The casual observer may simply write off Postbox as being another in a long line of hopeful desktop email client replacements, but there’s more to this powerful email client than meets the eye. A familiar layout, a bevy of smartly integrated features, reliable performance, plug-in support make Postbox a dream-come-true for anyone who relies heavily on their inbox to keep their business and personal lives organized.
Unfortunately, with all those premium features come a premium price and the inevitable doubts that accompany paying for something that you have always counted on being free. Read on for an in-depth review of what Postbox does right, what it could do better, and a few details that may help ease the sting of forking over hard-earned cash for what appears, on the surface, to be just another email client, but is really so much more.
Like Thunderbird, But Better
Built on Mozilla’s Thunderbird code-base, Postbox feels much like a beefed-up version of the popular email client in many respects. Aside from a shiny new look, the layout of menus and message windows feels a lot like Thunderbird (and many other desktop mail clients) and all of the features that Thunderbird users love are here, along with a whole load of new ones that bump Postbox up to the next level (more on those later).
Setup and configuration was quick and easy, with the only slight annoyance being that Postbox asked several times during the setup process if I was sure that I didn’t want to make it my default mail client. The standard setup dialog boxes were helpful in guiding me through importing settings and messages from other email accounts and I was pleased to see that the “Import Mail Account” box included options for adding POP3 or IMAP accounts from Gmail, Windows Live Mail, Yahoo, and even AOL. Choosing one of these common accounts would fill out the incoming and outgoing mail servers for you, saving me the hassle of looking them up and the accompanying grumbling.
Being the confirmed, die-hard Gmail user that I am, I instructed Postbox to download all of my webmail (some 4,500 messages and hundreds of attachments) and sat back, comfortable that I’d given Postbox something to chew on for a half a day and could now go read my book. I was surprised when it finished downloading everything in about twenty minutes, considering that Thunderbird took three times as long to do the same thing and required multiple attempts to complete.
Postbox seems to be geared towards giving users a fast, reliable, searchable email experience and, even though it’s still in Beta, it is clearly delivering these things. In the several days that I tested and abused Postbox it never lagged, froze up, or crashed.
Features and Flaws
Many features from Thunderbird are standard in Postbox, and also quite a few new and innovative tools that may inspire some devotion. The inbox can be viewed as conversational Gmail-style threads, and “Topics” function much like tags and help with searching and separating work from play. The mail filters are rock-solid and spam-handling is top-notch.
Probably the best feature that Postbox brings to the table is its new tab system. Similar to Yahoo’s newest webmail interface, tabs help by allowing you to keep several messages and inbox folders open while working on other things. This, in itself, is incredibly handy, but Postbox also includes powerful “search tabs” that index all of your attachments, images, and in-message links, making them easy to search or browse. In turn, each search tab displays content in a way that makes the most sense: you can adjust the size of thumbnails in the “Images” tab to fit more on the screen at once, items in the “Attachments” tab can be searched by a phrase in an attached document, and the “Links” tab actually searches the pages that the links point toward for words and phrases. Searching this content is fast and made easy by allowing common language queries like “last 30 days” or “video”.
Postbox includes the ability to post status updates to Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed, which it does by way of a button on the menu bar labeled “Post” that’s got a bullhorn on it, which may be a little too poignant of an icon. It’s disappointing that you can’t read Twitter or Facebook updates right now (you can only send them), but I retain hope for a solution in the future.
Another handy feature is the “To-Do” button that appears in every message’s upper right corner. Clicking on the button marks the message as something that needs your later attention and you can then pin these “To-Do” messages to the top of your inbox. It’s impossible for me to put into words how immensely useful this is to me and anyone else who has glanced over an important email with good intentions, only to have it buried under the rest of the day’s inbox load.
Like Thunderbird, Postbox gives users the option to install plug-ins and extensions that can improve usability and add even more features to an already feature-rich application. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Thunderbird plug-ins don’t work in Postbox, which seems strange given that they’re so closely related. There are currently around twenty Postbox add-ons available for download and, hopefully, many more on the way.
There are definitely a few things about Postbox that need to be considered before the final release, chief among them being the lack of any sort of calendar. It seems almost a given these days that your email client will have some sort of calendar system, but the closest Postbox has is the aforementioned “To-Do” list, which unfortunately isn’t even close.
Other small issues that could use some work include the contact list that requires a lot of scrolling and pressing of the “List More” button and the search function, which could use some tweaking to improve the odds of a successful search.
Try It, Love It, Buy It
While using Postbox, I couldn’t help but be amazed with how well everything worked together and how blazingly fast everything happened. Small things, like displaying Chinese characters when my other email clients simply displayed blocks until I downloaded the appropriate language pack, won me over. Postbox is packed with many great features and tools and innovative ways of handling tasks, but manages to integrate them so well that you might not even notice them until you need them. This is the hallmark of a well-designed program.
Postbox’s price tag of $39.95 will scare off many potential users, but there are coupon codes for $10-off floating around Twitter, as well as student and business discounts. Also available through the website is a plan that lets you split your single license between five computers and another plan that gives you free upgrades for life. When you consider what you are receiving, the price seems more and more reasonable.
Postbox is a brilliant email client and for many people it will be worth the price. The setup is painless, the included features are powerful and save time, the layout puts everything at your fingertips yet remains intuitive, and the plug-in support, while not as great as one might hope, opens up many doors in the future. If you’re anything like me –you really like Thunderbird to begin with, your workday revolves around your inbox, and you frequently find yourself combing through old emails for a single link or an elusive PDF file – give Postbox a try and then put it on your Christmas wish-list.
