Per my recent post, I am experimenting with using two email clients to separate professional and personal email accounts. Because I have heard rave reviews on this forum and in podcasts about Mimestream, I’m going to use the 14-day trial for my work account to see what I think, notwithstanding my aversion to subscriptions.
I’ve also heard positive things about Fastmail, which I have not yet checked out. Those of you who have used both, is there an advantage(s) to one over the other?
You’re probably aware, but just in case: Mimestream is a desktop client for Gmail. Fastmail is an email service that can be accessed via the web or in a client application that supports it.
Unless you’re looking for a new email address, Fastmail probably isn’t quite what you’re looking for.
I would suggest that Mimestream is great if you have a lot of work Gmail/Google accounts. It’s probably less useful if you only have the one. I’d also add that the web interface for Gmail really is the bleeding edge - google does put new features in it quite frequently and if I only had a single account I’d use the web interface for those reasons.
I have multiple GMail Business and Workspace accounts, Fastlane accounts. To manage and access them I just use MailMate. The client is the king of all email clients. Robust features and lot of customization can be done.
It has good number of plugins to most productivity apps. I just feel that it doesn’t get its share of love. But I feel personally nothing can come closer to it.
Mimestream is a great email client. In my view, the best on Mac. But it’s only on Mac and only works with Gmail (at this time).
Since I ditched Google for Fastmail, I quite like their iOS/iPadOS app, especially that it includes FULL access to all your settings (take note, Google!). But I do wish they’d tweak it and release it for Mac. Apple Mail has just gained the one critical feature I need (don’t open any email unless I tell it to) but wow, it’s quirky in so many ways!
I had taken yearly subscription of Mimestream when it had launched.
I had a strange problem of emails not getting Archived even after archiving from the app i.e. emails would still appear in inbox even after I archive them in Mimestream. I was using Google Workspace account.
To be honest I have had this problem with few mail apps, with Spark Classic being the most reliable in this regards, though at times it also misses an email or two.
I hope Mimestream has resolved this issue (or it was an issue at my end only) because I would really like to start using it again
Oooh! Why didn’t you say so earlier?? I might log my accounts back into it and see if it’s tolerable. Although Mimestream handles labels just so well
This just made my day! I didn’t realize they added that feature! Thank you!
The way Mimestream does what it does so well is because it’s not using IMAP but the proprietary Google Mail API. While certainly the developer should be able to add this kind of support for other providers, it’s not an easy task and will depend on what each mail provider allows to do (for example MS with their Graph API). Another option would be to roll out IMAP support, but then I would assume the differentiating factor vs Mail, for example, would tend to go away.
It’s been a while but I think a lot of what I liked about Mimestream had little to do with its Googleness and more to do with just being thoughtful and efficient. I would not assign either of those things to Mail.