If you just want a simple email application to unify all of your email accounts, Inky is definitely an app you should check out. Programs like Outlook offer more powerful features but they may be overkill for many.

The beauty of Inky is its simplistic interface. Big buttons allow you to access different accounts, settings, and features. There are a ton of keyboard shortcuts for those power users as well. Once you've created an Inky account, you can log into various email services like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.com so you can have access to all of these accounts whenever you log into Inky.

It's very easy to get started with Inky as your emails are displayed in the traditional column and preview pane. You can reply directly from within that email or you can choose to compose a new email. Everything is laid out logically and the options aren't intimidating.

Power users who love Gmail may find Inky lacking some important features, though. There no support for Gmail's labels and Google Contacts aren't pulled into the app, which is very disappointing. Only a select few contacts showed up. Inky features its own priority inbox and sorts relevance by different shaded water droplets. The symbols are too similar and makes it very difficult to use.

Overall, Inky is a great email hub for users who want basic features but power users will want to look elsewhere.

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Mailbird is a Windows desktop email client. The client currently only supports Gmail accounts for email, but also provides support to display Dropbox, Facebook, Google Drive and other services. Mailbird’s design and functionality is nearly identical to Sparrow on Mac, making it ideal for anyone looking for a Windows equivalent. This free beta version doesn’t include all of Mailbird’s features, but will give you a good taste of what it can do.

How it works

The app provides basic Gmail features such as composing emails, and sorting email into folders and labels. Mailbird does not support more advanced options such as filters, making it lackluster if you want to perform complex tasks. Another downside is that the beta only allows a single Gmail account at once.

However, you can work around this with the Identities feature. Identities allow you to forward several e-mail accounts through a single Gmail account, making it very similar to having multiple accounts. However, you have to setup e-mail forwarding within Gmail. Identities also do not save folders, labels, drafts or sent messages to the secondary accounts, only to the primary account. There are plans to add multiple account support in the final release, but for now this is not part of Mailbird's beta.

Mailbird also includes several optional apps that provide more functionality or connect to other services. Feature Apps include quick access to contacts, a detailed calendar, and the ability to search attachments. You can also use apps to connect to online services such as Dropbox, Facebook, and Asana. There are also links to popular tech blogs such as TechCrunch and Lifehacker.

Design and Interface

Nearly all of the menus, apps, and notifications are accessed from a toolbar on the left. Emails are listed in a large column that takes up only a fourth of the screen. Before a message is selected there will be a large empty space. Once an email is picked, this space will fill with the message, graphics, metadata, and menu controls. In the upper right hand corner you can quickly add labels, download attachments, or reply to an email. You can also use any Gmail keyboard shortcuts in Mailbird, making it even faster to access different features.

Composing an email will open a new compact window that has all the normal writing functionality. This includes being able to select font type, size, and color, a paragraphs alignment, and any images, lists, or links. The slight annoyance is that the app does not search for contacts; you will need to have your contacts app open or know the exact email address. The apps in generally don’t have an unique interface in Mailbird, instead they simply open the service’s webpage in the client.

Performance

Emails from major social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn are clearly marked with icons so that you can quickly identify them. When a new email or notification arrives a bird chirp will play. If you receive too many frequent messages you can disable this chirp. Mailbird does generally have load slowly when first opened, mainly caused from populating your entire Gmail account and all folders. However, its speed is quicker when receiving a fewer messages at once. You should be able to avoid this problem by staying logged in.

Conclusion

While in beta, Mailbird is still a great Windows email client if you are content with only a single Gmail account. Its biggest advantage is apps that provide integration with services such as Facebook. Just be prepared for delays when receiving a large amount of emails. Give the beta of Mailbird a try and it might entice you to get the full version.

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You can define multiple user profiles so that each of them have their own settings and it supports multiple accounts, use of templates and both a simple spam filter and RSS reader.

If you're looking for a portable e-mail client to use between various people, then you'll find this helps you easily configure multiple profiles and does a simple but effective job.

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Postbox is based on Thunderbird, and this is visually obvious the moment you run the program. Installation and setup is easy, and as you'd expect you can set up multiple email accounts. There is an excellent search engine which requires your inbox to be indexed for rapid results. If you have thousands of emails, the first indexing might take a little while, but after that it's not something you'll notice.

One unusual feature in Postbox is the tabs. There are contacts, images and attachments tags. The images tag, for example, will show you all the images from your email, and this works for contacts and attachments too. These can then easily be accessed and added when composing email, which turns your inbox into a useful active database. They are also fully search-able, so finding that picture of the cute kitten that so and so sent you becomes much easier.

Highlighting any text and right clicking gives you a range of useful tools, from Google and Amazon searches to listing on social media sites. The former is useful, but the latter feels tacked on and not fully implemented yet. You can, for example, post highlighted text to Twitter and Facebook (as a status update), if you allow Postbox to login to those services. However, these are currently very basic, and unlike some social media clients, there is no way to add your Facebook news feeds etc. You can also add RSS feeds, although as a reader Postbox is still a little basic.

While a little beta-rough around the edges, Postbox is still a very able email client with some promising new features.

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You can protect all accounts with a password and enjoy the benefits of tabbed e-mailing and switch between text and html. One bonus is that the program also allows you to convert your mailbox into a simple backup and storage utility for large files. One particularly nice feature is that eMailaya can tell you in each e-mail how long it took to be sent and be received which is useful when diagnosing delivery issues.

This is certainly one of the most innovative e-mail clients you'll find and well worth a try for those looking for something a bit different in their e-mail experience.

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Spicebird principally includes e-mail, a calendar and and an IM client. Everything is integrated with Gmail so if you're a user, all your contacts can be conveniently imported immediately. Spicebird also features a nifty RSS reader to keep you ahead of the latest news from your favourite sites. And like Outlook, it warns you when a meeting or appointment is approaching on your calendar. Spicebird is still very much a work in progress and in the future will include new languages and many more extensions to enhance it's performance. In the future, it will include new languages and extensions that enhance its operation. However, there are still basic things that still need to improve before it can seriously rival Outlook including a more advanced contacts list. In addition, like many Mozilla products, it can be rather heavy on your RAM. There are undeniable similarities between Thunderbird and Spicebird but unfortunately, it doesn't seem to integrate very well but as it's still developing, hopefully they will take this into account.

A good looking, easy to use suite which has a lot of potential although it will be a while before it can seriously rival Outlook.

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