If you're looking for something that will look right at home on your GNOME desktop, with a simple and easy experience, Geary is what you want. It's very simple, without many options to change how it works0.

If you use KDE, you'll probably want to head towards Kmail, which is designed to look right at home on that desktop environment.

Kmail can work with Exchange accounts, supports OpenPGP, and you can integrate SPamAssassin or Bogofilter to remove spam.

If you want a more complete suite for handling all your productivity needs, Kmail can also integrate with Kontact, which brings in an address book, a calendar, a todo list, RSS feeds, a journaling solution, and some sticky notes.

Evolution doesn't get many updates these days, and it looks more at home on a GNOME 2 desktop than on a GNOME 3 one, it's still a pretty useful email application. Evolution will pick up on your dark theme and GTK theme, and you get access to your email, contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes.

You can change how things look, with the message panel on the right or the bottom. You also get a ton of preferences to change how you write your email, manage your labels, how the calendar and tasks work, if you want to load external content in HTML emails.

Mailspring is a pretty nice email client that you can get from flathub. It can use most email providers, like Gmail, iCloud, GMX, Office 365, or Outlook, and of course independent IMAP accounts. It comes with multiple themes out of the box, including one that looks like Yaru, Ubuntu's theme, and it has a dark theme.

It's got a comprehensive set of keyboard shortcuts, including presets, and you can set rules for incoming email, create hmtl signatures, as well as configure a lot of things.

Bluemail isn't open source but it still has a Linux version, and it has an interesting approach: treating your inbox as a todo list.

It has a small kanban board to let you organize your email as if they were tasks. You just drag them to a column, like Today, Later, or Done, and you've got yourself a little organizer to avoid using another app to convert your actionable emails into tasks. You can create other columns if you like to sort your work exactly how you like.

[SPiRiT]

You are so lucky you can choose. For me - there is only one option, Thunderbird, for it is the only client that supports bidi/rtl (Right to Left text). This is so sad in the linux world, many apps don't support rtl properly 😢

[jimbo-dev]

In my opinion this is one of the most important videos of any linux desktop topic. Email is still sadly so fundamental part of computing. Great execution, thanks!

[ent]

I use Geary. It's very important though to unsub from all the email lists you're potentially subbed to when using a client because it doesn't just send notifications for "Primary" emails. You basically want to ensure that almost eveery email you get is something you care about. Unless you do that, most email clients will be a pain

[draukuxan]

The "You're HIRED!" email contents was quite funny. I'm surprised you took the time to write that, but the attention to detail is appreciated!

[synosahil]

your videos really helped a lot in my "linux" journey

[elijahbuchanan]

Thank you so much for this one, I haven't been able to decide on a Linux email client yet so here's hoping this video helps 🤞

[splitSec_fpv]

I really like the fact that you have a summary in the description... Exactly what you need when you don't have the time to finish the video

Also I generally enjoy most of your videos! Keep it up!!

[little_forest]

„Standard“ Thunderbird user. As someone using different DEs on different devices, I am very happy about apps with an agnostic layout. So to me, this is definitely a pro. Maybe I check out one of the other mail clients that are neither kde nor gnome.

And regarding the „loud“ people who prefer the dark theme, the fact that the light theme is standard makes it inherently necessary to be „louder“. Cause if there are problems with a basic theme feature, then it is about not switching to a dark theme. Also a lot of the people who use the light theme are people who do not care about the theme, and it is really not hard to be „louder“ than people who don’t care ;)

[peterschmidt]

While Thunderbird might look a bit dated compared to some of the other email clients, a couple of things I like about it
- if something happens to your system (be it windows or Linux), or you decide to change distros, it's quite easy to copy config files and email messages over the top of a new install and have it back up and running in no time at all like it never happened.
- lots of plug-in add-ons
- a great folder structure can be created if you work or archive by years making it easy to hide older emails that you "might" need to reference.

[viktorsirin]

Good content, as always. Not so detailed that the video was too long, but a concise overview of each client. Nice.

[AdamDymitruk]

ok. I had to rewatch to read all the email to the other Nick. this is awesome! please integrate other Nick in your future videos!! he should get a raise :)

[code]

This was a good overview, though I think Claws Mail was worth a mention, too. Can you do a video on how to set up PGP encryption on the mail clients that support it?

[Chris.Wiley.]

Thanks for the Geary recommendation. I recently switched to Gnome and it works quite well for me.

[Kris-odsj]

8:28 Vertical layout (email content at the top, email list at the bottom, or vice versa) is absolutely amazing to use on a vertical monitor! You need to try it some time ^^
Thunderbird supports this kind of layout as well

[SetVet]

I didn't know I needed that Bluemail feature for categorising your email for when you want to handle them until I saw this video. Very interesting

[amazoniam]

Sir, your email conversations with "Other Nick" are freaking hilarious!
Thank you for the dash of humor in this video ;)

[tokiomitohsaka]

Good to see Thunderbird is not abandoned, I used it for years before ditching it in favour of accessing my email from my browser.

[babyboomertwerkteam]

Evolution is my favourite! I love how it feels like the classic Microsoft Outlook versions did. Also, it supports Exchange which I need for university!

[johannscv]

Great summary, Nick. But i have to add a voice for Claws. Simple yet powerful and configures to almost all providers including Gmail, Yahoo, outlook, etc. Thanks for another informative video.

[pfitz]

Thanks for the email client reviews. You have saved me the trouble of installing and testing all the various clients. Gonna go with Thunderbird.