Gmail style mail client based on Thunderbird
Postbox is an intelligent, multi-language cross platform mail client that has clearly been inspired by Thunderbird.
Some say it's a little "too" inspired by Thunderbird but the developers have only basically taken the core code behind it and expanded on it to make what some consider to be a superior mail client. There's no doubt that Postbox features many useful tools that make organizing and tracking your e-mails very intuitive and version 2.0 has made it even better.
Features that particularly standout in Postbox are a slick, Apple Mail style interface, very fast searching for everything from messages to attachments, Gmail style conversation views, tabbed browsing of mail, categories and folders, to-do lists and integration with Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Spotlight, and Quick Look. Postbox also works with third party apps such as OmniFocus and Things.
Setting-up Postbox is very straightforward. A wizard takes you through the entire import process and Postbox automatically determines connection settings for you. The great thing is Postbox is a lot simpler than Thunderbird and getting your webmail - such as Gmail or Yahoo e-mail onto your desktop - is extremely quick and painless. It can even retrieve your Facebook messages for you using a separate simple setup wizard. Once you've imported, Postbox works behind the scenes to catalog everything including every single bit of text, contact, address, link, picture, document and attachment. Within seconds, you should have a fully searchable and effectively backed-up copy of your e-mail on your hard drive.
Browsing images is a pleasure in Postbox and I liked the way you can scroll through every single image in your inbox in one go. Organizing your mail and work load using Postbox is refreshingly easy and reminds me of a more advanced version of Gmail. It does not however extract labels from Gmail which is a downside because it means reorganising your entire collection once again. You may also receive quite a bit of spam in Postbox because although it has it's own spam filter, it doesn't support more powerful solutions such as SpamSieve.
Postbox is one of the most intelligent e-mail clients you're likely to try on Mac. The latest version is better than ever although now that Outlook is available on Mac in Office 2011, it may have to improve even further to attract more users.
High-definition font support for Retina displays on Mac OS X (experimental). Support for Gatekeeper on Mac OS X 10.8. Support for Notification Center on Mac OS X 10.8. Fixed "Help | Configuration Data" for non English versions. Fixed another issue where IMAP attachments could get corrupted on download for Gmail and Exchange servers.
Changes
High-definition font support for Retina displays on Mac OS X (experimental). Support for Gatekeeper on Mac OS X 10.8. Support for Notification Center on Mac OS X 10.8. Fixed "Help | Configuration Data" for non English versions. Fixed another issue where IMAP attachments could get corrupted on download for Gmail and Exchange servers.
User reviews about Postbox
by Anonymous
disappointing.
After a few days of use... It seems to loose lots of saved mail, which has been put into a new folder, made inside postbox4. It seems to confuse boxes or accounts, so there is no telling what has happened to saved mail.
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by Anonymous
PostBox 4.0.X is disappointing.
In all honesty, I am disappointed with Postbox 4.0.X. It frequently crashes when I try to delete spam from the Junk folder. It looses the ability to save copies of outgoing emails a lot. I generally have to reset indexing several times a week to get it working again. The online manual is woefully wrong in many parts. For example, there are directions on how to get colored icons to display on the Mac version but the menu choices they instruct you to try don't exist. And why in 2015 are colored icons not a default item. Several times I have been forced to delete an account and recreate it because it will not connect to the server. This has happened with gmail, yahoo and iCloud accounts. Fortunately I always store my emails at the source or I would loose everything.I have followed Trouble Shooting suggestions and even have completely trashed the ~/Library/Application Support/PostBox folder but the problems reoccur soon after.I switched from Apple Mail to PostBox to avoid email troubles. I wonder now if I should have spent the money on PostBox.Jim
Pros:
Faster
It's not Apple Mail
Cons:
the database corrupts easily and frequently
the online manual is woefully inaccurate More