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

So you’ve taken the leap and installed the versatile internet browser, Firefox, but are you ready to trade in your Outlook Express for Mozilla’s open source mail application? Thunderbird is Mozilla’s award winning and free solution to manage your mail more efficiently.

Thunderbird woos users thanks to its flurry of options and the benefits of an open source application. Automatic updates ensure that you have the latest version of Thunderbird, preventing any security threats and offering you new features as soon as they’re available.

The biggest worry for users is switching from one mail application to another and losing precious information. With Thunderbird the switch is painless because you can quickly import your mail and contacts from your Outlook and set up your POP3 or IMAP account is a snap. To stay well organized we suggest taking advantage of Thunderbird’s filters. While this option is nothing new to the experienced Outlook user, you’ll have to admit that Thunderbird makes filters much more accessible, thanks to a simple selection of combinations and actions. Create distinct folders for your personal and professional mail and your newsletters and associate them with filters to avoid the hassle of constantly sorting your mail. Another feature we could single out is the integrated spell checker, a blessing if you send many emails and can’t be bothered to constantly verify your writing.

Although it isn’t visible right away, Thunderbird also features an RSS reader. Handy if you need to follow the news or specialist websites, this tool fits seamlessly into Thunderbird and you could almost forget that it is a mail application. Paste in the RSS feed from your favorite news source and the main messages window will reveal a list of all the latest feeds. The message pane is used as an integrated browser window to display the selected article.

Email is the number one source of viruses, that’s why Thunderbird offers various levels of message encryption, a spam filter and support for valid certificates. We found the spam filter particularly effective. Set it to “learn” mode, and it teaches itself to separate the valid email from the rest of the junk. You have to be mindful of this option though, because Thunderbird can become too restrictive and may decide on its own that one of your friends is suddenly persona non grata. Reviewing your junk folder every now and then should avoid you accidentally losing friends. Thunderbird also automatically turns off Javascript and by default does not load remote images, a good way to defuse the risk of viruses from dodgy emails.

Another known feature of the Mozilla line of products is customization. Just as with Firefox, Thunderbird can integrate a slew of extensions and add-ons to rev up your inbox. You can also add or remove icons from the actions pane, selecting the ones you use most frequently.

The one place where Thunderbird fails, and professionals will confirm this, is the failure to integrate Microsoft Exchange support. An essential tool in any work environment, the collaborative messaging software is sorely missed in Thunderbird and seriously limits its usefulness in offices. Furthermore, we can question why Mozilla included an RSS reader yet failed to incorporate a calendar, standard in most mail applications nowadays.

While the lack of proper business minded features will limit Thunderbird’s point in the workplace, the simplicity, customizability and security make it a number one choice for home users. If you’re worried about your safety on the Internet or are just looking for a more efficient way of handling your mail, Thunderbird is probably the best solution out there.

Download Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.16 in Softonic

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

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

If there's one thing I've just about had enough of, it's Windows Live Hotmail but with Microsoft Outlook Connector there is a way around it.

If you want to avoid Windows Live Mail's bloated, unintuitive, RAM sapping, vomit inducing interface you can use Outlook to access it instead using Microsoft Outlook Connector. Microsoft Outlook Connector allows you to access any Windows Live Hotmail (and Office Live Mail) account from the far more civilized Microsoft Outlook.

With Microsoft Outlook Connector, you can use Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to access and manage your e-mail messages and contacts for free which is great although rather annoyingly (and typically Microsoft), management of calendar, tasks and notes requires a subscription fee. If you do pay for this, you can synchronize multiple calendars between different Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Windows Live Calendar through Microsoft Outlook Connector.

Microsoft Outlook Connector also means you benefit from Outlook's spam filter which you can apply to Windows Live Hotmail's incoming mail so no more mails from fake political exiles requesting you to send your account details so they can deposit a million dollars in your account (I get these constantly and am starting to think that being a political exile must be extremely lucrative).

If you're an Outlook user, you'll never go back to using Windows Live Hotmail's own interface after trying Microsoft Outlook Connector.

Download Microsoft Outlook Connector 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

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

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

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

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're a keen photographer, and you are using Microsoft Outlook calendar (the 2003 or 2007 version) you can schedule photo shoots with this simple plugin.

Fully integrated with Microsoft Mail, this plugin allows you to create lists of photographic material and tools that you'll need for an upcoming photoshoot whether it be a wedding, birthday, fashion sheet or even if you're thinking of being a paparazzi. The basic advantage of this plugin is that enables you to stay more organised especially if you're a photographer with a lot of bookings per day. The amount of material, props and equipment you need from shoot to shoot often varies wildly and forgotten tools can cost you valuable bookings. With Photo Shoot Pro you can prepare in advance the material you need for each photo. This way you can The plugin even has a special options for reminding you of the type of camera and settings it should be prepared at so that be sure that you do not forget anything and wearing the proper equipment.

For photographers this is an excellent plugin although amateur photographers will find little use for it.

Download Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot 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

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

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 5.85.3718 in Softonic

Despite the popularity of web-based email accounts, there are still people who use POP3 mailboxes and email clients such as Outlook Express. If you're one of them, keep on reading because you're going to love this app.

SpamBrave is a powerful antispam tool that sets a filter between your mailbox and the mail server, analyzing each message you download and throwing all the spam away so that it doesn't bother you anymore. Of course, the program's efficiency depends highly on its training, and training takes time. But this learning process has been automated to a certain extent, which means that fortunately you don't have to go over all of your messages one by one.

SpamBrave can take a look at your Outlook folders and learn from what you consider good and bad email messages. If you don't have enough of them, it'll learn from its embedded spam library. Plus you can also create "white" and "black" lists with your approved and banned senders, respectively.

The program is seamlessly integrated into the Outlook interface as a new toolbar and includes some configuration settings with which you can adapt it you your needs.

SpamBrave is a powerful spam filter for Outlook Express that, after some careful training, can help you get rid of those unwanted messages.

Download SpamBrave Lite for Outlook Express 5.6 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

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

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

Simple Mail is a Firefox extension that can turn your favorite web browser into a basic, yet fully functional email client.

Once installed, you can configure Simple Mail with your email account details and manage your mailbox from just another tab in Firefox. The extension works with POP3, SMTP and IMAP email accounts – no webmail support here, but hey, simply open another tab and browse to your webmail page. Also, you can set up as many simultaneous accounts as you want.

Simply Mail behaves just like any regular email client: you'll be able to check your messages, reply to them, see any attached files and of course send new messages from a full featured rich text editor. The program also includes some nice options such as an address book or the possibility to download just message headers. Just bear in mind that this is meant to be a simple, lightweight client so there won't be extra features like signatures or spam filters.

If you only need a basic, simple-to-use email client for your POP3 email account, then Simply Mail can be a perfect solution, as long as you use Firefox as your web browser.

Download Simple Mail 2.69 in Softonic

I use Gmail so much now that in many ways, I prefer it to even using Outlook. However, integration with Windows is nowhere near as good as Microsoft Outlook for obvious reasons.

gAttach! bridges that gap somewhat by allowing you to attach files directly to Gmail or Google Apps Mail directly from Windows. In other words, just right click on a file, select "Send To" and "Mail recipient" and the plugin will automatically open your Gmail client with the file already attached. It not only attaches files directly from Windows Explorer - it also opens up a whole new world of attachment possibilities from Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

There's not much more too it than that - it integrates perfectly into Windows Explorer. However, you may experience some glitches. If you are sending a file attachment whose filename is in a different alphabet to the one you use normally (e.g. your computer uses English but you're sending a Spanish attachment), it may not recognize or attach the file. It's also limited by Gmail's 20MB file attachment restriction. If you're logged into your Gmail, it won't prompt you for your details but if you are not, then it does ask you for your username and password which you may or not feel comfortable submitting.

For any Gmail fan, this is an excellent utility that makes attaching and sending files so much easier than opening your web client all the time.

Download gAttach! 1.2008.7.7 in Softonic