[goatman]

Hi. I'm looking for an alternative email client and was wondering if any use Apple Mail's same data folder. I think that would be easier if I even want to go back to Mail. Also, then I won't have two data folders using up a lot of iCloud storage space.

Do you have any recommendations? This is never mentioned in product descriptions on their sites.

Thanks very much.

[ghporter]

Here is a fairly recent list of Mac email client apps. I do not believe ANY other app uses Mail's data files. And that's a Good Thing, because most email clients do their own thing in their own way, not the Apple way, so it could get dicy if MyApp wants to do something to the data that Mail can't handle.

What I would do is back up ALL of my Mail mailboxes - export them in Mbox format and save them locally - and try out a different app with ONLY local storage. If you like it (and if it supports iCloud storage, which isn't at all a given), then you can overwrite whatever cloud data you already have.

Since I have all of my email accounts set up as IMAP, everything is in some cloud or other (at the server side) anyway, so I only have local copies of stuff I want to have local copies of. I admit that I don't go in and purge my mail accounts often enough, but so far none of them has complained...

[goatman]

Thanks very much, Glenn. Appreciate it.

[besson3c]

Why a local backup? The data files will be updated the next time you launch Mail.

The short of this is that if you want to try another email client and you are using IMAP, there is no stress involved in making this switch - you don't need to worry about messing up your account or something.

About the only headache you might have is with accessing your address/contact list.

[besson3c]

I use Postbox and have had no problems. I believe it is integrated with iCloud, so if I were to switch to Mail I believe I'd have access to all my same contacts.

[ghporter]

I keep local copies of some items for a variety of reasons, but I certainly don't keep everything locally. And I don't think anyone should, since most of my mail is more notification and "updates" type things, plus the spam that gets caught at either end. But I looked back and found that I had kept an amazing lot of stuff over the last 10 years.... So I have a plan to go through what I'm keeping every month and saving what I need in one form or another, then getting rid of the rest. A local mail data file can get huge pretty quickly, so it's important to be attentive.

With that said, besson3c has a great point: with IMAP you don't need much in the way of local storage at all. Having another app try to use Mail's database is not only a bad idea from a software standpoint, it's not necessary if you just keep the local stuff to a minimum.

[Curiosity]

SeaMonkey works. I use that, and like it.