The Bottom Line
Pros
- GetMail forwards from Hotmail, Yahoo! and POP accounts to any email address
- Working unobtrusively, GetMail gets mail periodically
- GetMail create backup copies and migrate mail to a new account
Cons
- GetMail does not offer a direct POP/IMAP proxy service to Hotmail
- Processing Hotmail a bit slow, doesn't allow you to specify arbitrary folders to check
- GetMail configuration, especially if you need multiple accounts, is a bit confusing
Description
- GetMail collects mail from multiple MSN Hotmail and POP email accounts and forwards it.
- Every account can have multiple specific email addresses to forward to in GetMail.
- GetMail lets you create backup copies (in .eml format) of forwarded mail.
- GetMail can check for new mail automatically and periodically.
- Optionally, GetMail includes the "Bulk Mail" folder and filters spam using its own filter.
- You can use GetMail to migrate mail from a local account to any email address in bulk.
- Using GetMail's purge tool, you can quickly clean a POP account of old mail.
- Get Mail supports Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/3/XP/Vista.
Guide Review - GetMail 3.3
GetMail collects messages from multiple MSN Hotmail or POP accounts and forwards them to any other email address reliably, unobtrusively and periodically (I wonder if the question whether GetMail should really check for mail can be turned off, though). If this is all the functionality you require and once you've set up GetMail (it can be a bit confusing to configure more than one account), GetMail is a great tool.
It's just a pity that GetMail does not support other web-based email accounts (such as Yahoo! Mail) and that it cannot work as a POP or even IMAP proxy directly. Of course, the forwarding approach lets you benefit from the spam filtering of the target email address.
GetMail does not allow you to specify which Hotmail folders you want to forwarded. You can, however, have GetMail delete forwarded messages or create backup copies (as .eml files) before forwarding.
