Seeking a email client

Published on January 20, 2017.

In 2009, one of my friends introduced me to Vim and its power to edit text files. After a few months I was so happy using Vim that I couldn’t write my emails on the poor web email client input box so the same friend that introduced me to Vim told me about Mutt.

I copied some dotfiles from the web, edited them and after a few hours (maybe days) I could check and reply my emails using Mutt and Vim. If life was a fairy tail it will end here!

To be updated with some of the last cool new stuff on the open source world I subscribed to a few mailing list and some times I wanted to reply to one email but never remeber which email I used to subscribe to that mailing list. I received all my email in one inbox but I used different addresses that were configured to forward the income email to my main box. After searh on the internet I discovered that I could use :

send-hook mailing-list@foo.net "set from=my-email@bar.net"

to Mutt set up my correct email address when writing the email to one list and I end up with one configuration file where I keep a record of all the mailing lists that I subscribed.

In 2015, I discovered org mode that is a great tool to “keep notes, maintain TODO lists, planning projects, …” but can only be used on Emacs. I know there is some projects that try to emulate org mode on other environments but they aren’t complete as the Emacs implementation. I started using Emacs because of org mode and I decided to give a try to Gnus <http://www.gnus.org/>, one email client on Emacs.

After more than one year using Emacs, there is a few features that I like on it but there is some thing that I’m missing, probably because the way to have it is to implemente them yourself in Lisp.

And since most of my time now I spend dealing with emails the lack of a good tool to manage my emails started to bother me too much. So here is the list of things thaat I want on my next email client.

Integrated

The email client need to talk with a address book and a TODO list management. And the address book need to talk with the TODO list management because I want to have my contact birthdays on my TODO list.

GPG Support

I want to start using GPG again!

Mailing list management

The email client need to know which email it need to use when I write a email to the mailing list X.

Provide ways to unsubscribe to a mailing list is a plus.

Contact list

The address book need to support contact list, know as mail-alias on BBDB, to help me remember who I need to email when I saw something interesting.

Time tracking

The TODO list management should be capable of track how much time I spend on my tasks and provide me with some statistics.

Possibility of integration with Google Calendar, Trello or Wunderlist is a plus.

Easy to configure

Configuration should be very easy since I don’t want to spend days looking on the web how to tailor it.

Bonus: Contact sync with Android phone

I’m REALLY missing the syncronization between my address book on my computer and my mobile phone.

Candidates

If no one know one open source email client how can suit my needs I will try to test Evolution and Kontact.

If Evolution and Kontact fail to make me happy I will probably need to learn Lisp and implement what I need on Emacs.

Candidates not short listed

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