Readers Respond: Which Free Windows Email Program Do You Use?

Responses: 122

By Heinz Tschabitscher, About.com Guide

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I currently use outlook for some mail, IncrediMail for when I want to use stationery… Outlook crashes frequently :-(( Please bring back OE!
—Guest Lisa Mills

I currently use Thunderbird (v3) for both personal and business email. I Have it installed on all of my business and personal computers. I have tow laptops running XP (One home, one Pro), A desktop running XP Media Center (XP Pro), a desktop running Win7, a laptop running Vista, and another desktop running XP Pro. All have V3 installed, and I have not had a single issue with TB. I also run many add-ons on every installation, and have been doing so since v2. I run signature switcher (switches between various signatures automatically), contacts sidebar (displays contacts in sidebar), FoxClocks, (shows times around the world in status bar), Lightning (calendar add-on that is synced to my Google calendar - Real time updates!), Google Contacts (Sync's my google contacts with my TB contacts), and startup master (provides password protection on startup) to name a few. TB is super robust, and startup, even with all of my extras, is very fast. I did use Outlook with BCM.
—Guest Meynonline.com

I've long used Thunderbird (v2) and been happy with it. Still have it on the laptop running Vista, but cannot get it to work (v3.1) on the new desktop running W7. Looking on Mozilla Website simply confirms that this new version is full of bugs, with no solution in sight. Tried downloading v2 from filehippo.com, but no joy there either.
—Guest J Baldry

Thunderbird, Eudora, and Windows Live just don't have the simple organizational and filtering features of OE. And Thunderbird's latest upgrade convinced several acquaintances to switch.
—Guest Jane

I've been using TrulyMail for well over a year, and I really like it. I highly recommend it.
—Guest Paula Robinson

Like many others, I must find a new e-Mail program because Microsoft chose to discontinue my favorite Outlook Express (OE) in Windows 7 (which is the OS on my new laptop). Like others here, I MISS OE!! Why do away with such an excellent e-Mail program? I have written to Microsoft asking them that very question!! I wonder if I will receive an answer? While I do very much appreciate about.com's review of several e-mail programs, it's frustrating to have to "audition" them! I had decided on Eudora because of its fairly good review here and its great reputation over many years only to find out on their web site "system requirements" section, that, apparently, Eudora does not yet come in a version compatible with Windows 7! Someone else here wrote pleading with Microsoft to add Outlook Express back in to Windows in a Windows 7 update. YESSSS! I vote for that!
—izzylea

I had to settle for Outlook 2007, BUT I WANT MY OUTLOOK EXPRESS BACK IN THE WORST WAY! OE was simple and fast, nothing comes close to making me as happy. PLEASE bring it back!
—Guest bud

I have used this for years,used to be good. But they have changed it. Twice I had to hire/pay someone to come in and fix my computer because of IncrediMail. It has become the worst program ever. I definitely DO NOT recommend it…
—bbbcc

I tried all mail program that I could get my hands on. I wound up using Outlook 2007. 2003 doesn't work well with Win 7. All the other mail programs failed to work the way I wanted. Some (most) were really bad. Once outlook 2007 is setup it works really well. MS was really helpful with the few problems that I had. Been using 2007 for around 2 months and really like it.
—Guest K5QM

I use TrulyMail Portable (they have a non-portable version as well) because of its rich feature list (they just added a VoiceMail feature. It's free and includes encryption. I used to use Thunderbird but I like TrulyMail much better.
—Guest George Carter

Besides Windows Live, we have used Incredimail for most of the latter twenty years now and did not find any problem with it. Recently we went to Win7-64bit and installed Incredimail 2, and again, no problem. Because our ISP's recommendation to run Thunderbird for Win7, we tried to get the damn thing going for the last two days, installed half a dozen times and promptly uninstalled, because it installed 'itself' incorrectly. So far, we could not solve the problem of this stupid program entering incorrect data by its own automatic search for it. Last try just now; no go! That's it! No more! Let the gurus at Mozilla/Thunderbird go back to square one and figure things correctly.
—Guest Reness

For lots of reasons too long and boring, I have had to switch my 4 main computers to Windows 7 ... a truly atrocious program. Worse, it has no OE which I need [can't use Windows Live because their "terms & conditions" make it illegal for me]. I have to have many of my OE messages available… 5 years back. I haven't found a program to replace OE in Windows 7… so… you techs… is there any way, back door, front door, side door… to install OE into Windows 7??? It can't be that hard. [If not one of you should write an "almost OE" that you can install in W7… you'd make a fortune!]
—Guest Tucker

I, due to a horrendous bout of hacking, had to switch to Windows 7. It is a terrible program and it's… well, truly terrible suffices. And the loss of Outlook Express is a huge hassle and time consuming problem. I need something that can read my old .dbx files [much archived email is critical to my business]… which is law. And that makes Windows Live Email illegal for me to use: Attorney/client material is privileged. That means I can't give ANYONE, not God Himself… oh… sorry, I thought God and Microsoft were different entities for a moment. Silly. I use email to communicated with clients regularly. Live Mail's terms include letting Microsoft read ("have access") to my email and to allow a bunch of vaguely defined others to as well. I believe any attorney who uses Windows Live (and probably a bunch of their other programs that we don't think about since they haven't been so "in your face" about it). USE OF MICROSOFT LIVE WINDOWS BY AN ATTORNEY PROFESSIONALLY IS MALPRACTICE!
—Guest Guest Name

I've had it for 2 days and HATE it. Apart from simply not functioning for two of the domains I handle, I can't send-to-outbox to send later (and I hate, hate, hate waiting for the window to shut that pops up telling me all about the sending, because I don't care, and want to move on to the next message). It downloaded email from 2008 from somewhere?!? on three different accounts, and re-dated more than 80 as December 31, 1969 --most of which I'd received yesterday. Love to know why it did that. I can't delete the contents of the Deleted file --without selecting every single message and deleting them manually -even though it's set to 'delete on close' which it simply does not do. Overall, endlessly clunky and annoying, and I'm dumping it right now.
—Guest Membername

Used to love IncrediMail - but it has gone to hell in a handbasket. Once you upgrade it is difficult to go back to an older version. Has become very unstable in the last 6 months despite a re-format of my computer. Now looking for a new client.
—Guest OldCodger