The first thing youll notice is the Smart Inbox, which collects emails from all of your accounts and automatically organizes them into categories like Notifications, Newsletters, Personal, and Seen.

It can be buggy, occasionally has issues playing nice with Gmail, and lacks some more advanced features that are present (and have been present for years) in other third-party email clients.

If you use plug-ins to extend Mail.apps functionality, Apple has a history of making changes that cause developers to re-write their plugins, resulting in a broken email workflow while you wait for updates.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of excellent third-party email clients that aim to fix Mail.apps shortcomings.

In this article, well take a look at several of the more popular options and introduce you to our favorite.

Criteria for the Best Email App In selecting the best email app for macOS, we used the following criteria to select the winner: Overall Design Dealing with email can be annoying, and using a poorly-designed email client can compound the frustration factor.

The email client you decide to use should provide you with a well-designed user interface that aids you in your quest for Inbox Zero.

Ease of use The email client you use should give you the tools you need to get the job done while staying out of the way as much as possible.

You want to focus on reading and responding to email, not navigating complex menus or trying to figure out basic functions.

Innovative Features As the amount of email we receive grows over time, the way we deal with it must evolve.

Developers are starting to reconsider how we fundamentally deal with the email we receive, and it is important that we consider innovative features that make it easier (and more enjoyable).

Support for Multiple Account Types The best third-party email clients are flexible enough to offer support for many different types of accounts, such as Gmail, iCloud, O365, Yahoo, Exchange, IMAP, etc.

If an email client doesnt support your email provider, then its just not an option for you no matter how awesome it looks.

Support for Gmail-Style Shortcuts If youve ever used Gmail keyboard shortcuts, you probably cant imagine not using them since they can drastically reduce the amount of time you spend in your email client.

Gmail Kickstarter Mac Support These

These shortcuts can be a game-changer for how you read and respond to email, so its important that the best third-party email client for Mac support these.

Update Schedule The email client you use should have a track record of being well-supported to minimize the risk of it suddenly disappearing, forcing you to figure out a new tool for your email workflow.

Integration with Other AppsServices Email doesnt happen in a vacuum.

Many emails you receive have a task associated with them or a file you need to save for later, so it makes sense that you should be able to link that email message to your task management system (like Things 3, our favorite GTD app ) or a cloud storage solution like iCloud, Dropbox, or Google Drive.

CustomizationWidgets A good email client is flexible enough to support customization.

Email is personal, and some email clients allow you to install widgets or plugins that can extend the core functionality, enabling you to create a very custom application that meets your specific email needs on any device.

Plays Nice with IMAP Folders Some apps (rather sneakily) create additional IMAP folders for extended functionality, which (at best) creates additional clutter when you access your email outside of that email client, and (at worst) can cause major problems in your email-based workflow (i.e., when you cant find a message because its actually sitting in a hidden folder).

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Get Your Email Under Control: Check out our free guide for getting your email inbox calm and under control.

Download it here.

Our Favorite Email App: Spark Spark is our favorite third-party email client for the Mac because it has a great combination of powerful features and a clean, well-designed user interface.

Its a great productivity tool for individual users, and also offers some innovative features for teams that need to collaborate on emails together.

Everywhere you look in Spark, there are features focused on making email better.

Gmail For Mac Kickstarter