KMail 1.7 - Free Email Program

Pros

• KMail offers powerful and flexible mail filters and virtual folders for email management
• Integrates secure, encrypted email using both OpenPGP and S/MIME
• KMail comes with a familiar, friendly and easy to use interface

Cons

• The KMail Message editor lacks a tad editing power
• KMail does not allow you to set up flexible message templates
• No internal spam filters or tight integration with external tools

Description

• KMail manages multiple POP and IMAP accounts, mbox and maildir mailboxes, and multiple identities.
• Powerful and flexible internal mail filters as well as support for procmail filtering.
• KMail can filter mail directly at the server to avoid downloading huge attachments or spam.
• Powerful message search with regular expressions and virtual folders make email management a snap.
• KMail supports display of HTML emails, colorizes quoted text, and can sort messages by thread.
• Unwanted mail can be bounced back to the sender, simulating a dead email address.
• Import mail and addresses from Outlook Express and Pegasus Mail, addresses from Netscape and Eudora.
• Supports OpenPGP cryptography and TLS/SSL connections natively, external plug-ins for S/MIME.
• KMail supports Linux/BSD/Unix and requires KDE 3.3.

Guide Review - KMail 1.7 - Free Email Program

Where all applications start with a 'k', the email client is no exception. And like most of KDE, KMail combines powerful features with ease of use.

KMail boasts a pretty interface providing access to very powerful filters, strong IMAP support, PGP/GnuPG integration and secure but still complete HTML support. One nice feature is the ability to filter mail directly at the server to get rid of some unwanted mail immediately before downloading it.

Another great filtering option is at the client side: KMail lets you set up "search folders", virtual folders that automatically collect all messages matching certain criteria.

Unfortunately, there's a slight exception to KMail's hands-down approach with a sense for practical solutions: the message editor. It support HTML formatting, but surprisingly lacks a bit of plain text editing power. Fortunately, an external editor (like vim or Emacs) can be used instead, but that counteracts KMail's overall ease of use a bit.

Busy mail users would probably appreciate message templates including variables or some kind of scripting language. Tighter integration with (trainable) spam filters than what KMail's setup wizard provides would be nice as well.