Postbox for Mac

5.0 stars

"The Only email client I'm going to pay for!"

November 30, 2010  |   By ilgaar

Version: Postbox 2.0.2

Pros

Fast, simple and user friendly interface, much less buggier than thunderbird, extra useful functions. And best of all Mac friendly :)

Cons

It's a bit too expensive! if they only lowered their prices a little it would have been perfect.

Summary

overall it is a good application and I think if you are looking for a professional email client, this is the right one.

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1.0 stars

"good app-but DON'T buy till they amend policies"

October 29, 2010  |   By tannerc

Version: Postbox 2.0.2

Pros

potential to be a great alternative to mac mail- add-ons are promising-

Cons

very shady customer relations
When some users, voiced concern @ being asked to pay for upgrade, just 3 weeks after purchase -PB-inc, rather than work w/paying customers for resolution-just deleted the feedback& users accounts- not smart business

Summary

censorship- -even at this level, is not worth supporting

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2.0 stars

"still not usable"

August 12, 2010  |   By hrabeX

Version: Postbox 1.1.5

Summary

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
- image attachments are not resized
- total attachments size is not displayed
- very basic filter categories
- no iPhoto/Aperture/iWork support /share/
= mail.app is still much usable

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5.0 stars

"Excellent product"

March 10, 2010  |   By emerge3d

Version: Postbox 1.1.2

Summary

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
This app runs rings around Mac Mail and has enough polish over Thunderbird to justify the price. There are a few small interface quirks but these should be ironed out in time. Thoroughly recommended as the best Mac email client.

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4.0 stars

"Sadly, Postbox 1.1 is not quite what I was hopin..."

December 5, 2009  |   By MacInTalk Pro

Version: Postbox 1.1

Summary

...fo
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I use two different mail clients because I get enormous volumes of e-mail every day (about 5000 for work and probably 500 a day for personal/other endeavors.

I used to use Eudora on my Mac. I loved that program despite its flaws. It was the fastest mail client with a GUI I've ever used and had absolutely no problems with all the e-mail I get and archive (I keep much of my mail back to 1994.)

When it went open source (became a Thunderbird pet project) I had to give it up and I was very sad about that.

I went looking for another mail client that was as fast and that had a reasonable GUI, paid OR free.

I moved my personal e-mail over to Apple Mail and have been quite happy with it (it isn't perfect, but it really does work well and have a good UI especially in Snow Leopard). However, I didn't want to mix my personal and work e-mail anymore and needed some other solution.

I tried all of the available paid e-mail programs for the Mac and none of them worked well for my needs.

I ended up with Thunderbird 2.0 for my work e-mail not because it was the best choice (the UI absolutely stinks) but because none of the paid options were any better and so I decided to stick with free, all other things being equal.

I recently heard about Postbox from a friend and thought, hey, I'd love to have a Mac e-mail client that works well and has a decent UI, so I downloaded v1.1 and told it to import my Thunderbird e-mail and it went to work.

It wasn't all that long before everything was imported. Unfortunately there seems to be a bug after import because the folders were all listed in Postbox, but the right side of the screen where the mail should be was blank (dark grey, no UI elements)/ Not knowing the program I fussed with it for a bit before figuring this had to be a bug.

I quit and reopened Postbox and there was all my mail. Great. It imported everything from Thunderbird, mail, address box, filters, everything! Yay.

My initial impression was the program was pretty nice. I like the threading and the UI is something of an improvement over Thunderbird. I like the auto threading of e-mail conversations. Unfortunately, it is Thunderbird at its core and a lot of the bad UI choices remain in Postbox. I can forgive that since this is a new product. It will take time to build something truly great.

Since the developer is currently offering 25% off anything you buy, I came "this close" to purchasing Postbox. With lifetime upgrades for my family the total cost came to just under $65. Again, not a problem for a product under active development with lifetime upgrades.

However, at the last second, something told me to try the product some more before committing myself.

I'm glad I did because it was only after some use that I noticed flaws that make the product not worth the money to me.

1) v1.1 is still slow. I tried opening the trash on my work e-mail (containing a couple thousand messages from today). I got the old classic Mac OS "watch" icon (meaning, I'm working on this, please wait) so I waited... and waited and waited. I have an early March 2009 Mac Pro with the fastest processor option and 12 GB of RAM running Snow Leopard. There's no excuse for poor performance. I went back to Thunderbird 2 and opened the trash and it came up immediately. So I quit Postbox and restarted and it still took a very, very long time to open the trash folder. Other folders with lots of messages took a similarly long time to open.

2) There are too many bugs. I tried emptying the trash and the process failed to do anything (the mail remained in the trash, no warnings, no indication of the program still working on my request). I tried opening an address book contact and the display was garbled the first time. I had to go to something else and go back to that contact to get the display to work properly.

3) Despite the improved UI, it's still not a true Mac program. I'm guessing the developer is using mostly Thunderbirds non-standard UI elements or has written the program in Carbon, because things just don't work like they should on a Mac. On top of that there are still a number of Thunderbird's ill-conceived UI choices left in the program (take, for example the bizarre little pop-up sheet that warns you that Postbox isn't the default client. Checkboxes and odd scrolling elements, exactly the same as Thunderbird. Additionally, not all of Postbox's configuration items are in the Preferences like they should be. Some are under tools (as they are in Thunderbird). There's more but this post is already rather long.

So I decided to take a look at Thunderbird 3.0RC2 that was just released. I discovered that Thunderbird 3 has several of the UI and feature improvements of Postbox 1.1, not all, but many. Plus, Thunderbird 3 looks somewhat more like a real Mac program than v2 (still not great, but closer). Considering that Thunderbird is completely free and much, much faster than Postbox right now I just can't see spending the money.

Here's the thing... I desperately WANT to find another e-mail program that has a great UI, blazing speed and handles heavy e-mail loads for the Mac. I'd gladly pay $129 for it if there was such a thing.

It might be that some day Postbox will be everything I need and more and if so, I'll be happy to pay immediately and switch, but I just cannot recommend this program for serious e-mail use.

If you get a normal volume of e-mail and you're big into social media then Postbox is a great choice and I encourage you to take a look.

Unfortunately, I'll be sticking with Thunderbird for some time to come, it seems.

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4.0 stars

"Great build"

December 1, 2009  |   By robio

Version: Postbox 1.1

Summary

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
1.1 is a great upgrade to Postbox. I'd already chosen Postbox as my email client after a long hunt for a Eudora replacement. This version adds tremendous speed improvements and other upgrades. The tabbed browsing is fantastic (keep several mailboxes open at the same time), and the sidebar of attachments, links, images (with instant search for recent messages from the same sender) is great, and the Conversation View makes reading a long thread easy. The learning spam filter could be stronger, but that's one of the very few even remotely weak points. Oh, that and iPhoto doesn't recognize Postbox as an email app for one-click mailing. Well worth the price, and the developer offers an purchase option that includes upgrades for life.

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3.0 stars

"Could be a gem"

September 9, 2009  |   By ylon

Version: Postbox 1.0

Summary

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
The developers really have a great idea here. The biggest problem is that the app does not appear to be built atop Cocoa, or at least they are not using the proper Cocoa text fields for Spelling and Grammar checking. I have a TREMENDOUS number of custom spellings in my dictionary due to my industry and unfortunately I will not be porting all of these spellings back over. It feels as though they are using Mozilla as a foundation for that and that is extremely unfortunate in this case.

If you hear this guys, please strongly reconsider using Cocoa fields for all text editing for deeper Mac OS X integration and much happier customers. I would probably be willing to be a slight amount of money for this app if they fixed that and cleaned up the interface slightly with Cocoa elements.

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5.0 stars

"Goodbye Thunderbird, hellooooo Postbox!"

July 22, 2009  |   By pfeester

Version: Postbox 1.0 beta 13

Summary

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Postbox is now my only client. The powerful search alone is worth the switch, let alone the myriad other features (including the great gmail-like conversation view). When this goes out of beta I am for sure ponying up some $$.

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4.0 stars

"Finally found my new email app"

July 10, 2009  |   By robio

Version: Postbox 1.0 beta 13

Summary

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Ever since Eudora went kaput, I've been looking for a new email app that has even half the features I loved about that old workhorse. While the interface of Postbox isn't very Eudora-like, I've come to like tabbed browsing MUCH more than separate mailboxes, which was the Eudora-unique UI element I wanted most (and was the hardest thing to find). I'm a QA consultant by trade, so in the process of trying every available app under the sun (Entourage, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Revolver, PowerMail, Correo, Gyaz, the T-bird based Eudora pretender called Penelope, the attempted Eudora replacement called MailForge, etc.), I created detailed QA worksheets for my finalists, and came down to two: Postbox and Outspring. I was leaning toward Outspring at first, but their communication with beta testers is almost non-existent, and their development slow. It wasn't long before Postbox's functionality passed Outspring's and now Postbox is a much stronger, more stable app with almost everything I want, plus a bunch of features I didn't know I needed until I had them: To-Dos - click one icon in the mailbox, and any email becomes pinned to the top of the mailbox so it doesn't end up "out of sight/out of mind." Conversation view - Gathers all emails in a given string and puts them in one viewing pane, with all the quoted text suppressed. Practical upshot: a VERY clean view of an entire conversation. Inspector pane - Incoming emails have a sidebar showing attachments, images and links, plus a bunch of simple, quick tools for finding other emails from the same sender, adding them to your addy book. Contact panels - Click on a sender's name, and you can see their Address Book info, perform instant searches, create a filter, etc. Multiple status states - the "read" column in the mailbox can be a blue dot (unread), a little clock (waiting, e.g. for a reply) or blank (read). Attachments tab - All my attachments in one place, without having to dig through User > Library folders. Images tab - All attached and inline images in one place: Trying to find the message you know had your nephew's school picture in it? Find the picture, and follow it to the email. Compose sidebar - I don't use this one much and it still needs some work (Postbox is in beta after all), but you can quickly access previous attachments and images, add signatures, look for maps to include, etc. Topics - didn't like these at first, but now I think they're far BETTER than colored text or highlighting of messages in your mailboxes, and you can have multiple topics per message. Plus there's a Favorite Topics section of the sidebar where you can look just at mail with a given topic. (Example: I can see all my mail labeled "politics" in one place, regardless of what folders I've put them in.) Tons of keyboard shortcuts - although they're not always intuitive (some require CMD, some don't) and there's no cheat sheet yet. Thunderbird Add-Ons - new in this release, and I'm really excited about being able to file messages with just a few keystrokes (instead of drag-and-drop) with the Nostalgy plug-in, for example. Editing - This is BIG one for me: You can edit received mail. Bold or color important passages, change the subject line to something that makes more sense to you, etc. Eudora had this, and just about no other app does. Plus very good search, a very attractive an easy UI, and a LOT of flexibility regarding how you handle your mail. Different in box for every account? Sure! Same in box for every account? You can do that too (can't do both though, like in Apple Mail ? yet). There are a few things I wish were better. There's still no app out there that can compete with Eudora's fantastic filters, and Postbox can be slow to render at times. It could be easier to move mail between accounts (although Nostalgy fixes that too). And I really, really miss the "Who" column in Eudora mailboxes. It makes so much more sense than having to have "Sender" and "Recipient." OK, I've just realized how much I sound like an employee plant here. Not the case. In fact, I offered my QA services, but they've go it covered. However, now that I'm settled on Postbox, I do have an active interest in seeing it succeed so I don't have to go through again what I went through when Eudora died. So here I am, posting the longest VersionTracker review EVAR. Shutting up now, except to say that Postbox is extraordinarily stable for a beta.

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