Managing your time has long been a part of the knowledge worker’s day, and calendar apps have been around almost as long as email. But while the quantity of available options is high, the number of quality calendar apps is a small handful.
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The option that is best suited for you will depend on your needs, but a closer inspection has shown us that, for most people, Fantastical 2 is the best calendar application for macOS users.
What We Looked For When Looking for the Best Calendar App
A calendar app on its own is a simple thing. You put items on it to show where you need to be, how long you’re going to be there, or what you’re going to do. Any calendar app must include those features to be useful in any way.
But a useful and effective calendar app requires those features to be well-designed, as well as include other functionality. Here’s what we looked at to arrive at our decision.
Ease of use: The number one priority of a calendar app must be the UI. How intuitive is the app? How easy is it to add a new event? A task or reminder? To add some notes or details to an event? How hard is it to invite people to an event? These are some of the questions we asked when comparing the options.
Aesthetics: For many people, using a calendar application is a necessary evil. It’s a tool to manage how other people are using up your time. But if you’re going to have to spend time managing this part of your life, an attractive interface can make the chore more enjoyable.
Power: Once you have a smart UI in place, the next thing to consider with a calendar app is the feature set. What can the user do from this application? The best app will need to meet the needs of the novice (your grandma) as well as the power user (your CEO’s assistant). And those features cannot detract from the usability of the app. No small order, there.
Price: With many categories of desktop applications, the price can often be irrelevant as the gap is narrow and most options are similar. However, because of Outlook’s inclusion in our comparison, price factored into our decision.
macOS integration: How well the application fits the environment is always key — especially for cross-platform tools. At the risk of sounding painfully obvious, a calendar app for macOS must work with iCloud. And not just for the calendar functionality: Reminders are a key tool for Apple users and need to be accessible in our selection.
Third-party integrations: Because macOS users do not all use the same calendar service (iCloud, Google Calendar, Exchange, etc.), our desktop app must work with all the available options.
iOS versions: Lastly, because most of us live in a multi-device environment, it is beneficial to have iOS versions of each app.
The Calendar App Contenders
Calendar (Free): Included in macOS, Apple’s option covers all the basics. It sports an attractive interface, but suffers from several usability issues.
BusyCal ($49.99): The BusyMac team has been in the app-making business for some time. And their flagship app, BusyCal, has long offered more features than its macOS counterpart. The focus here is functionality.
Fantastical 2 ($49.99): This option started as a menubar app for macOS, often used in tandem with the other desktop calendar options. It originally launched in May, 2011 and has since made its way to iOS. However, Fantastical 2 for macOS sports a new interface and is now a full-fledged desktop app.
Outlook ($6.99/$9.99 per month, $139.99/$219.99): The old behemoth chugs along. Outlook was a key cog in the Microsoft dominance on the PC, but it’s always felt like an ugly duckling on macOS. We wanted to know if that was still the case.
The Verdict: Fantastical 2 is the best calendar app for Mac
The original Fantastical for macOS was the best option for quickly adding and reviewing calendar entries. Version 2 keeps all its advantages while adding the functionality of more robust calendar applications.
Ease of Use
There is a lot to like about a number of these calendar apps, but what makes Fantastical stand out is the first item on our list of criteria: it’s the easiest to work with. For a calendar app, ease-of-use needs to be considered in a few different ways.
First, how easy is it to glance at your day, week, or month and quickly get a feel for how your time is going to be spent? Second, and perhaps more importantly, how easy is it to get items into your calendar? Because many calendar apps do a decent-to-good job of displaying your events, we could argue that ease-of-entry is the most vital part of a desktop calendar app.
And, in this regard, Fantastical leads the way.
Aside: savvy macOS users could point to the fact that desktop utilities such as Alfred, LaunchBar, and Spotlight make ease-of-entry a non-sequitur. And I agree: I often use LaunchBar to add events to my calendar rather than Fantastical … but this is a review of the full-fledged functionality of the desktop calendar app landscape. If launcher type utilities are your thing, check out our review.
From its inception, the focus with Fantastical was its natural-language parsing, the ability for the user to enter random bits of text into the entry box and the app just figures it out. It’s almost magical and it set the bar for calendar apps on macOS.
That has not changed with Fantastical 2. Although the app is no longer just a menubar utility, the ease of getting items into your calendar is the same. The great part of Fantastical 2 is that for those who loved the simplicity of the first version, you can use it in the exact same fashion. The full fledged app interface never needs to be seen.
Indeed, the menubar functionality is now a must-have for a calendar application. I want to be able to glance at my day without having to open the full application. Fantastical gives me that option and builds on the original experience of the first version to also give the full functionality and bigger long-term views of more traditional calendar apps.
Apple makes every effort to turn the phrase “it-just-works” into reality. Flexibits does the same with its ability to take what you throw at it and turn your words into events that make sense. And, as alluded to earlier, ease of use also includes a few other touches. Viewing a calendar filled with events and tasks is one factor, but we’ll touch more on the UI below.
Another way many calendar apps cause frustration is in editing events already in your calendar. Some of our options add friction to the process of editing existing entries, most often in the form of multiple clicks. Fantastical does no such thing. Simply click on an existing event, and update fields as desired. Other options require you to click a button or double click an entry before field values can be added. Advantage Fantastical!
There are a few other common tasks that are (thankfully) easier than was common several years back. Adding invitees, locations, or notes to a calendar entry is a fairly simple process in Fantastical, BusyCal, and Calendar.app — both in creating a new entry, or with editing an existing one. In this regard, Outlook adds slightly more friction to the process.
Aesthetics
In many interfaces, the “less is more” mantra is an ideal goal. Most clean, well-thought out UI’s make ample use of whitespace and contrast to differentiate between different types of content.
The hard part of designing a calendar application is that the designer has to give the user the ability to view a large amount of information (a month or year view of a busy person’s calendar), yet still maintain clarity. No easy task. In this regard, Flexibits has done a laudable job with Fantastical.
The desktop calendar space for macOS had long been ruled by options putting functionality over aesthetics or options that came close to usable, but slightly missed the mark (Apple’s own Calendar app).
Power Play
The problem with many of the apps that place the highest priority on aesthetics, ease of use, and a clean experience is that power features are often sacrificed. And in most cases, this is a good thing.
But applications that can provide a clean user experience and full functionality will rule the roost. That’s the case with Fantastical. No one could ever accuse BusyCal of not delivering on features, but it, and other options, lack the grace of Fantastical. So, when talking about feature sets, this must always be kept in mind.
How does Fantastical fare with features in mind? Very well, thank you! It integrates with iCloud and Google accounts, the two most used options for macOS users. But it also plays nicely with Exchange (for those poor souls living double lives), Yahoo, and CalDAV accounts. Is your Google account configured to use two-factor authentication? No problem.
In essence, desktop calendar applications can be thought of as wrappers. The full functionality is dependent on the background service (iCloud, Google etc). But each client on macOS integrates with those backend services to differing degrees. Fantastical does a fair job of offering the majority of options that iCloud and Google calendar apps provide.
However, one feature Fantastical does not include is the ability for users to share their calendars. But, neither do any of the other options we considered (apart from Outlook giving you options to share Exchange calendar accounts). Overall, most of the apps considered have parity in this regard. None of the other options add enough functionality to overcome Fantastical’s excellent design.
Price
For many comparisons of desktop applications for macOS, cost is not a determining factor, simply because the range of prices is mostly consistent, but with Calendar apps, price does come into the discussion. This is due to the fact that Apple provides a free option within the desktop OS, but also because Microsoft Outlook is more than 4 times the cost of the other contenders.
With Fantastical and BusyCal sitting at $49, people have two questions to answer. First, do these third-party applications offer enough advantage over the free app already installed on their computer? If the answer to that question is yes (and for many people, it likely is), the next question to answer is whether or not Outlook offers enough advantages over Fantastical and BusyCal to justify the $219 price tag.
Lastly, one consideration when factoring in price to a decision such as this is support. When a Mac user makes a purchase of this nature, choosing a third-party tool over what Apple already provides, you have to consider what kind of company your purchasing power is supporting. Part of what makes macOS so special is the thriving community of developers. They truly make macOS a better platform (as well as iOS), extending what it can do beyond what Apple envisioned.
It’s just another reason that makes Fantastical our top choice. It feels good to support the Flexibits team. Reciprocal benefit is a beautiful thing!
Fitting In
Another vital aspect of a desktop calendar app for macOS is fitting in and being a good neighbor. With iCloud, an app that makes adding and viewing reminders has a distinct advantage over an app that does not. And again, Fantastical meets the need, and does so better than the other contenders.
This may be one of my favorite touches with Fantastical. To add a reminder to one of your Reminder lists, simply toggle the switch in the new entry window.
The same benefits to adding an event to your calendar apply to your Reminders. Simply start typing in the entry window, then toggle the switch as shown above. Want that reminder to have a due date? Not a problem — just type it in like you would for an event. The natural parsing of Fantastical handles events and reminders with ease.
Displaying your reminders is also done well. In the Mini Window (capitalized for your pleasure), your reminders are placed at the end of your list of events. If one has a due date and time, it shows amidst your events at that time. In the full app window, the reminders show in both the sidebar and the full calendar view.
Apple has made an attempt to have Reminders be the default to-do list of the casual computer user. Unfortunately, they fell short making the experience fluid. However, Fantastical makes up where they lack. With Fantastical 2, the experience of adding, viewing, and interacting with reminders makes it feel as if Reminders is a natural extension of the calendar.
Fantastical has a fantastic (sorry … you knew it was coming!) Today widget. None of the other contenders offer that functionality. If the menubar is not your thing, then a quick three finger swipe can bring up the Today window for a look at what’s coming.
Basically, Fantastical makes working with your calendar and your reminders an experience. It’s the best option for fitting in with macOS. By far!
iOS Counterparts
Although not essential to the experience on macOS, any desktop application that has counterparts on iOS (or Android) extends the overall experience. Outlook is complete in this area, as is Apple’s Calendar app. However, the same smart design touches that make Fantastical the preferred option on macOS also give it the edge with the iOS versions.
We’ve written in detail about the Fantastical iPhone app in a separate review. Read more about that here.
Once again, Fantastical comes out ahead in our comparison.
Free Productivity Guide: Download our simple guide to productivity to help you improve your workflows and be more focused with your time and attention. Get it here.
Other Candidates
BusyCal
Probably the most feature complete option we considered, BusyCal is the best choice for those who value function over form. It certainly gives you all the features you could want. Where it lacks for yours truly is the aesthetics: it looks and feels a little like corporate software.
I used BusyCal several years back when there were less options available to replace Apple’s iCal (you can almost smell the faux leather). Today, BusyCal is greatly improved, even to the point where it competes feature-by-feature with Fantastical.
A good example is the menubar functionality. Although BusyCal started as a full desktop app, in contrast with Fantastical’s progression from menubar utility to full app, it includes a nice menubar option that allows for quick calendar entry. It even uses Fantastical-like language processing.
Where it falls short of our choice is the overall look and feel.
Outlook
One consideration a review of this type requires is how to approach Outlook. Do you compare the calendar function only? Because it’s a full-fledged application that covers multiple categories (email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and notes) with a price tag to match, you have to decide if the additional functionality should factor in to the comparison.
For this review, it did not. If an all-in-one approach is your preference, then Outlook is certainly a potential good fit for you. But, when considering calendar-specific features on their own, Fantastical is a much better overall experience than what the calendar portion of Outlook has to offer.
Another issue to weigh is the cost. Is Outlook good enough to overcome the larger price tag? Not in this author’s mind. If fitting in with Exchange is a must have or if you already subscribe to Office 365, then Outlook merits serious consideration. For anyone else, the other options are all a better fit.
Calendar
Last, and certainly least, Apple’s own Calendar must be considered. It’s free, it’s installed on every Mac, and it has improved over the years (the Scott Forstall faux leather years, to be specific). For the most casual user, it can certainly fit the bill.
Where does it lack compared to Fantastical? Well, it does not have a menubar option. As mentioned under ease of use, this is a must have for yours truly.
The oddest part of Calendar is its lack of integration with other iCloud items. Want to interact with your Reminders in your calendar app? Me group macclesfield. Then Calendar is not for you. Same for the Calendar Today widget. Because Apple separates Reminders into its own app, you cannot see these tasks (even if they are time-based) in the view of your day. You’d have to keep both apps open.
Once again, the completeness of Fantastical surpasses the contender.
Why this over other options
With our full comparison, while there is feature parity for the most part, none of the options can compete with Fantastical in terms of overall design and ease of use. BusyCal comes close feature-wise, but is lacking the grace of a more well-designed application. And while Apple’s Calendar has the benefit of already being on your machine, it falls short in terms of usability.
Fantastical is the king of the hill. You need look no further!
Whether you live in your inbox or just use it to communicate with those who do, email is going to be a daily part of your work life. And if you use a Mac, one of the best things you can do to improve your experience with email is use a Mac email client. Unlike web interfaces like Gmail, desktop apps focus on providing robust native applications that are more responsive and feature-rich.
The email app you choose can change how you read incoming mail, browse your inbox, organize messages, and craft your responses. We've dug deep into the pool of email clients for Mac, and here we'll give you our picks for the best in breed.
What Makes a Great Email Client for Mac?
While reviewing dozens of dedicated email clients, we focused on 'full-fat' email experiences. This means leaving out the smaller assistants, menu bar apps, browser plugins, and generally cut-down software. Our chosen apps each contain a full range of email features, including the ability to read, compose, search, and organize your mail.
Support for a good range of email services is also important. Some apps are built with specific services in mind (like Gmail or Office 365), while others offer support for a range of providers. Whether you're using your own IMAP compliant email account, Yahoo, iCloud, or Google's ubiquitous offerings, you'll find something here that fits the bill.
The best email apps go further than providing a pleasant place to read and write correspondence. Setting up rules, filtering your inbox, organizing mail, and searching for messages are all key aspects of any all-encompassing mail app. Each of our selected applications offers something in this department.
We also considered user experience, as native applications have more flexibility compared to web apps in this department. Some use multiple windows for different elements, others offer tabbed email browsing. Better support for keyboard shortcuts compared to web apps also provides a boost to productivity.
Finally, there are a few small quality-of-life improvements that make your email client a nicer place to spend time. These come in the form of handy features, like the ability to snooze emails to a later date, email tracking tools to let you know if your past message has been read, and reminders that notify you when it's time to send a follow-up message.
No single email app will tick all of the boxes, so it's up to you to decide what you're willing to pay, which app feels most comfortable, and which features you can't live without.
The 9 Best Email Clients for Mac
Apple Mail for a basic, free client
Airmail for a feature-rich alternative to Apple Mail
Spark for collaboration on emails
Canary Mail for a security-focused email client
Unibox for people who wish email was more like instant messaging
Microsoft Outlook for people who value features over simplicity
MailMate for writing plaintext and Markdown-compliant emails
Mailplane for chronic Gmail users
Hiri for Microsoft email users looking for an Outlook alternative
Apple Mail
Best Mac email client for a basic, free solution
Apple Mail is a free client that comes preinstalled on every new Mac sold—that in itself makes it a solid default choice for Mac users. The application's trademark postage stamp icon hasn't changed a lot over the years, and despite steady development from Apple, the client still retains its old-school feel.
Aside from the attractive lack of a price point, Apple Mail is often chosen for its simplicity. It's a basic email client with support for a range of services including the company's own iCloud Mail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Exchange, and AOL Mail. It also allows you to connect your own IMAP and POP3 accounts, with S/MIME support for end-to-end encryption.
The user interface is clean but nothing special, with mailboxes, folders, and accounts accessed via the sidebar. Messages are presented as threaded conversations that are separated by subject. Unified mailboxes let you see all of your incoming, sent, and draft mail in a single list by default, or you can pick specific mailboxes if you prefer.
One standout feature is the inclusion of smart mailboxes that filter your mail based on rules of your choosing. Head to Mailbox > New Smart Mailbox to define the criteria by which you want to filter your messages (e.g., unread messages, mail with attachments, or messages you never responded to). You can then quickly access your filters via the sidebar beneath the Smart Mailboxes heading.
There are plenty of other bells and whistles too. Handoff with iOS allows you to seamlessly pick up where you left off on your mobile device, and Mail Drop uploads large attachments to iCloud for easier sharing. In a recent macOS update, Apple also included support for macOS Mojave's dark mode.
Apple Mail Pricing: Free.
For another free option, consider Mozilla Thunderbird, an email client from the developers of Firefox. Thunderbird is a free and highly extensible email client that feels like a classic version of Outlook. Some of the more useful features include tabbed email, sending of large attachments using cloud storage, and the ability to greatly change the look and feel of the app.
Airmail
Best Mac email client for a feature-rich alternative to Apple Mail
Airmail takes the basic premise of an email client like Apple Mail and builds on it with more modern features and an emphasis on speed. There's robust support for all major email services, including Gmail, Outlook, Exchange, and IMAP or POP3 mailboxes. You can browse and reply to all of your mail from a single unified inbox, which brings all of your accounts together in one place. When you compose a new message, you'll use a dropdown to select which of your connected accounts and personas you want to send from.
Airmail is a fast and clean email client that doesn't bog you down with features you don't need. If you're familiar with Gmail's shortcuts, you'll be off to a flying start, but you can also set your own custom shortcuts to navigate with your keyboard. Swipe left or right with two fingers on your trackpad to archive or bin a message, or set your own custom swipe actions (like snoozing a message or marking as read/unread) from within Airmail's preferences.
Conversations are threaded by subject, with a Quick Reply button for replying to a message in-line. Click the small speech bubble icon, and a reply field will pop out, which makes it easy to respond to a specific message in a thread without losing your place. Composing a new message or 'full' reply takes place in a separate window, much like Apple Mail. You can drag and drop your attachments into this window, with full support for iCloud's Mail Drop link sharing.
Snooze email directly from your inbox so that it appears at a more relevant time, which you can define within Airmail's preferences. Turn your messages into to-dos or memos using Airmail's built-in organizer in two clicks or using a keyboard shortcut. The organizer lives at the bottom of the sidebar and looks and feels just like an inbox for your schedule. You can even access your Google Contacts directly in the app using Google's search-as-you-type functionality.
Airmail Pricing:$26.99.
If you're willing to spend a pretty penny, we'd also suggest Newton (formerly known as CloudMagic). For $9.99/month, you get a client that's focused on speed, with instant notifications for all accounts, read receipts for everything you send, delayed sending, snoozing, sender profiling, and a feature called Recap that resurfaces emails that require your attention.
Spark
Best Mac email client for collaboration on emails
Spark is a desktop email client that brings Gmail-like features to Outlook, iCloud, Yahoo! Mail, Exchange, and IMAP email accounts (with support for Gmail too, of course). It includes a smorgasbord of conveniences, like the ability to snooze an email for later with a click and smart sorting of your inbox into categories like 'Personal,' 'Notifications,' and 'Newsletters.' Get follow-up reminders for email that you've sent, and organize your life using the built-in Calendar tool.
Spark for Teams is where the mail app takes on a whole new life. The team behind Spark hasn't just built a convincing email app—they've developed a collaborative email platform. This includes unique features like the ability to comment privately with team members on email in a small chat box to the right of the message. Collaborative composing allows you to invite other team members to collaborate and proofread your email in real time (just like Google Docs). Create secure links that point to specific threads or messages, and share them with your team. With these features, Spark could even function as a lightweight CRM solution.
Spark Pricing: Free for 5GB storage, two active collaborators per team, and five email templates; from $7.99/user/month for the Premium plan that includes 10GB storage per team member, unlimited collaborators, and unlimited email templates.
If you're looking for an email client specifically for shared inboxes (vs. a personal email client that can also serve for collaboration), consider Front. Front allows you to connect mailboxes to channels, then assign team members to those channels. It's a powerful tool that can spread the heavy load of a busy inbox across your entire team.
Canary Mail
Best Mac email client for a focus on security
Canary Mail is an email client for the security-conscious individual due to its support for end-to-end encryption using PGP. You can choose to use Canary's own PGP-based encryption (which requires the recipient to also be using Canary) or private PGP keys for advanced users. With encryption enabled, nobody aside from the intended recipient is able to read your message—not even your email provider. Encryption can be enabled with a single click while composing your message.
In addition to privacy features, Canary offers a range of tools to improve your productivity. This includes the Focused Inbox, where Canary learns which emails are important to you and hides the rest with one click on the Focused tab at the top of the window. You can also search your mailboxes using natural language processing (think: 'photos from Dad last month') to find things quickly.
There are a host of other useful features that elevate Canary beyond its security-focused roots. You can track your emails to find out if they've been read, snooze incoming messages for later perusal, and unsubscribe from newsletters by clicking the thumbs down icon at the top of the message. Canary is suitable for use with Gmail, iCloud, Office 365, Yahoo! Mail, and IMAP accounts.
Canary Mail Pricing:$19.99.
Unibox
Outlook 365 Client For Mac
Best Mac email client for people who wish email was more like instant messaging
Unibox describes itself as a 'people-centric' mail client, something it achieves by grouping your messages by sender in reverse chronological order. Instead of seeing your inbox as a list of messages and subject headings, Unibox shows you a list of recent correspondents and the number of unread messages within each conversation.
The app presents everything—including email composition—in a single window view. Respond to an email, and a compose box will slide into view, providing just enough room to type your response and still read the original email thread. This simplicity in design is seen throughout the app, from truncated message threads to the ability to view all files exchanged between yourself and another contact by toggling either of the attachment views at the top of a thread. Samsung usb driver for mac.
It's not possible to view your inbox like a standard inbox in Unibox. There's nowhere to view all of your outstanding drafts either (you'll need to find the contact, then open the editor to view them). This is a radical conversational approach to email, and assuming your own email habits are compatible, it works.
Unibox Pricing:$13.99 with a free trial available. Also available on SetApp.
Microsoft Outlook
Best Mac email client for people who value features over simplicity
Outlook Desktop Client For Mac
If you have an Office 365 subscription, you're already paying for Microsoft Outlook. That should be reason enough to give Microsoft's full-fat email client a go, since it works with Microsoft accounts, Gmail, iCloud, and Yahoo! Mail, as well as standard IMAP and POP3 email addresses. Outlook maintains the same familiar design that hasn't changed much over the last decade, which is why it may feel a bit stagnant in the UI department.
There are many new features to get stuck into though. Focused Inbox is one such trick: It separates your inbox into two tabs, placing all the email that Outlook perceives as important on the Focused tab. Twitter-like @mentions let you tag people, with Outlook automatically adding their email addresses in the 'To:' field, which can come in handy if you're often adding coworkers to emails. You can even use customizable two-finger swipes to cut through your email.
Like most Microsoft Office-branded products, Outlook includes excellent support for mail templates. Use Microsoft's included templates or design your own so you can roll them out time and time again. And many of the modern email features that have emerged over the past few years haven't escaped Microsoft's gaze either: follow-up reminders, delayed sending, email scheduling, and support for SVG graphics, to name a few.
Outlook delivers all of these mail features, plus a calendar, chat, task manager, and note-taking. You can even create Office 365 groups right in Outlook now. If you take an 'everything including the kitchen sink' approach to email, Outlook is the client for you.
Outlook Pricing: From $5.99/month for Office 365 Personal.
Another feature-rich option to consider is Postbox, a powerful mail app at a sensible price point ($40). It includes the ability to group accounts together into custom unified inboxes, tabbed email, a focus mode for hiding unimportant email, and the ability to quickly post mail content directly to other services like Dropbox, Trello, and Instagram. It's a good alternative to Outlook in that it takes a full-featured approach to email management, with plenty of bells, whistles, and filters to boot.
MailMate
Best Mac email client for writing plaintext and Markdown-compliant emails
MailMate isn't like any of the other apps on this list. It's a niche product aimed at users who want things done their way. The big difference is that MailMate loses the rich text editors seen in competing apps, opting instead for a plaintext composer for crafting your messages in Markdown, HTML, or plaintext instead.
But the differences don't stop there. For one, MailMate excels in its keyboard-friendliness, allowing users to navigate virtually the entire app without taking their fingers off the keyboard. It also offers 'bundles,' extensions that allow you to expand the app's functionality via the Command menu, even adding support for using external editors when composing messages. Download bundles to add support for other apps like Evernote and Reminders, then head to Command > Evernote or Command > Reminders to quickly save messages as notes or reminders in the respective app.
If you want to compose email in your text editor of choice (like Atom, BBEdit, or Sublime Text), MailMate lets you do that too. First, enable the appropriate bundle, then compose a new mail message and head to, e.g., Command > Atom > Edit, and your draft will open in Atom. When you save the file in Atom, the contents will appear in the compose window of MailMate.
Beyond these quirky niche features, MailMate is an aggressively simple mail application. Its three-pane view is reminiscent of Outlook or Thunderbird, with mailboxes on the left, messages up top, and message body down below. It has smart mailboxes but lacks modern comforts like the ability to snooze mail, natural language processing, or threaded conversations.
MailMate is a very specific tool, for a very specific audience. If you prefer a roll-your-own approach to email, MailMate might be it.
MailMate Pricing:$49.99.
Mailplane
Best Mac email client for chronic Gmail users
Mailplane is a desktop email application for Gmail users (note: the project is not affiliated with Google). The app enhances the existing Gmail web interface, and as a result, won't work with other services like iCloud or Outlook. Mailplane supports multiple Gmail accounts, Google Calendar, the soon-to-be-defunct Google Inbox, and Google Contacts. It uses a tabbed interface (one tab for each account inbox and each account calendar) to keep your various email and calendar accounts close at hand.
One of the app's best features is called Search Everywhere. It lets you search all of your connected inboxes at once, a real time-saver for users with multiple accounts. A handy menu bar notifier sits at the top of your screen to show you your unread count, and provides quick access to recently received messages, the email composer, and Do Not Disturb mode, which mutes incoming notifications and, uniquely, hides your unread count.
Head to the app preferences to enable all manner of extensions to improve your Gmail experience. This includes productivity tweaks like Boomerang for Gmail (send later, track messages), FullContact for Gmail (learn more about the people you are conversing with), and Right Inbox for Gmail (schedule mail to be sent later and create recurring emails). All this, plus all the goodies Google packs into the web version like chat support, keyboard shortcuts, and industry-leading spam protection.
Mailplane Pricing: From $29.95 for a personal license.
Hiri
Best Mac email client for Microsoft email users looking for an Outlook alternative
Built exclusively for the Microsoft mail ecosystem, Hiri is a smart mail app designed for Exchange, Office 365, Outlook.com, Live.com, Hotmail.com, and MSN.com. Like Mailplane does for Gmail above, Hiri won't work with non-Microsoft mail services. But while Mailplane is built on top of Gmail's front-end, Hiri is a completely separate app that does away with webmail entirely.
The svelte design keeps things minimal by only displaying what you currently need to see on screen. Navigation is performed via a collapsed vertical menu to the left, and there is no Outlook-like array of controls and filters at the top of the screen. Hiri hides distractions, so you can focus on a unified inbox that displays messages from all of your connected accounts. Hiri also includes a task manager that lives on the right of your inbox, with drag-and-drop support for turning email into to-dos.
Most of the magic happens in the Skills Center, which is where you can turn on some of Hiri's best features. This includes support for the Actionable/FYI split, a system that allows you to categorize incoming email based on whether it fits the category of actionable or FYI. Other useful extensions include one-click task list creation and the ability to delegate emails by hovering and clicking the delegate icon. Delegating an email adds a note next to that message in your inbox with a custom description and the recipient's name, and adds the task to your Sent list in the task manager.
Hiri is a solid alternative to Outlook, particularly for users that find Microsoft's flagship mail app confusing and unnecessarily feature-rich.
Which email client you choose will be largely driven by personal reasons. For many of us, Apple Mail does the job. It combines an uncomplicated interface with a slightly dated look and feel that's suitable for beginners and advanced users alike. But for many, it doesn't go far enough in terms of features. Our advice: Don't be afraid to download and try out a few different clients. I wasn't convinced of the 'inbox-less' approach taken by Unibox, but I've been using it for three weeks now without a second thought.