Do you think Linux messaging customers do not find a balance between aesthetics and features? Do you want a professional messaging client with professional features? Well, Mailspring is my free and open source messaging client (FOSS) who combines an elegant design with powerful features!
Why emailspring is my favorite messaging application
When I say that mailspring is my favorite and non -Thunderbird email application, I do not pretend that mailspring is better That Thunderbird – because “better” would mean that mailspring can do whatever Thunderbird can and more. This is not the case, and Thunderbird East The alternative richer in functionality.
However, Mailspring can do some things that Thunderbird cannot. It brings a different set of features and priorities to the table, and I personally align myself better with what it has to offer, which is essentially summed up with the following five features.
Modern design with the thesis support
Mailspring is by far one of the customers of the most elegant Foss emails, offering a clean and polished design that looks modern! Everything, padding and margins in the police style, seems to be thoughtful. He presents a lot of information (in which I will go later), but he does it with a level of minimalism that I cannot help but love it!
Let’s start with its default arrangement of four columns. You have your messaging folders such as the reception box and the elements sent in the leftist panel, followed by the list of emails in the selected folder, then the e-mail preview, and finally, the right panel on the right displays information on the sender with a list of previous email exchanges.
The arrangement is intuitive and dense information without being too overwhelming. However, if it seems too much, you can easily change it by heading to Edit> Preferences. You can adjust the number of panels you want and divide them vertically or horizontally.
In addition, if you find the default theme a little too brilliant and blue, you can move on to a different theme while heading to the Edit> Change theme. By default, Mailspring offers six themes. I particularly like Darkside, in particular on Ubuntu – these make the application resemble a native part of the operating system. You can also install community themes from GitHub or even create your own theme using this tool, although it requires coding know-how.
Links monitoring and pixel monitoring (reading reception)
These are the main features that distinguish emails from other office messaging customers. Usually, these features are reserved for professional email marketing software, and the fact that we get them in a consumer level tool is simply great!
When writing an email, you can simply press a button to activate links or pixel monitoring or both for this specific email. The follow -up of the links does exactly what it looks like – if you include a link in your email and the recipient clicks it, you will get a notification. Meanwhile, pixel monitoring is essentially stealthy reading receptors – you will receive a notification when someone will open your email.
These features can be really useful in professional contexts. For example, when sending emails for job interviews, knowing if they saw your message gives you usable information when you send a follow -up. The same goes for sending assistance emails – you can assess whether your message has been received and act accordingly.
Now it’s a freemium feature! At the time of writing the editorial time, the free plan gives you five uses (could change in the future) for monitoring links and monitoring of pixels per week. You can get unlimited follow -up by upgrading to mailspring pro for $ 8 per month. Personally, I stick to free plan because I don’t need to follow each email!
In some places, such as the EU within the framework of the GDPR, the monitoring of emails is illegal without the explicit authorization of the recipient. If you live in these areas or your recipient only uses these features after obtaining the necessary authorizations.
Detailed email analysis
Beyond the basic monitoring, Mailspring provides a complete analysis dashboard which gives you an overview of your performance by e-mail. You can see not only the number of emails you have received and when but detailed metrics on your emails sent – how many have sent, how many of them have been opened and how many answers!
If you send a large volume of emails, the analyzes can even show you which object lines and models (you can create messaging models with emailspring) work better, which gives information on what is read more often!
Although these features are technically intended for the marketing of use cases, they are also precious for non-markets! For example, if you are looking for a job, you get data on the number of your emails that are open and responded, helping you understand if the problem is your subject or the content of the message.
Snot the emails, define reminders and send later
Mailspring includes three intelligent productivity features that help you stay informed of your important emails: snoozing, reminders and send later! The Snooze function allows you to tell Mailspring to remind you of a specific email at a specified moment. It is perfect for the moments when you receive a long newsletter or a detailed email that you want to read, but not at that time, and I don’t want it to be lost in your reception box either.
The recall function does the same thing, but for the emails you send. It allows you to define a reminder to revisit the email if you have not received an answer within a specified time. Let’s say that you have sent an invoice to a customer and want to follow up if you do not receive any acknowledgment of receipt in a week. This option guarantees that you will not forget!
Finally, the subsequent sending functionality – which is particularly useful with all the analyzes you have at your disposal. You can check the times when a particular recipient generally opens your emails, then specify mailspring to send this email at this time precisely. This can considerably increase your opening rates!
Elted e-mails translations
Mailspring also supports translation in the application, which is a surprisingly practical feature that prevents you from the hassle of copying an email, opening a browser and heading for Google Translate to understand what it says. Mailspring manages the translations inside the application – you just press a button and the email is automatically translated. This feature is particularly useful if you work with international customers or if you receive newsletters from foreign sources. At the time of writing the writing moment, there is support for around 100 languages.
How to install and configure mailspring
If you like all the features that MailPring has to offer and want to install it, you can do it as a Snap package. This means that Ubuntu users can install it directly from the App Store: just search “emailspring.
On other distros, if you have installed a snap, you can just as easily install it using this command:
sudo snap install mailspring
Now, if you don’t like shots, it is also available as flatpak. You can install it using this command (provided that Flatpak is already configured):
flatpak install flathub com.getmailspring.Mailspring
You can also visit the official mailpring website and download it as a Deb or RPM package, but I would recommend on this subject. These packages do not automatically update, which means that you will have to download and manually install new versions when published, which becomes a real problem over time.
Once installed, the launch of mailspring will encourage you to create a new mail account. It is essentially a user recording process – you do not create a new e -mail address “User@mailspring.com” – and it is completely optional. It is only necessary if you want to use specific mailpring features such as reading receipts and links. In addition, the email account you use to create your mail ID is only to create a new account with mailpring and will not be added to the email customer.
Then you connect your email accounts to the mail customers so that they can display all your reception boxes and your emails. It supports all popular messaging services such as Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo and gives you an occasional interface and easy click to quickly connect the customer to your email account. Alternatively, if you use personalized domains, you can also manually configure the IMAP and SMTP settings. I personally used the two options and they work perfectly!
After following these configuration steps, Mailspring will take a few seconds for a minute to load all your emails. You can add more email accounts from the file> Add an account.
Mailspring may not be as customizable or rich in functionality as Thunderbird, but it offers a specific mixture of simplicity and professionalism which, I am sure, will appeal to many of you!
