5 Great Alternatives To Microsoft Outlook

1. Mozilla Thunderbird

The first and the most popular alternative is Thunderbird, the open-source email client from Mozilla. It is the best when it comes to speed and flexibility. It can expand its usability through plugins and add-ons like Firefox. That’s why most Firefox user will feel easier to work with Thunderbird.

Thunderbird supports all popular protocols including POP, IMAP and SMTP. Another advantage of Thunderbird is that it is available in all platforms while Microsoft Outlook is only available for Windows (and now on Mac OS X too).

One advantage of Thunderbird over Microsoft Outlook which I have personally seen is the use of IMAP. While Microsoft has done some work in this area in Microsoft Outlook 2010, Outlook still tends to hang and become unresponsive if using an IMAP account connection, Thunderbird prospers in this area and works very fast even with IMAP. If you prefer IMAP to access your email, Thunderbird is the best alternative with lots of other features and extensions.

Latest version of Thunderbird can be downloaded from Mozilla Messaging.