Postbox acquired by eM Client

I suppose this was inevitable given how infrequently it has been updated recently, but I’ll be sorry to see Postbox go - I tried other clients but somehow kept coming back to it. Unfortunately looks like Postbox is being end-of-lifed as part of the acquisition.

https://www.postbox-inc.com/blog/entry/postbox-acquired-by-em-client

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I’m a little sad at this news. I used Postbox for years and really liked it. I’ve been confused ever since they started selling themes—it seemed like a bizarre approach to revenue generation, and I interpreted it as a desperate gesture. I’ve never heard of eM Client before, and what an ambitious space to compete in. I can’t imagine trying to win market share from the existing behemoths.

As a good point, they are honouring old Postbox licenses, I checked once for 2014 and it offered me a 50% discount.

I would say it’s an impossible win for corporate customers, most of them will pass by with Outlook or their org admins will not allow third party apps beyond the native macOS ones.

I had wondered why Postbox hadn’t come out with an Apple Silicon version.

I’m afraid the absence of an Apple silicon version is what made me return to Thunderbird after ten years using Postbox. I’m now very comfortable with the latest Thunderbird ESR releases and certainly have no intention of investigating any new email client.

Stephen

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I asked them several times if an Apple Silicon version is planned and never got an answer. Now I know why. This was planned for a longer time.
It’s sad but I understand that keeping up with the shenanigans email providers are playing is hard on its own and then keeping up to date with all the changes. I hope that the Mailmate dev isn’t giving up. He has gone very silent, too.

Exactly the same for me. And no reason to look elsewhere at the moment.

Benny is very active on the mailing list The mailmate October 2024 Archive by thread. That’s the best I can do not signed in.

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I used postbox for a number of years. But 5 or 6 years ago I found that it used a lot of cpu. Postbox was excellent but I decided to try something else. Went through a bunch of them and settled on mail mate. That lasted a couple of years. MM had a few really good features but I found some aspects quirky. Ended up back on Mail but not happy. I have been using Thunderbird for about a year now and it seems alright. But I think I liked Postbox best.

I switch apps and play with new apps like so many of us here, but usually eventually settle on something that works. Mail seems to be the one thing where I keep looking for the a Door Into Summer and never quite find it.

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Yes, but not a lot of people know about that. I found out on Reddit. On the webpage there is still the beta from Jan. 2023. And the in-app update for alpha releases stopped to work a while ago. There is somewhere (hidden) a page with his recent releases but I can’t find it anymore.

Same here. I even tried a lot of other clients. I came to the conclusion that either I use Apple Mail with all its downsides or Mailmate with all its downsides. Mailmate is much better, but Apple Mail has just all the recent features and Mailmate doesn’t like Microsoft Exchange. Which is not Mailmates fault. Microsoft is just using non-standard protocols and naming. I would gladly ditch MS but we all have to use it in school (I’m a teacher).

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There is somewhere (hidden) a page with his recent releases but I can’t find it anymore.

This? https://updates.mailmate-app.com/archives/?C=M;O=D Last update was 2024-08-28. Benny said this on the mailing list on 2024-10-16:

. . . sorry for the lack of updates recently. I’m busy working on
setup/release/server-related issues and not MailMate itself.

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I was attracted to Postbox because of its ability to store emails on my Mac in subfolders. Does anyone know of an email client that does that? I loved Postbox’s keyboard shortcuts for putting emails into those subfolders.

Thunder bird can do this.

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…and that’s exactly the way I use it: IMAP plus local folder storage for emails I wish to keep.

Stephen

Yeah, I’m a fellow Postbox user and I really like the simplicity of it. I have a licence for EMClient but don’t like it, it’s ugly and clunky IMHO.

I’d love something similar to Postbox, but ideally something that would work with Fantastical. There was (to my knowledge) no way of getting an email into Fantastical automatically, there was always a bit of faff involved.

All recommendations gratefully received, I think I’ll just use Apple Mail in the meantime. I don’t know why I can’t stand EMClient, it’s just an aesthetic thing I think, as it’s pretty full-featured.

Airmail has an integration to Fantastical

I don’t like emClient so I moved to Thurderbird. It’s sorta like Postbox or at least feels that way. It’s way snappier than Apple Mail

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