Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, E-mail, Productivity, Commercial
Postbox e-mail app for Windows and Mac exits Beta
by Paul O'Brien Sep 9th 2009 at 6:00PM
Postbox - the e-mail application for Windows and Mac OS that we first mentioned back in February has exited it's long Beta period and reached a 1.0 release.
Postbox pitches itself as being 'smarter than your average e-mail client'. Built on a Mozilla core, the application works behind the scenes to catalog everything in your mail. Text, contacts, addresses, links, pictures, attachments - all of them are indexed, providing a very powerful search experience and a useful e-mail view that abstracts potentially interesting content from the body of the e-mail itself.
If, like me, you use GMail, you will have become accustomed to the conversation based message view and this is a perspective that Postbox retains, making migration from the web interface to the Postbox application a painless process. Postbox is compatible with a wide range of e-mail services (Gmail via IMAP and POP3, MobileMe, AOL Mail, Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail Plus as well as any generic IMAP or POP3 account) and includes excellent integration with the most popular services. One such example is the integration between Postbox's powerful 'To Do' flagging function and GMail's own 'Star' system.
The feature list is really too extensive to list here, but includes RSS support, Newsgroups support, Facebook / Friendfeed / Twitter integration, emoticons, draft auto-saving, password protection, spam filtering, return receipts, add-ons and much more.
Postbox retails for $39.95 with discounts available for 'Family Pack' purchases. A 'Lifetime Upgrade' option is also available.
By far the best way to experience Postbox's powerful search facility and unique content abstraction is by trying it - and thankfully a free trial is available from the Postbox site.
The only question is... is there still a place for desktop e-mail clients in today's online e-mail environment?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gamof said 6:09PM on 9-09-2009
Postbox is awesome. But I can't see myself paying for something like this especially with Thunderbird 3 coming soon...
Reply
motang said 6:26PM on 9-09-2009
Thunderbird 3 is awesome, I loving Beta 3.
motang said 6:27PM on 9-09-2009
$39.95! Why, when we got great mail applications like Thunderbird (upcoming 3.0 is freaking nice) and Spicebird.
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mixxsky said 10:39PM on 9-09-2009
Email and everything email related should be free, I will never pay a penny for anything like this.
Reply
Emma said 12:29AM on 9-10-2009
I switched from Thunderbird, actually. I don't know of another
mail client (tbird included) that works as well (or as fast) as Postbox,
especially for someone who works with thousands of messages across
multiple email accounts. Postbox saves me a lot of time. Don't mind
paying for something that i use so often..
Reply
turu said 4:24AM on 9-10-2009
I think the point is which version of Thunderbird you compared with the postbox. Sure, the postbox would look better if you compare it with current stable release of Thunderbird, TB2series. But postbox is based on the TB3, and if you compared TB3 with the postbox, I'm not so sure that you want to pay more or less $40 for it.
Postbox is faster on treating lot of msgs on multiple account compared with other non-tb based mail client, it's just because TB3 get faster on treating lot of msgs on multiple account .
Geir said 4:59AM on 9-10-2009
Thunderbird is a tough opponent, it has to be darned good if I should switch from Thunderbird --fast searches is likely not enough, as I search too seldom to make that a major feature.
However, I have been keeping an eye on Postbox, and will take a closer look at this release. E-mail is likely the application I use the most, so any improvement in the e-mail client software is likely to pay off right away --and I would be willing to pay for that....not just yet sure if Postbox has reached that level, and if it has will it be leveled out when TB3 is released? We'll see....
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jkforde said 9:30AM on 9-10-2009
Using Thunderbird, will never truly trust netmail\cloud for my business email and attachments... mymanaged local network backup of my messages is my definition of email security. Good luck to them trying to charge for something which has the fundamental free functionality of TB.
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Jackamus said 1:28PM on 9-10-2009
Sorry. I like the program but not worth 40.00... Not at all. Too many free clients out there that do the same. I like it, and worked with the beta, but after the new free trial is over, I will remove from my system and just stick with outlook 2007...... Should have kept it free or cheaper.
Reply
Brandon said 1:44PM on 9-10-2009
You use Outlook 2007 and you're saying you wouldn't pay up to $40 for an email client?
Mysterius said 10:48PM on 9-10-2009
@Brandon: If you have Outlook, you probably bought it as part of a Microsoft Office suite, in which case you're also getting Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.
While Microsoft lists the price of the full Office Standard suite at $400 ($240 as upgrade), there are myriad ways to get Office at significantly cheaper prices (bundled with new computer, corporate pricing, student discount, etc.), so most users probably don't pay the full price.
If we peg Outlook at ~$100 list price, Postbox may be a "bargain" at $40. But the major attraction of Outlook is its presence as the de facto Office standard, while Postbox has to compete directly with a variety of powerful, free alternatives.
Brandon said 1:42PM on 9-10-2009
Microsoft has been charging for an email client for years. I'm not saying I'd personally pay for Postbox or Outlook, but when you compare the price of the two Postbox is a pretty good deal... As long as you keep Thunderbird 3 out of that equation :-P
Reply
turu said 2:34PM on 9-10-2009
There are "free" version of mail client from Microsoft too. It's called Windows Live Mail and it has built in calendar(which can think with google calender) and rss/new reader.
http://download.live.com/wlmail
turu said 2:36PM on 9-10-2009
sync*