Email Programs

TraceyT

New Email
Hi All
First time on one of these so forgive me if I do this incorrect.

I need a good email program......I am getting so confused and don't know what to do.

I need to access several different email account and don't want to have to be signing in and out of each one if possible. I don't even know if that is possible.

A personal account and two separate business accounts. My family members will want to sign in and out of their email accounts also, don't know if that matters.

I want easy format where I can create many folders for each one.

I dislike gmail and I have used outlook but I refuse to pay for another version of office just to get Outlook.

Free would be good but don't mind paying if worth it.

Any recommendations and thank you in advance....
 

foggy

Valued Member
Tracey,

I don't have any great answer to your problem, but I'm confused a bit by your description, so let me ask some questions. :confused:

You say you need to access 3 different accounts. Do you presently have all three of these accounts or are you interested in opening 3 accounts in the near future for your purposes?

If you have them presently, are they all at the same provider? (You say that you "have used outlook"… do you mean the free email service outlook.com formerly known as Hotmail? Is that the service where you presently have your three accounts?) Or do you have accounts located at different providers, e.g. one at outlook.com, one at Gmail, etc.? The answer might affect your options as noted further below.

You say that you do not want to be signing in and out of each account, but that your family members will want to sign in and out of their accounts. Are they sharing all three of the accounts you have for some reason? Without wanting to be too inquisitive, I'm not sure how their email desires pertain to your present needs.

As far as offering some input in anticipation of your responses:

1. Some providers have a feature whereby you can access different email accounts at that same provider without the signing in and out that you're concerned about (and Ray (popowich) can give you better information on which ones and how well they work; one example is here (How to link and check multiple Hotmail accounts | Email Questions) and Gmail also does this (Official Gmail Blog: Access two Gmail accounts at once in the same browser). I don't know how well either of them work.)

2. If you have an email service that doesn't provide this option — or if you just don't want to access your various accounts in this "linked" manner — you can try an offline client as Ray suggested above. Thunderbird (or its Palemoon counterpart, Fossamail (FossaMail) might be the easiest.

The Outlook client you mentioned not wanting to pay for (a part of the Microsoft Office suite of programs) may also have too many confusing bells and whistles for your purposes. But if you are actually interested in a more 'office' oriented program to help manage your business email, you can try eM Client (eM Client | Best Email Client for Windows 8, 7, Vista, XP)

Remember: these offline clients are only the programs used to access your email (from as many accounts as you have). They are not the service providers themselves. So if you use one of these downloadable clients, you wouldn't need to switch to another service (from whichever one(s) you have now) in order to access all accounts in one place.

3. FWIW, there are some providers (for-fee services like Polarismail (Canada) and EuMX.net (Germany)) which have — among their several webmail interfaces available to users — one called "Group Office." This interface actually allows users to access external accounts from the one location via an IMAP connection. This is not just sending through that account or getting email from it. It's managing all your email through the GO webmail. E.g. I have an account at EuMX. I can login to their Group Office (GO) interface online and set it up to access my FastMail account and my Runbox account (or Gmail or Outlook or whatever). I can view all my folders in each of those other accounts from the EuMX GO webmail location without logging in to each of those accounts separately. The GO webmail is basically doing the logging in for me. I can read, write, send, organize, move email in each of those external accounts using the GO interface.

Now, not everyone will like the GO webmail. Although it has three different 'themes' available, it's not nearly as customizable as something like an offline client (e.g. Thunderbird). There is a demo (not entirely in English) here.

The Polarismail and EuMX services are extremely inexpensive relatively speaking: $12/yr for the 'basic' PolarisMail account (though I do believe it's $24/yr for the account level which provides the GO webmail) and $16 /yr for EuMX. Both have great personal customer support. But Outlook, Yahoo, and Gmail (i.e. Google Apps) also have premium levels, I believe, though I don't know if stellar support goes along with the price. Others would know more about that than I. (FWIW, my own main account is actually at FastMail, but its webmail interfaces don't allow the IMAP connection to external, non-FM accounts that Group Office does, which is why I didn't mention it.)

All in all, the simplest solution would probably be the one Ray mentioned: using an offline client (and setting up each account as an IMAP account). But that will depend on your answers to the questions above. :)

Hope this babble helps
 
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