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Especially for commercial use and in many of the internal routines of a company, the e-mail client is an essential tool whose operation can influence many routines and therefore, choosing the most suitable one requires a careful evaluation.
What are the advantages of using an email program and what characteristics to evaluate when choosing one are some of the questions we will address in today’s post.
What is an email client?
E-mail client is every program that is installed on your device (laptop, desktop, smartphone, etc.) and that is intended for managing one or more e-mail accounts.
But why email client? Why not email program or software?
How you refer – email client or program – to it is a matter of preference. Unlike many of the other programs we install, this one is often referred to as an email client, especially by IT people, because it works on a client/server model.
Explaining better, a server as the name suggests, serves services, however redundant the statement may seem. And e-mail is one of many services that can be made available to users, who in turn play the role of customers using a program.
Thus, if instead of e-mail the service is for example FTP, we are said to be using an FTP client to transfer files.
When one chooses not to install software, but to use the one provided by the service and which is installed on the server itself, we call it a webmail client, both because it is still based on the same model of server and clients, and because its interface is accessible from the web.
What is an email client used for?
It may seem simple to answer this question, but an email client is for much more than reading and sending email messages, especially depending on the features it offers and how you configure it.
The correct thing is to say that an email client is a program designed to manage email accounts and all that means.
For example, if you set it up using IMAP, everything – or almost everything – you do locally will be reflected on the server where the account is set up. Thus, when deleting a message, it will be deleted directly from the account, as well as the creation of a folder, it also represents the creation of the account.
In other words, what you do is directly affecting the account on the server.
If, instead, a certain e-mail account is configured as POP3, with each connection to the e-mail service, new messages are downloaded to the device and are stored locally. Any changes after download do not affect existing content on the server.
Whether using IMAP or POP3, the process of creating folders, moving messages, configuring email filters, marking as unread, or any other action, constitutes the management of email accounts configured in the program.
How good or simple this management is, is what one should look for when choosing an email client, since everything that involves email in the work routine will be influenced.
What features/characteristics to evaluate in an email client?
The choice of an e-mail client must take into consideration quite objective factors, observing the set that follows.
1. Interface
A program’s graphical interface is more than simply the set of aesthetic elements, shapes, colors and how these all combine in a layout.
Naturally it must be visually pleasing and that is quite subjective. However, the form must also fulfill the function, that is, the use must be easy, intuitive and practical.
Size, colors and images of icons need to be able to quickly identify what a click on it produces. In addition, the most used resources must be activated by them, without the need to use a navigation menu, which always means more clicks and whose location may require more work.
Resizing areas such as the message preview panel, which elements are displayed, standard fonts and their sizes, are some of the aspects that contribute to fluidity in use.
Therefore, more than being beautiful visually, a good e-mail program must provide a productive use.
2. Personalization
The possibility of customization is another very important feature.
It means that you can either change some things related to the interface so that it is more suited to the user’s personal preferences, or introduce some degree of automation for repetitive and unnecessary tasks.
A concrete example is the possibility of creating e-mail filters, with which you can make sure that messages from a certain contact are automatically moved to a folder, instead of the inbox. Or even older messages are automatically moved to an “archive folder”.
3. Ease of use
Ease of use is related to the previous two factors, but also how the tools work and even how the settings are made.
What’s it like to include hidden recipients so everyone doesn’t know the others have been copied? Or how to display the header of an incoming message to investigate a suspected spoofed email message? Or even then, how to set up a new email account?
Especially in cases where you have two or more email accounts set up on the same client, how easy access and use of features and settings will interfere with your productivity.
4. Variety of features
Variety of resources refers to the diversity of functions that the software offers to facilitate or extend the management of messages.
For example, is it possible to import a list of contacts you got by attending an event? Or is it possible to create automatic replies to incoming messages that meet certain criteria?
Use of tabs / tabs, internal search engines, message archiving, file management, are some examples of features that the best clients offer.
But that’s not all.
At a time when the number of applications used for various purposes is growing, the e-mail client offering integration with your videoconferencing service, your cloud storage, your calendar / diary, among others, represents ease of use, increases its power and improves productivity.
5. Multiplatform
Being cross-platform means that it can be used on different operating systems, such as Linux or Windows, Android or iOS.
There are people who, because they like it or because they have to, access their e-mails on more than one different device, such as their notebook during working hours and their smartphone while commuting, in external meetings, or at night and on weekends.
A client that can be used on any platform, ensures that you don’t have to adapt to different interfaces and ways of using it for each different device when you access it.
6. Security
Security in the digital world necessarily involves email security and, therefore, making sure that the chosen client offers options to make it more robust is essential.
Among the main email-related threats are phishing, spoofing and SPAM. There are already programs that offer filters capable of identifying some levels of threat and forwarding them to a suspicious or junk folder, so that the user can make a more careful assessment before opening.
Blocking potentially dangerous attachments, end-to-end encryption, remote tracking (privacy), management and use of secure passwords, digital certification, among others, are important differentials.
Advantages of using an email client
For those who are used to using webmail or the environment of a free email service such as Gmail or Outlook, even in their paid versions, you might ask yourself: why use an email client?
There are a number of advantages when choosing to install a program designed to manage your email accounts:
- More than one account – when you have more than one email account, which is a recommended practice, centralizing management in just one place makes work more practical and easier. Always the same steps to do anything, the same features, the same look and no need to switch between different windows;
- Connectivity – especially when configuring the client with POP3, if you need to access previously sent/received content, Internet connectivity is not required. That is, offline access is possible, as all messages sent / received until the last connection will be on the device;
- Backup – it is not a typical backup and should not be considered as such, however when configured as POP3 and checked the option to keep a copy on the server, there is a copy of each message on the device and on the server. If used on more than one device, there is an additional copy for each additional device;
- Personalization – if you have opted for a client that offers a good level of personalization, an environment adapted to your tastes and needs is available, which most online platforms do not allow, or when they do, it is on a limited level;
- Freedom – when using a local client, it doesn’t matter which email service or services you choose to use. You will always have the same interface and your messages will always be in the same place;
- Security – all antimalware (antivirus) programs “see” e-mail clients and their content and, therefore, are capable of blocking potentially identified malware. But not all of them are as efficient in detecting web content, which is the case of access via webmail.
Disadvantages of using an email client
Not everything is just flowers. As with anything, there are also some downsides to choosing to manage your email accounts locally.
- Disk space – if you need to keep a large part of the messages sent and received and their volume is large, there may be significant consumption of disk space, especially in the case of a smartphone or new entry-level notebooks, whose SSDs are not usually be of great capacity;
- Connection – depending on the number of messages and their nature, there may be great data consumption in terms of traffic and transfer, as all messages are necessarily downloaded to the device, even if you do not open them, read them or any attachments. When accessing via webmail, only what is opened is transferred to the device’s cache or if you download it;
- Device resources – it is common – although not a rule – that an e-mail client consumes more memory and device processing, compared to webmail, which is accessed through the browser;
- Tools – some features that the webmail client offers and your local client does not. It is less common, as local clients are generally more complete than webmail clients.
Conclusion
Choosing the best email client is more than just downloading the most popular download or the most modern look, but one that has very precise characteristics.
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