Better email programs on your own computer

Nowadays, most email programs are hosted on the web through popular services like Google Mail (Gmail for short), Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. All of these services are free, and each makes a bit of money by selling advertising and broadcasting it to you.However, as a small disaster at Gmail proved in February 2011, even the world’s best software engineers occasionally get it wrong. This means you should also keep your e-mail locally on your machine, just to be safe. And to achieve that you need an email program that runs on your machine.

There are also several other benefits to using a email program (also known as an email client). Once you’ve downloaded the email locally, you can view it, search it and even search its attachments — handy if you’re not connected to the internet. You can also reply to those emails and then the email program will send them once you’ve got an internet connection.

You can also use the program to set up a series of rules (also known as filters) to sort your email for you. The program can also sort the email into different threads so its easier to follow the conversation (something that is already native in Gmail).

Finally, another option is to continue to use your web-based email provider but download those emails to another machine using an email program/client– say you might use a client at your office but use the web interface to check it at home, or vice versa.

The choice of which email program to use depends on your operation system and what your needs are. Here’s a basic list of Email Programs that will get you started on your options.