The Best Android Email Clients
Most new Androids come with Gmail and another mail client that is simply called mail. While Gmail only handles emails from its namesake Google email service (Gmail), the generic client (Mail) can handle multiple accounts, but has a limited feature-set. In this article, we will be looking at other Android email clients that can replace the stock Droid email clients and can also handle multiple POP3, IMAP and other webmail services.
If you are looking for a good messaging application it may be worth your while to checkout WhatsApp, at least until Blackberry releases its Android BBM app. Otherwise, here are some of the best email Android clients.
K-9 Mail
This is an open source email client that can also combine POP3 and Gmail emails into a single Inbox. K-9 can display webmail emails in a folder and POP3 mails in another, which makes it possible for the user to eliminate the need for using the stock Gmail app and a separate
email client to handle other types of emails. It is also possible to combine different types of email into one folder, if that is preferred. The app allows the user to still identify what service the message is coming from by using color-coded system.
Not everyone likes the way the app looks, but owing to the fact that it has a large number of customization options, users can change things to make it their own. Some customization options include: the ability to change the date format, font size, gestures controls, animations, theme, background syncing and debug logging. You can download and install the app using this QR code.
ProfiMail
This is a push email client that can handle POP3/IMAP and SMTP mail servers. ProfiMail can also view, save and send attachments while allowing for the viewing of images in popular formats such as JPG and PNG. Other notable features include:
- Support for IMAP folders
- Support for HTML messages with images and hyperlinks
- Built-in File Explorer
- Support for character encoding – Western, Cyrillic, Central European, and more
- Build-in image viewer for JPG, PNG and other popular formats
- Text viewer for standard text, HTML and Word documents
- Selective message filtering and downloading (via rules)
- Opens and browses ZIP archives
- Access Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail, and other webmail accounts
- Push email – instant notification about new messages (using IMAP IDLE)
- Address book
- Signatures
- Multiple email accounts support
- Scheduled message download
- Sound notifications
You can install the ProfiMil using this QR code.
There are other good email clients such as Improved Email, and MailDroid, but we believe that the extensive feature-set of K-9 Mail is superior to these. If you know of other good email clients for that Android platform that you think we should have included in this roundup, please let us know about it in the comment section below.
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April 27th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
Why wasn’t Maildroid even mentioned?
April 27th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
Oops, I should have said “reviewed.” While it was indeed mentioned, after researching e-mail clients for my HTC Thunderbolt, it appears that Maildroid deserves a review. I’ve been hardpressed to find a user that prefers K-9 over Maildroid and some even suggested that K-9 caused non-email related problems.
May 28th, 2011 at 10:54 am
apparently because this is a biased review. they mention No others …. K9 owned prob.
May 28th, 2011 at 10:55 am
why have spam protection if u review the replies anyways
August 23rd, 2011 at 2:12 pm
No mention of Moxier Mail? This isn’t very complete at all. Of course I don’t know if Moxier mail will work with POP3 servers, but it is still worth using as your business email if you are looking for that.
August 23rd, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Thanks for the input Anthony, but the objective of this blog is not to mention all the the good apps. Instead we just want to highlight the very best.
August 24th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
I started with K9 Mail for a week…right up until it emailed a duplicate reply 85 times to the same recipient. So I switched to Mail Droid, loved it, tweeted about it, etc. for about a year. However…MailDroid, even when configured to delete old messages/clear cache every day or two, has turned into molasses and I got sick of waiting 20 seconds for an email to open so I could actually READ it. So I just loaded Secure9 Mail, which they say is based on K9 but with some tweaks and added capabilities. I’m viewing all my messages in a split-second; what a treat. I’ll stick with this right up until it reply-mails someone 99 times…
October 31st, 2011 at 1:36 pm
The only one and standalone – is ProfiMail. I use it for 3 years by now. This is the one thing that really works. All the rest like K9, and other derivatives, EnhancedEmail, Kaiten, Maildroid, Corp.Mail etc – sorry – are good for nothing. I purchased all paid clients to test them and to chose, and as it appears – to delete all of them. Truly, since the times of old Symbian – Profimail is the easiest, quickest and reliable. I have 7 mailboxes all with different IMAP etc all is working perfect, which I cannot say about all the rest. I have overall around 27000 mails totally in all mailboxes and can browse throught all of them in no time. Try do do it with some other email client – none pf them is capable of what Profimail is doing in a very easy and simple way.
November 3rd, 2011 at 8:03 pm
An irritating email client which after reading about it here & elsewhere I will be deleting.
Primary annoyance is the lack of a proper address lookup facility.
It also has peculiar labeling for some functions making them confusing.
But fix the lack of a proper address lookup & I would reconsider using it.
Until then MailDroid is the way to go in preference to K-9
November 18th, 2011 at 11:23 am
Just tied the ProfiMail looks nice a bit confusing but no support for Hebrew all Hebrew text is dsplaed the wrong way and they want 25$ to unlock the trial version which is good for 30 days. I whould consider using it if the Hebrew problem will be fixed. Works very fast though.
January 16th, 2012 at 5:13 pm
Yeah, if only it had Hebrew. What was the developer thinking? *sarcasm*
April 11th, 2012 at 12:52 pm
Yeah, absolutely rediculous, considering the whole world’s first language is English!
Oh wait…
May 15th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
K-9 is ugly as crap, it looks like it was designed 10 years ago. I am still searching for an Android mail client that is worth a damn, instead of having to have a separate Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail app just to get my freaking mail. This is one place where iOS is a big winner, their mail app handled all 3 three of my email accounts without issue, and did it well.