Judi Sohn

Reinventing myself one crisis at a time.

MailPlane

Now that I’m living my email life under the Google umbrella, I’ve fallen in love with MailPlane.

mailplane.png

MailPlane is a Mac OS X desktop application for Gmail. I know what you’re thinking…$25 for a dedicated Google email browser? I can load Gmail or my Google apps page in any browser for free. I can get my email via POP or IMAP for free. Why Mailplane?

  • While Google has IMAP access, with 4 accounts and some large mailboxes I found Mail.app to be unreliable. Searches were slow, crashes were frequent. It would have been more reliable had I used POP to get my mail, but I wanted to keep read states in sync between the Google browser and email client.
  • I have 5 Google email accounts that I regularly check, including one @gmail.com address. Bouncing around browser tabs is a pain in the butt. This is especially true for addresses in the same domain, requiring me to sign in and out each time. With MailPlane, I can keep all accounts signed in at the same time and switch back and forth easily. That alone was worth the fee, but wait, there’s more…
  • I can use Apple’s Address Book for email addresses.
  • MailPlane is tons faster and more flexible than any email client for searching. It’s the browser version of Gmail, after all.
  • Drag & drop attachments. Images are automatically optimized.
  • Growl notifications and a clean, handy menu bar icon.
  • mailto: links direct to MailPlane, not Mail.

I prefer a desktop client for email and couldn’t get used to doing all my email in browser tabs. MailPlane gives me the best of both worlds.

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Judi Sohn

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2 responses to “MailPlane”

  2. Is there anyway to import all my emails from OE for Mac v.5.0.6 to Gmail [GoogleApps] MAILPLANE? MailPlane looks very cool — finally an email app that has the HTML BAR right along the top of where you write your message, ie, right at your fingertips, just like my old favorite OE for Mac 5.0.6 (which is why I haven’t quit using OE to this day).

    (With Mail.app you have to go to the top menu bar to reach HTML tools, vs. right at the top of the MESSAGE-writing-window.)

    My biggest concern about Gmail is that Google is so “Big Brother Friendly,” added to the seriously “politically correct” atmosphere today, they may think some of the subjects of my emails are “politically incorrect.” (Never had a problem w/earthlink so far, so I don’t know, just curious. Several years ago there was a lot of info online re: Google and Big Brother, but not too many current ’09 articles showing up).

    Anyway, thanks for the MailPlane review!

    Opps, PS: Can I use FILE FOLDERS with MailPlane vs. that “label” method? I really don’t think I could get used to that. I like things in their own cubicle. 😉