The Free Software Store - Email Software

Email Software: Background: An email client is a software application that allows you to send, receive and manage emails.
For most people, an email client is one of the most fundamental pieces of Internet software next to a web browser. And email software is the most widely used web software next to browsers too.
Email actually predates the inception of the Internet. The first prototype of email was developed by MIT in 1961. It allowed multiple users to log into an IBM 7094 from remote dial-up terminals and to store files online. By 1966 the first primitive email systems were running on a number of in-house computer networks at US Government and research facilities, and by 1969 email was incorporated into the ARPANET (the predecessor of the global Net we know today) where it quickly became a killer application.
These days - according to some studies - email is used more often than web browsing. And email has become as fundamental a communication tool as the telephone for many individuals and businesses.
An email client - usually Microsoft Outlook Express - is supplied with all new Windows PCs as freeware. But there are lots of email programs out there and many people choose to install and run more than one email client on their computers for a variety of reasons which are outlined below:

Popular Email Programs

Microsoft Outlook Express

Outlook Express is an e-mail/news client that was included with several versions of Microsoft Windows, starting with Windows 98 in 1998 and continuing through to the release of Windows XP in 2001. Outlook Express was also bundled with Internet Explorer 4.0 and was made available for Windows 95 and Mac OS 9 too. This makes it the most widely-used email software in the world at the present time.

From Windows Vista onwards, though (ie January 2007), Outlook Express is being replaced with Windows Live Mail. And Microsoft Entourage - which is sold as part of Microsoft Office for Macintosh - has replaced the Macintosh version.

Nonetheless, given the slow adoption by users of new Microsoft Windows releases, it seems very likely that Outlook Express will be in widespread use for several years yet.

As an email client, Microsoft Outlook Express has 5 major problems:

Database Corruption: Various releases of Outlook Express have had a number of problems which can result in the software corrupting its files database (especially when the database is large, and also during database compaction). This has led to a thriving market for programs that can backup, restore and recover corrupted files. Microsoft has attempted to solve these problems but has only had limited success. So the best way to avoid them is to back up your email files often; keep your databases small; avoid compacting if you can; or to use a different email client altogether.

Security Issues: Outlook Express was one of the earliest email clients to support HTML email and scripts. Due to lax programming, however, this meant that emails could be infected with viruses fairly easily. Outlook Express also had severe security flaws in the way it handled scripts and attachments, allowing scripts and files to be executed on PCs without the user's consent as soon as an attachment was viewed. And because Outlook Express used Internet Explorer to render HTML email, many of the equally severe security flaws in Internet Explorer were also open to malicious exploitation. In fairness, from Outlook Express SP2 onwards Microsoft has tried to correct these security holes. Nonetheless - like Internet Explorer - Outlook Express still remains the buggiest and riskiest email software to use.

Handling Of Signed Messages: Outlook Express doesn't correctly handle MIME and won't display the body of signed messages inline. Instead, users get a blank e-mail and two attachments (one of the message text and one of the signature) and need to open an attachment to see the email. And if the email has been forwarded several times, users also need to open attached email messages one inside the other multiple times until they reach the parent message. Again, the only way to avoid this is not to use signatures in Outlook or to use a different email client altogether.

No Anti-Spam: Outlook Express - unlike Thunderbird, Eudora and Pegasus (below) doesn't have in-built anti-spam filtering at the present time, so this needs to be supplied by third parties. There are several good programs on the market which do this, but from our own experience we've found that SpamFighter does a pretty good job of it (see banner above right). SpamFighter is distributed as free 30-day trialware. After this you can buy a copy on an annual licence or be automatically downgraded to a free version with a slightly reduced functionality set. Tired of Irritating Spam? Download Award Winning Spam Filter for Outlook and Express.

Miscellaneous Bugs: Like nearly all Microsoft software, Outlook Express suffers from a range of other small but annoying bugs (for example, installing Microsoft Office 2007 on a Windows XP system will cause the spellchecker in Outlook Express to malfunction - the French language will becomes the spellchecker's only option). Again, the only way to avoid this is to use another email client altogether.

Note: Outlook Express is often confused with Microsoft Office Outlook, an integrated calendaring and address book system. In fact, they're two completely separate programs. And while Office Outlook does provide email facilities, they work differently to Outlook Express and (for most ordinary users) are best avoided.

Get Microsoft Outlook Express

Mozilla Thunderbird

Thunderbird is produced by the Mozilla Organisation - the same people who make the Firefox web browser. And while it's not necessary to use the Firefox browser in order to use Thunderbird as an email client, if you do you'll find they integrate together much better than the latest versions of Microsoft Outlook Express and Internet Explorer.

The current release - Thunderbird 2 - runs on all Windows platforms from Windows 98 to Windows Vista; on Apple Macs from Mac OS X 10.2 upwards; and on Linux. Thunderbird is distributed as freeware and it's now the second most popular email client in the world.

The software's major features include inbuilt anti-spam and phishing protection; a variety of ways to organise and display your folders; message tagging; message history navigation that allows you to scroll forwards and backwards through emails in much the same way your browser moves forward and backward through web pages; rapid and incremental message searching (ie locate specific text within emails) along with the ability to save frequently-used searches; and easy integrated access to popular web mail services (eg: you can integrate your own email account and a Gmail account into one inbox).

Thunderbird also offers informative and relevant message alerts for newly arrived messages, and folders provide a pop-up that summarises new messages in that folder. The software also has robust support for privacy and security matters (much like the Firefox browser).

Because of this - and because of greater attention to quality programming in general - Thunderbird has far less of the security issues that bedevil Outlook Express. And as with Firefox, any bugs or security issues that do emerge are much less severe than those which afflict IE/OE and are fixed much faster.

On a personal note, Thunderbird is the first email client we've used since Eudora that's blown us away with its plain old-fashioned good workmanship. For our money it leaves Outlook Express for dead in much the same way that Firefox makes Internet Explorer look like a lame duck. Why? Because it allows us to be more productive; it doesn't force us to do things its way; and we aren't troubled by seemingly endless strings of bugs and bug updates that seem to come with anything that carries the Microsoft brand. No database corruption problems either!

Get Thunderbird

Eudora: Eudora is an email client that runs on both the Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. It also supports several palmtop computing platforms (including Newton and the Palm OS).
Eudora was first developed by Steve Dorner in 1988 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before being acquired by Qualcomm in 1991. Qualcomm stopped development of the commercial version of Eudora in 2006 and instead sponsored the creation of a new open-source version based on Mozilla Thunderbird and code-named Penelope.
Eudora pioneered the concept of an always-present folder list pane. It was originally distributed as freeware but after it was commercialised by Qualcomm it was initially offered in Light (freeware) and Pro (commercial) versions. It's now distributed in three modes: adware, payware (removes ads) and the classic "Light" mode.
Eudora 6.0.1 added support for Bayesian spam filtering with a feature called SpamWatch. Eudora 6.2 added a scam watch feature that flags suspicious links within e-mails to thwart phishing. And Eudora 7.0 added Ultra-Fast Search, which finds any emails using single or multiple criteria in seconds.
Eudora also has support for 'Stationery' - a standard message or reply prepared ahead of time to a common question. And it stores emails in the mbox format which uses plain text files instead of a database (as Microsoft Outlook does). This allows users to back up portions of their e-mail correspondence without needing to back up the entire database.
Eudora supports the POP3, IMAP and SMTP protocols, along with SSL and S/MIME authentication, which allows users to sign or encrypt email communications for security reasons. It also has far fewer bugs than Microsoft Outlook Express and poses far fewer security risks.
On a personal note, we used Eudora in our offices for many years and we liked it much better than Outlook Express. Why? Because it was easier to set up; much easier to modify (we're still amazed at how difficult it is to alter something as simple as a "Reply To:" address in Outlook Express compared to Eudora, for example); and didn't result in a mess of screens as we ploughed our way through our daily email correspondence). We'd probably still be using it today if our ISP hadn't swapped to a Microsoft-only email system and Mozilla hadn't released Thunderbird 2.
Get Eudora

Pegasus Mail: Pegasus Mail is one of the Net's oldest freeware email clients and after such a long time in development, arguably one of the most robust too. It was developed by programmer David Harris and versions are available for 16-bit Windows (eg: Windows 3.1); 32-bit Windows (eg: Windows 98 to Windows XP) and there's even a DOS version available as well.
Pegasus Mail can run on single Windows computers, or local area networks. It has special support for Novell NetWare LANs that allow it to operate intuitively and with almost no maintenance. The program also supports multiple users on a single computer. Pegasus Mail can act as a complete internal mail system on its own without needing further servers or components. It can also send and receive Internet mail on its own using standard protocols. And by adding the Pegasus Mercury Mail Transport System as a mail server - which is also freeware - you can provide your PEgasus Mail users with fully-integrated centralized Internet e-mail services and mailing list management.

Pegasus' main features include in-built anti-spam filtering; multiple viewing modes; a MailMerge facility that allows you to create customized form letters to send to multiple recipients; distribution lists to allow easy management of large mailing databases; support for multiple "identities" and also for multiple users; a powerful message editor with full formatting capabilities; ability to generate HTML emails in a way that won't set off security alarms at the receiver's end; and a near-immunity to the security issues that plague Microsoft Outlook Express.
Pegasus also has an in-built spellchecker (using both US and UK English); support for plug-ins; a template interface that allows you to design complex mail forms using a simple text editor; and many more features too extensive to list here but which can be viewed on the company's web site.
On a personal note, we've only had brief exposure to Pegasus ourselves - and that was many years ago - but we know of several people who swear by it. While it used to be a little harder to get into than other email clients (it has a 500K manual!), it's also one of the most powerful if you have specialised mailing needs. And certainly a program you should seriously investigate if the mainstream email clients fail you.
Get Pegasus Mail

Other Email Software Resources

Last updated: 01-Jan-2008