BEST ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO ACCESS GMAIL & OUTLOOK
Thunderbird
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Rather than ditch Gmail or Outlook for another service, you can access your account through an alternative email client. This will give you a cleaner inbox that’s free of adverts, tracking and spam, and saves you opening your browser each time you want to check your mail.
Mozilla’s free email client Thunderbird is the best tool for this purpose and its recent update (to version 102) makes importing messages and contacts from Google and Microsoft’s webmail services very straightforward.
We explained how to set up your Gmail and Outlook accounts in Thunderbird when you first run the program in our Workshop in Issue 638 (page 38). If you already use Thunderbird and want to sync either service, click the Settings button in the bottom-left corner, choose Account Settings and select Add Mail Account in the Account Actions menu. Enter your name, Gmail or Outlook email address and password, click Continue and Thunderbird will automatically detect the required server configuration settings (see screenshot above right). Click ‘Done’, log into your Gmail or Outlook account and grant Thunderbird access. Click ‘Finish’ to download all the messages from your Inbox and other webmail folders.
Thunderbird has several advantages over Gmail and Outlook, including robust spam filters and phishing protection, automatic blocking of trackers, and a tabbed interface you can customise using themes and useful add-ons. It also supports end-to-end encryption for your emails using the OPENPGP standard – see www.snipca.com/43736 to find out how to set this up.
Mailspring
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Mailspring is the closest alternative to Thunderbird for accessing your Gmail or Outlook account without using their respective websites. It has an even simpler interface that looks more like a webmail service than a desktop email program, and offers a host of handy features.
These include an Undo Send function for retrieving accidentally sent messages (see screenshot above right), a Send Later scheduling option, a powerful search tool for finding emails across all your accounts, a built-in spell checker and a choice of themes – including dark mode – so you can tailor its look to your taste.
The free version of Mailspring limits you to syncing four accounts, but this should be enough for most people. You can link your Gmail or Outlook address when you set up the program, simply by choosing the relevant service and granting Mailspring access to your account.
For more features, including unlimited accounts, read receipts and an Activity tab that shows statistics about your email usage, you can upgrade to Mailspring Pro for $8 (£7.19) a month.
Spark Mail
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If you use email on your phone or tablet as often as you do on your PC, Spark Mail is a great alternative to Thunderbird and Mailspring, because it offers apps for Android, IOS, Windows and macos. Adding your Gmail or Outlook account is as easy as entering your email address, then allowing Spark Mail permission to access your data. This is safe to do because, unlike Google and Microsoft, Spark won’t collect unnecessary information about you or share your data with advertisers (see box below left).
Spark Mail benefits from a clean, unified design and a ‘Smart Inbox’, which displays new emails in a separate Notifications section at the top of the screen (see screenshot below) and organises other messages into categories such as Newsletters and Personal. Useful features include a Gmail-style Snooze option, a Send Later function and reminders to reply to important emails. We also like the ability to save whole conversations as PDFS in a couple of taps.
Spark Mail is free and free of ads, but has a paid-for Premium plan with extra tools. This costs $4.99 (£4.50) a month, but you can try it for free for seven days.