Pros and Cons of Free Email Programs for Windows

If you're looking for a new email program for Windows, especially Windows 7, you'll have a significant selection to choose from. All for free. Here's a look at some of these free programs as well as the good and bad aspects of each.

Mozilla Thunderbird

This email program is designed to make customizing the set-up easy. Users say it's secure and fully functional. Mozilla Thunderbird is also an RSS feed reader and has the ability to filter junk mail which you can precisely filter. It can detect scams and the entire email program can be run from a removable medium. Managing email in Mozilla is easy because of the smart folders, views, filters, tags and fast search features.

According to users, faults of Mozilla include a RSS feeder reader that could be more powerful and be integrated better as well as the program's inability to show related documents, posts and messages.

Pegasus Mail

Pegasus Mail is powerful and offers flexible template systems and filtering. It also provides spam filters and phishing protection alerts as well as the ability to set up mail merging for newsletters and mailing lists. The program allows users to create auto replies from flexible message templates. The program is very stable and secure with specialized features that protect your privacy. There are no virtual folders or labels as examples and some of Pegasus Mail's features could be designed for easier access.

Sylpheed

This free email program automatically files messages and organizes them with color labels. There are customizable message templates for auto reply messages and the message editor can also be used as an external editor. Email can be encrypted with PGP/MIME.

It's easy to use but does not support HTML formatting. The message editor can be used externally, but it only wraps text because it cannot re-flow it.

DreamMail

DreamMail allows you to access many POP accounts and aggregate news from RSS feeds. Mail can be displayed in plain text only for increased security and you can flag messages using your choice of 13 customizable color labels. It allows you to easily back up email data or remind you to do it manually.

The email program will not allow you to set up virtual accounts and you won't be able to assign free-form labels to messages. DreamMail can't complete many language encodings.

Foxmail

With this program you'll be able to manage multiple Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail or POP accounts for multiple users. It allows you to remotely manage POP accounts and preview and delete mail at the server. Spam filters filter junk mail. The program also offers a variety of stationeries and flexible custom templates.

Foxmail does not have IMAP support and the message editor doesn't re-wrap text properly. Although there is a spam filter, it can be a bit difficult to learn and use.

(0 Comments)