Mailspring- OpenSource mail app for Linux, Mac, and Windows
Mailspring is a free and open-source ‘easy-to-use’ email client with various features like unified inbox, starred and important mails, snoozing, reminders, spam, drafts, activity navigations, read receipts, and link tracking. It supports all IMAP providers(Gmail, Office 365, iCloud) but does not support POP3. Mailspring makes it simple to obtain information at a glance. Users can view the mails, tasks, or email activity that has been done so far, which enables users to cross-reference data and prevent scheduling conflict.
Features
Inbox
As Mailspring supports Unified inbox, almost all email accounts from any email provider (Gmail, iCloud, IMAP/SMTP, Office 365, Outlook.com, Yahoo) are merged into a single inbox, minimizing the need for login and logout of accounts.
Unread
In the unread folder, only unopened emails are separated from the rest of the inboxes. It allows checking back at what happened during the last time connected and determines which emails still need to be answered.
Starred
The star system allows the most essential emails to be highlighted, enabling the user to find them easily. The message is removed from the starred list only after the user has removed the star.
The user can set starred messages in different colors and types that labeled with a yellow star by default. A message can be starred by clicking on the star mark on the left of the message in the inbox or by clicking on the star icon in the top bar if the message is open.
Snoozed
Mails can be temporarily removed from the mailbox and delayed until the user wants to view them again. It makes it easy to control email and manage the to-do that were supposed to be stored in the inbox.
A mail can be snoozed by selecting the time that the message needs to reappear on the window that appears after clicking on the snooze icon [🕑] at the top of the reading pane. It can be tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month, or any other time, depending on user preference. On a touch screen computer, mail can be snoozed and archived by swiping at the thread view directly.
Afterward, users can find the snoozed emails at the snoozed pane. They will appear back at the top of the inbox according to the time that the user chose, so the user is able to handle them later.
Reminders
This option is designed to make tracking easier to remember, thus minimizing the user’s ability to drop a conversation. When composing an email, Reminders can be enabled by clicking on the reminder icon and selecting the desired time.
Then Mailspring will automatically schedule a reminder and, if no recipients reply to the relevant mail, the user will be reminded about the thread by appearing the message on the top of the inbox
Important
The user has the ability to mark emails as important in order to keep a clear inbox. All the mails that are marked as important, can be seen in the ‘important’ pane. After a message is read, it gets removed from the important list.
Sent Mail
All emails, as well as reply mails that were successfully delivered to the relevant recipients, are stored in the ‘Sent Mail’ folder.
All mail
This folder contains all emails received, successfully distributed, and pending delivery. The relevant icons indicate whether the email was sent, received or starred, or important.
Spam
Mailspring has the ability to separate unsolicited and unwanted junk emails, which are often exchanged for commercial purposes, into a separate list of spam mails, as it is harmful to store them in an informal list of recipients. The user can do this by clicking on the spam mail icon while reading a message.
User also has the ability to remove all mails from this folder By clicking the empty spam now’ button.
Bin
All the trashed mails are included in this folder. Clicking on the bin icon next to the email allows the user to send an unwanted email to the bin file.
Draft
Email messages that have started composing but have not yet been sent are stored in the draft folder. The email will be automatically stored in the draft folder if the user selects the option ‘File →Save’ or close the window before sending it.
Activity
Activity folder includes a summary of analytical activity reports that have been performed on the email account over a period of time. A parametric report is created for each time a user sends mail. Activity reports are a new tool that allows to get a ‘birds-eye view’ of all of the email activities. When the user views the activity report, he can select the account, and the relevant time ranges that needs to analyze at the top of the page
These data are shown in separate graphs for each activity.
Messages Received: This graph indicates the total number of messages received, including messages in the inbox and that are sent directly to a folder by postal rules and spam during the selected time period.
Messages Sent: The Total number of messages sent in the selected time period.
Messages Time of Day: This chart is a histogram that is divided into 24 columns, one for each hour of the day. The height of each column is determined by the number of emails received per hour.
Read Receipts and Link Tracking
These parameters include only messages that have been sent with enabling read receipts or link tracking. User should click the ‘eye’ or ‘cursor’ icons at the bottom of the composer to enable these capabilities when sending an email.
If the user has enabled the above features, the read receipts and link tracking section can be seen as follows. If those features are disabled then the relevant data is displayed as 0%.
Opened: The percentage of emails with at least one open divided by the total number of emails sent with read receipts.
Clicked: The percentage of emails with at least one link clicked, divided by the total number of emails sent with link-tracking enabled.
Replies: The percentage of times user received one or more replies to threads that started.
Best Templates and Subject Lines:
This section of the report displays the “read receipts and link tracking” data individually for each subject line if users send several emails with the same subject line. This gives the information that needs to make decisions and enhance the outbound emails.
Compiled versions of Mailspring can be downloaded at, https://getmailspring.com/download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux
