Email clients these days have become the spine of almost any corporate or big company. Gone are those days when just composing and sending emails would do the work. Email services these days have to perform functionalities like organizing inboxes, keeping track of our schedules and contacts, and satisfying several other professional requirements.
Microsoft Outlook is an absolutely feature-rich and power-packed email client which provides all these services.
Year Founded: 2012
Headquarters: Redmond, Washington, United States
Microsoft Outlook is an email client that lets us manage and access our email. However, what makes it a software boasting 200 million plus users are its services like providing calendars, appointment setting, task management, web browsing, and more.
Have a look at the Microsoft Corporation Competitors And Alternatives.
List of Outlook Alternatives
Microsoft Outlook might be the best email client out there. However, there are other softwares that might be Outlook’s nemesis. Let’s have a look at some of them.
Thunderbird
Year Founded: 2003
Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States
An open-source email client, Thunderbird is a part of the very popular Mozilla Inc. The best part about Thunderbird is its simplicity.
Even though it comes with all the features barring the calendar, one can easily integrate Mozilla’s Lightning calendar into Thunderbird.
Thunderbird also supports every operating system enhancing the experience. What makes it a really good alternative to Outlook is the fact that it is absolutely free to use!
Gmail
Year Founded: 2004
Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States
If productivity is the concern, then that discussion is never complete without Google in it. Gmail is a free email client that has consistently ranked itself among the best.
With Gmail, emailing and managing them is a very seamless process. It also comes with a feature known as Workspace that enhances productivity by integrating features like custom domains etc.
Google’s brand value and reliability are what make it one of the most sought-after Outlook alternatives.
Em Client
Year Founded: 2006
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
eM Client is a relatively fast and feature-rich email client that one can use as an alternative to Outlook. What makes it more attractive is its modernized and clean interface. With eM Client, one can perform a search in PDF files as well.
Its integrations with Dropbox, Gmail, Calendar, and Drive enhance its productivity. A free-to-use plan gives it an edge over Outlook as an alternative. The caveat though is the limitation of services included in the free package and the unreliable support staff.
Mailbird
Year Founded: 2012
Headquarters: Palo Alto, California, United States
Mailbird is another great Outlook alternative. The user interface of Mailbird is also cluster free and thus provides it with a clean and sophisticated look. One can organize Mailbird’s emails into folders.
Mailbird also offers very flexible pricing for its premium plans, to suit the clients’ needs. However, it’s a manual process and lacks Outlook’s automatic sorting features. Outlook is ahead when compared to it, as Mailbird’s usage is restricted to just Windows.
Spark
Year Founded: 2015
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Spark is an adaptive email client that arranges itself as per the user’s needs and preferences. What makes Spark even better is the fact that it has a team collaboration feature.
With Spark, one can delegate and work with others via emails, setting deadlines, and notifications when it is completed.
However, Spark’s privacy policy is a concern for many users. It syncs all its user details, which means that it stays on the server and thus is easily accessible to hackers.
Shift
Year Founded: 2003
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Shift is an email client that allows the user to switch between accounts and facilitate its experience. Shift’s concept has been embraced by a lot of users. Its easy-to-use interface and organizational capabilities, render it one of the best alternatives to Outlook.
It offers both free and paid services. With the premium version, one can also add Google extensions to enhance productivity. Currently, it is only supported on desktops.
Spike
Year Founded: 2013
Headquarters: Herzliya, Tel Aviv, Israel
Until now, we have talked about alternatives that have the same professional approach as Outlook. However, Spike is different. With Spike, professionalism is retained but in a more interactive and fun way.
Spike looks more like a chat than an email service. Spike’s biggest advantage is that it looks way more attractive than any other email client in this list and its free package almost gets the work done. All these make Spike a pretty good alternative to Outlook.
Protonmail
Year Founded: 2013
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
Protonmail is more of an email provider rather than an email client. Its biggest strength is the security it offers. Protonmail offers end-to-end encryption for its users. With Protonmail, comes a very interesting feature of self-destructing emails.
One can time the period after which the email will be deleted from the recipient’s inbox as well the sender’s inbox. Potonmail arguably offers the best security compared to other email clients on this list.
Front
Year Founded: 2013
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Front’s main target of being an email client is improving communication between teams and customers. With Front, one can track the email sent in the form of when it has been delivered, read, and replied.
It offers a premium package as well as a customized one. What makes it a great Outlook alternative, is its customized plan where the user can choose his or her required services and get pricing as per that.
Postbox
Year Founded: 2008
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
Mainly prepared, keeping a small business in mind, Postbox is a very simple email client. However, its user interface can be very deceiving compared to the features it comes with. Its features make it quite well-suited for heavy workloads.
With Postbox, one can have access to services like archiving, spam filtering, and quick search. It also comes with a lot of design templates, quick bar, and smart folders.
Thus, being a simple yet feature-rich software, Postbox is a decent Outlook alternative.
FAQs for Outlook Alternatives and Competitors
What Are the Main Outlook Features?
Outlook offers features like email service, search, flagging, colour coding, along with a preview pane. It also offers a calendar function which stands out from all other email clients. It allows one to schedule, view, and communicate appointments and meetings. It also offers 99 GB of archiving data and also has the ability to set up automatic reply services.
How Much Does Microsoft Charge for Outlook?
Outlook.com accounts are free. $129 is charged for Outlook desktop license. Office 365 Business plans start at $5 per user, per month.
What Are Rules in Microsoft Outlook?
Outlook, is one of the most intelligent email clients. It performs an automated function known as rule, on sent and received messages. Outlook performs rule, based on conditions specified. For example, it can automatically move messages from a select person into a folder of your choice, instead of keeping it in the inbox.
Why Would I Use Microsoft Outlook?
If you have multiple email addresses, you can use a program like Microsoft Outlook to have them all show in one place. Organizing emails is probably one of the major requirements especially for a corporate user. Outlook, can perform that function far better than any of its competitors or even the webmail.
Do I Have to Have an Email to Use Microsoft Outlook?
Yes, Microsoft Outlook is used only to connect to email servers to send and receive messages. However, it is not a hard and fast rule. Outlook will still offer features like managing contacts, calendars, and tasks even if the email is not specified. The only caveat being that by doing so, the user would limit himself to the features. Therefore, specifying the email, is recommended.
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