Difference between revisions of "Email client"

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Revision as of 17:23, 30 June 2019

An email client (alternatively spelled e-mail client; commonly known as mail client; more formally known as mail user agent or MUA; hereinafter, the Client) is any digital construct that an end-user utilizes to compose, access, and/or manage his or her emails.

The Client can also refer to mail client software. More broadly, email software may refer to all the software utilized for the Clients, mail servers, or mail exchangers.


Functions

Communication

With regard to:
  • Outgoing messages, the Clients may be designed to:
    1. Accept requests from end-users to compose new messages.
    2. Analyze requests looking for their inconsistencies and/or missing data.
    3. Offer end-users to correct inconsistencies and/or add the missing data.
    4. Transfer messages to mail servers.
  • Stored messages, the Clients may be designed to:
    1. Accept requests from end-users to manage -- delete, arrange, label, classify -- stored messages.
    2. Offer end-users to confirm those changes that are setup as critical.
    3. Execute the requests -- delete, arrange, label, classify -- stored messages.
  • Incoming messages, the Clients may be designed to:
    1. Accept messages from mail servers.
    2. Analyze messages looking for their inconsistencies and/or missing data.
    3. Add information about the found inconsistencies and/or missing data to the messages. This information may further be used by mail clients to combat spam.
    4. Display messages to end-users.
On the one side, the Clients receive requests from and display the data to end-users. On the other side, the Clients communicate with mail servers in order to receive emails from and/or send emails to.

Mailbox management

Message composition

Encryption

Hosting

There are two major models of locating the Clients:

  1. On-premises: end-users may install the Clients on their devices; a common example would be an app running on one's cell phone. The POP3 protocol is commonly used for sending one's emails to and/or receiving from mail servers.
  2. Online: end-users may access the Clients that are hosted online, often, next to a mail server. The IMAP protocol is commonly used for accessing and/or managing one's emails online.

Software

Overview

Comparison

Comparison of the popular Clients
Category Features Evolution Outlook RoundCube Thunderbird Zimbra
Trivia Ownership OSS Proprietary OSS OSS OSS
Developer Community Microsoft Community Foundation Corporation
License GPL Unknown GPL MPL YPL-like
UI GUI (GTK+) GUI Webmail GUI (XUL) GUI
Latest release 3.32.2 2019(16) 1.2.5 60.7.2 8.6.0
Date 05/08/2019 09/24/2018 04/28/2017 06/20/2019 12/15/2014
Introduction 2000 1997 2006 2003 2005
OS Windows
macOS
Linux
BSD
Unix
POP3 Fetch all messages
Selected by filter
Selected by user
Non-POP3 communication protocols IMAP4
SMTP
NNTP
EWS
IPv6
MAPI
RSS 0.91 Feeds
1.0 Feeds
2.0 Feeds
LDAP v2
v3
Non-RSS integration protocols IMSP
ACAP
ATOM Feeds
iCalendar
MAPI/RPC
CalDAV
CardDAV
Regular authentication Login
Plain
CRAM-HMAC MD5
SHA1
RIPEMD
MD5 APOP
DIGEST-MD5
Other authentication MSN (NTLM) browser login
Compuserve (RPA)
Hardware token PKCS#11
Biometric
SMTP Auth
X.509 client certificate
OAuth
SSL/TLS support Secure POP3
Secure IMAP4
Secure SMTP
Secure NNTP
Secure LDAP
SNI
OCSP
CRL
Filtering Local junk
Server-side junk
Phishing
PGP support inline
PGP/MIME or OpenPGP
S/MIME support protocol
OCSP
CRL
Certificates on tokens, smartcards support
Appearance HTML email
UTF-8 support
Image blocking
Thread view
Conversation view
Message (general) Bi-directional text support
Postpone/scheduled message sending
Label messages with colors
with flag
antidelete
add note
Reformat received messages edit headers (e.g., Subject)
forced recode
Composing messages Spell checking
Signatures
Bottom-posts replies
Native images preview jpeg
gif
bmp
png
others
Native documents preview txt
pdf
doc
xls
odt
ods
others
Database Message file format
Encrypted database
Virtual folders
Scheduled backup
New mail notification ticker
tray icon
tooltip
sound
Folders Customizable interface
Customizable keybindings
Fragmented messages
Database search with regular expressions support
Indexed search
Search folders
IMAP Search
IDLE
Message templates new
reply
forward
read
confirmation
save
print
Individual for
Support in message templates scripts, programming languages JavaScript
VBScript
PHP Scripts
Python
Regular expressions
Java
Other (specify)

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