Believe it or not there was a time when using email was something of a novelty, rather than the routine means of communication it's become today. If you're yearning for those halcyon days when emailing was new and exciting then maybe it's time you found a way to spice up your text life. Incredimail is an email client that allows you to inject a bit of fun into your mail.

The application, which has been around in various forms for some years now, allows you to insert audio and visual elements such as background images, animated pictures or humorous (or at least supposedly humorous) noises. It's clear from the outset that the program is aimed at the less technical user from the set-up wizard that makes it incredibly easy to register your accounts and import your existing mail from either Outlook or your webmail account.

Once you've got the app up and running, you'll find a truly impressive range of backgrounds, fonts, emoticons and all manner of other bells and whistles that you can browse through and add to your messages effortlessly. There's also a wealth of downloadable extras you can find on the web should you want to add even more variety to your outgoing mail.

In terms of its basic mail features Incredimail is very similar to Outlook Express, though the junk filtering system is a little difficult to set up, which isn't really in keeping with the rest of the program. Another interesting touch is the addition of a 'mail servant,' which notifies you of new mail even before you've opened the client. The default is in the form of an animated butler, although this can be changed if, or should we say when, you become annoyed with him.

There's no doubt that the program provides an interesting way of making your emails appear more interesting. The trouble is, one person's idea of fun is another's vision of tackiness hell, and festooning your messages with all these gimmicks means mail takes longer to download, which is doubly annoying for dial-up users. Although we personally wouldn't want to subject our friends to animated kisses, jumping clowns or burp sounds, Incredimail certainly provides a novel way of making your emails stand out from the rest.

Download IncrediMail Xe 5.70 build 3524 in Softonic

Windows Live Mail Desktop is a simple, powerful tool that lets you get e-mail from multiple accounts in one place and integrates your mail with Windows Live™ Spaces, Windows Live Contacts, Windows Live Messenger, and more.

It gives speedy access to multiple e-mail accounts in one place (even AOL, Gmail, and many others) and allows you to compose and manage e-mail while offline: simply connect to the internet and your messages are sent and new messages downloaded.

Other key features include a reading pane with drag-and-drop features, so you can quickly read and manage your mail plus synchronization with Windows Live Mail and MSN Hotmail accounts.

It also features increased security options to keep your mail safer from hackers.

Download Windows Live Mail Desktop 12.0.1606 Beta in Softonic

GetMail for Hotmail is an email forwarding program that aims to address the lack of a POP3 server for Hotmail. This means that you can automatically setup Hotmail to forward your e-mails to other addresses. If you use GetMail For Hotmail with other third party POP3 tools such as FreePOPS or YPOPS you can also forward from AOL, Yahoo and many other webmail email accounts.

This makes it particularly useful for mass migrating all your e-mail to Gmail but also to continue forwarding e-mail received in your old accounts. For those that wish to forward to other POP accounts, the developers have created a list of SMTP servers. GetMail for Hotmail can even forward e-mail to your Blackberry. It's SSL compatible and can run as a Windows service.

This is an excellent program that's long overdue. As many more people move from Hotmail to other e-mail accounts, this will become an increasingly popular program.

Download GetMail for Hotmail 4.00 in Softonic

Mail PassView allows you to view detailed information on each of the email accounts you have configured on your system. Mainly, it's used for the recovery of passwords although undoubtedly, some people will use it to crack passwords. The information it reveals includes details such as account name, name and e-mail server type of application you use, user name and password. You can save all this information in a text file or copy it to the Clipboard.

The program supports the most popular email clients such as Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook 2000 and 2002, IncrediMail, Eudora and Group Mail Free. It also reveals passwords and info for IncrediMail, Eudora, Netscape 6.x/7.x, Mozilla Thunderbird, Group Mail Free, Yahoo! Mail & Hotmail/MSN Live Mail (If the password is saved in the applications.). It can even work for Gmail if the password is saved by the Gmail Notifier application, Google Desktop, or by Google Talk.

If you've lost your passwords or just want to snoop, it's worth a try but very hit and miss in it's effectiveness.

Download Mail PassView 1.44 in Softonic

Yahoo Mail disabled free access to its POP3 service in April 2002. This resulted in many people looking for alternative free POP3 services. But this exercise can be very difficult because of the fact that your Yahoo Mail address could be with several people and informing all of them about your new email address could prove to be a nightmare. So, YPOPs was born.

YPOPs is an open-source initiative to provide free POP3 access to your Yahoo Mail account. This application emulates a POP3/SMTP server and enables popular email clients like Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, Mozilla, Calypso, etc., to send and receive messages from Yahoo Mail accounts.

Download YPOPs! 0.9.5.1 in Softonic

Mail Bomber sends personalized e-mail to masses utilizing mailing lists and templates. It is a useful tool for anyone who needs to send information/notifications to a large number of recipients. It allows you to create and manage a number of separate mailing lists, write e-mail messages and keep track of feedback from your customers.

Download Mail Bomber 10.1 in Softonic

Lookout is lightning-fast search for your email, files, and desktop works with Microsoft Outlook®.

Lookout was acquired by Microsoft in June, 2004. Since that time, we have been hard at work building the MSN Toolbar Suite, which is a new search product from MSN. At this point Lookout is still available to use, but future developments from MSN will be in the MSN Toolbar Suite product. Existing Lookout users are welcome to continue to use Lookout as long as they wish, or upgrade to the new MSN product.

Download Lookout 1.3.0 Beta in Softonic

Although Internet speeds are getting quicker and email providers are offering more mailbox storage space, it's still no excuse for bombarding people with huge attachments. Yes, I know it's much easier to just dump the original file you want to send into the message, but programs like WinZip Companion mean you don't have to do this. The application allows you to zip and unzip files within Outlook with the greatest of ease.

WinZip Companion delivers several useful tools for helping you achieve smaller file sizes. The plug-in, which works exactly like the popular WinZip utility, provides a handy interface for compressing files directly before they are sent. It can bundle several different files into a single attachment, making things a lot easier for both you and the recepient of the email.

It's also very secure, because the software boasts built-in 256-Bit encryption. This means you can apply passwords to attachments so that they can only be opened by those who are authorised to do so. You can also opt to exclude certain file formats from compression if you so desire.

If you're an Outlook user and you send and receive attachments regularly then you can't afford to be without this program, as it will dramatically speed up transfer times and save precious space in your mailbox

Download WinZip Companion 2.0 in Softonic

If you usually receive and send lots of forwarded emails you've probably noticed that the text inside is marked with that ">" formatting character, so it gets increasingly difficult to read. However, you don't want to spend ten minutes cleaning up a simple joke.

The best solution here is emailStripper, a simple tool that cleans the forwarded text for you. emailStripper is an standalone app so simply run it, paste the messy email text inside its interface and click on "Strip it!". Voilà! Your text is ready to be copied back to the email message.

emailStripper only removes special characters such as ">" but it doesn't get rid of extra blank spaces or newlines, which would have been nice to have. Also, it adds an advertising line to the cleansed email, but this can be easily deleted.

Download emailStripper 2.2 in Softonic

You wish to toss messages from your friends into special folders, send automatic replies to people from other departments, mark messages from your dear ones with special colours. Press Ctrl+Shift+F to quickly create a new filter based on the current message and define its functionality.

A sales manager should send personalised price lists and promotional material to her/his company partners. Just create Quick Templates by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Q, type the handle of the template you need and press Ctrl+Space - The Bat! will promptly insert text, attach files and make the message ready to send.

Every day, you have to go through endless lists of messages from somebody who wants to sell you something you don't need? You want to read messages only from people you need and do not waste your time reading all those ads? Just add BayesIt! anti-spam plug-in to The Bat!, feed it with examples of spam you receive and relax - BayesIt! filters our virtually all unwanted mail while messages you need get through.

Download The Bat! Home Edition 3.99.29 in Softonic

Simple to use, powerful, and customizable, Thunderbird is a full-featured email application. Thunderbird supports IMAP and POP mail protocols, as well as HTML mail formatting. Easily import your existing email accounts and messages. Built-in RSS capabilities, powerful quick search, spell check as you type, global inbox, deleting attachments and advanced message filtering round out Thunderbird's modern feature set.

Advanced Folder Views

Thunderbird 2 offers a variety of ways for you to organize and display your folders, whether by favorites, recently viewed or folders containing unread messages. As always, you can also set up RSS and newsgroup folders to stay on top of news and your interests. Thunderbird 2 also allows you to maximize your message view pane by opting for a folder drop down menu instead of the traditional sidebar.

Message Tagging

Thunderbird 2 allows you to “tag” messages with descriptors such as “To Do” or “Done” or even create your own tags that are specific to your needs. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.

Message History Navigation

Thunderbird 2 offers message history navigation that allows you to click “forward” and “back” much like in your Web browser. You can now quickly toggle between messages and folder views.

Improved Search

Thunderbird 2 features a find as you type pane that speeds up searches within displayed messages. Thunderbird also offers quick search, which starts showing search results as soon as you start typing in search terms.

Saved Searches

Do you find yourself searching for the same subject or message content over and over? Thunderbird 2 saves you time by allowing you to store this search as a folder. Rerunning the search is just a matter of clicking on the saved search folder in the folder pane.

Stay Informed

Thunderbird 2 has been updated to provide more informative and relevant message alerts containing sender, subject and message text for newly arrived messages. Folders provide a pop up summarizing new messages in that folder.

Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services

Thunderbird 2 makes it even easier to integrate and use various Web mail accounts from one inbox. Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.

Download Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 in Softonic

One of the easiest ways to save time and speed-up your productivity is to record your e-mails by voice.

At first this might seem like an odd idea - why not just make a phone call? However, leaving a voice e-mail message allows the recipient to pick them up when they want, forward it on to other people, and generally get a much better idea of how you are feeling based on the tone of your voice. HandyBits Voice Mail makes it incredibly easy to get going by allowing you to record and playback voice messages in literally a few clicks. It's also very good at compressing voice messages so there's no need to worry about huge files blocking your inbox or bringing down your mail sever (which can be a common problem with such programs). In fact, according to the developers, it will compress messages to less than 10 times their original size which is pretty impressive. You can drag voice mail messages any way you want so you can drop them out of the interface and onto your desktop but unfortunately not directly into the attachment of an e-mail. It does offer regular tips which can be useful depending on how familiar you are with the program but they can be annoying when they pop up all the time.

Get yourself into the world of voice e-mails with HandyBits Voice Mail and you'll be surprised at how much your productivity can increase although in my mind, nothing beats the simplicity of sending an e-mail when you don't want to talk.

Download HandyBits Voice Mail 6.0 in Softonic

With Voice mail Compressor you can send voice email messages to anyone with an e-mail address. Voice Mail Compressor generates compressed .wav files reducing the size from 16 to 10 times. The recipient doesn't need any special software to listen your messages, by just double-clicking the file, you can listen it using the default audio player.

Features:

• Works with the Windows® bundled ACM codecs ( present in all 32 bits windows versions).
• You can select the codec of the output voice file.
• Only 32 KB for a 30 second voice message with the DSP True Speech® Codec.
• Only 50 KB for a 30 second voice message with the GSM 6.10® Codec
• Only 30 KB for a 30 second voice message with the Lame MP3® Encoder, now with the mp3 format, Linux, Mac, Pocket PC and Palm users can listen your messages too.
• Simple, minimalist and intuitive graphic interface.
• Send the voice file automatically with your favorite pop3 email client or save it in a hard disk folder for use with your web-based email account.
• Compatible with all MAPI e-mails clients ( Mozilla Thunderbird®, Eudora®, Outlook Express®, etc...).
• Easily share Voice Mail Compressor with your friends ( less than 1 MB for the installer file).
• Voice Mail Compressor is 100% freeware, no ads, no limitations, no adware, no banners, no spyware etc....

Download Voice Mail Compressor 2.20 in Softonic

GML is a simple to use that application that allows you to load all your old email back into your Gmail account so you can access and scan them more easily. The application works by reading your existing mail files, and forwarding them to GMail. It does not delete the mail from your local computer. Email can be set to arrive at GMail in either your 'Inbox' or 'Sent Mail'.

Download Google GMail Loader (GML) 0.5 in Softonic

SMTP Finder is a utility that will allow you to quickly find out the mail server address of a particular domain. It's remarkably simple to use and requires nothing more of you than a finger to enter the domain (e.g. softonic.com) before it will go off and retrieve the mail server detils for you, which it does very reliably.

The app has a very small footprint, so it uses very little memory and runs really quickly. It might have been nice if the developers had built in some connectivity with Outlook or Outlook Express, such as the ability to export the SMTP settings to your Outlook mail config. However, it's a nice program that does the job it sets out to with no fuss.

Download SMTP Finder 2.1.0 in Softonic

If you like Google Calendar but the only supported calendar at work is the Microsoft Outlook one, this tool is going to make your life much easier.

Google Calendar Sync is a software app developed by the Google team with which you can sync events between your Google Calendar and the Microsoft Outlook calendar. Synchronization works in several ways: either one-way from Google to Outlook, one-way from Outlook to Google or two-way between both apps.

When installing Google Calendar Sync you'll need to close Microsoft Outlook and also provide your username and password for your Google account. Once you've done that you're pretty much ready to go. Google Calendar Sync shows an icon on the system tray (which is really not that informative) and can be set to synchronize events according to a customized period of time. Also, events are fully editable inside Google Calendar's web interface.

On the downside, all the events I had in shared calendars were not successfully synced so I guess it only works with your own personal calendars.

Despite not working with shared calendars, Google Calendar Sync is still a very handy tool to keep both Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar fully synced.

Download Google Calendar Sync 0.9.3.0 in Softonic

Nostalgic users of the classic Eudora will be glad to get their hands on the latest outing, Penelope. This updated version manages to mix in iconic Eudora features with many things from Mozilla's Thunderbird. You'll immediately recognize the Eudora icons and the typical Thunderbird interface. The mail client is easy to install and to set up your own account. You can create filters to manage incoming mail and use Mozilla's search as you type feature to skip through your emails.

Penelope also includes an RSS reader, once again based on the one from Thunderbird. It worked smoothly importing new feeds. The preview window lets you read feeds directly from Penelope instead of opening them up in your browser. Another neat feature of the mail client is that you can now install all Thunderbird add-ons to it. The address book has also been improved and you can easily import or export it to various formats.

Despite still being a bit unstable (Penelope is still in development after all), the Eudora mail client provides a good alternative to send and receive mail. Qualcomm Penelope developers seem to have succeeded in blending the strengths of both Eudora and Thunderbird into one.

Download Eudora (Penelope) 8.0.0 b3 in Softonic

GmailClipse is a Gmail Client to manage Gmail accounts. Uses port 80, so if you don't have acces to POP3 and SMTP ports in your office you can find this software very useful. You can use the plugin or the standalone version of GmailClipse. The rich client application version has exactly the same features:

• Advanced search
• Can copy contacts between accounts. Just drag and drop the contacts to the account
• Upload complete or partial projects to Gmail
• New View: Splitted Files
• Can work with multiple emails
• Can read entire conversations

Download GmailClipse Client 2.4.2 in Softonic

With the Plaxo Toolbar for Internet Explorer, you'll always have your address book and calendar right at your fingertips. Yahoo! users can even get their address books synched with the Plaxo Network to always have the most up-to-date info right in their address books.

Search the Web with Yahoo!—find what you need without having to open another Web browser. Mailing gifts? Need driving directions? A simple drop-down address book lets you look up everything you need without flipping through your little black book.

Booking a flight? An elegant calendar drop-down lets you view your schedule and add new events. Your toolbar is always in sync with Outlook and Plaxo. Quickly send a personal note to your friends and colleagues asking for their latest contact info. When they reply, Plaxo will automatically update your address book for you. Connect your Yahoo! address book to Plaxo so it's always up-to-date. Now you can effortlessly keep all your address books in sync and know you'll always have the latest information.

Download Plaxo Toolbar for Internet Explorer Beta 0.9.5.42 in Softonic

If you're always on the move and a big Thunderbird fan, then this program should answer a lot of your prayers. Thunderbird Portable can run from a USB stick and leaves no hard disk footprint meaning you can use it with ease anytime, anywhere.

The e-mail client is one of the most useful features - you can take your e-mail with you wherever you go although obviously, you can quickly fill up a flash drive with e-mails as you download them. Fortunately, the program itself only takes 30-40MB of space. In terms of performance, there are few noticeable differences between Thunderbird Portable and it's big brother. It's really easy to install although we found synchronization with the mail exchange could sometimes be troublesome.

The only major worry you might have is misplacing the USB drive if it's got most of your e-mails on. If there was some way to protect users from this kind of accident, then this would be the perfect portable app.

Download Thunderbird Portable 1.5.0.10 in Softonic