The best email clients for Mac: The ultimate guide

Whether you're juggling multiple accounts or looking for innovative ways to manage your inbox, the right email client can make all the difference in terms of efficiency, organization, and overall user experience.

Choosing the best Mac email client can significantly impact your productivity. In this article, we will present you with the most popular options and help you decide which Mac email client suits your needs the best.

No email client is universally better than others—the best option for you will depend on:

1. Features it offers

2. Design of the user interface

3. Efficiency and workflow automation improvements

When selecting an email client, consider the essential features you rely on in your daily workflow. For example, if you frequently communicate across different time zones, having email scheduling and snoozing capabilities is advantageous. If you manage multiple email accounts simultaneously, robust organization and labeling features are crucial.

Since your email client is supposed to optimize your productivity and streamline your efficiency, you should also explore solutions with advanced add-on support and third-party integrations.

An email client’s user interface should be intuitively designed to provide a user-friendly experience and ensure accessibility for users of varying skill levels. A well-designed, minimalistic interface can reduce eye strain, which is especially significant if you spend considerable time emailing. An intuitive and straightforward design enables users to swiftly locate the desired features and organize emails effortlessly.

Your email client should be a tool that actively helps you reclaim your time and focus; that’s why it’s crucial to choose the one that prioritizes workflow automation and efficiency. 

Much of traditional email management typically involves a host of repetitive, time-consuming tasks that not only eat up your day but also divide your attention, making it harder to concentrate on high-value work. For instance, working with most mainstream email providers like Outlook, Gmail, or Yahoo requires consistently:

• Sifting through emails to identify urgent requests, important information, and routine messages

• Jumping between email, calendar, task management apps, and other tools to manage communication and tasks

• Writing replies and rewriting similar responses for different inquiries, contexts, and clients

Choose an email client actively seeking to combat these challenges by incorporating intelligent features that automate these processes and speed up your workflow. Preferably, your email client should offer AI-powered filtering tools and AI-assisted email composition—automated scheduling features are also a plus. 

These tools help you free up time and mental energy to focus on crucial, creative work and ensure better results. 

Keep reading: Want to explore some less popular email provider options? Discover the best alternatives to Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.

Based on the above criteria, here are the top three email clients for Mac:

1. Apple Mail

2. Microsoft Outlook

3. Notion Mail

Apple Mail provides a reliable email experience for users within the Apple ecosystem. While it may lack some advanced features and customization options, Apple Mail offers solid performance, strong email management capabilities, and tight integration with other Apple services.

Apple Mail offers a simple email experience, providing users with a clean interface and intuitive navigation. It includes essential features for managing emails, such as the “Rules” function, which allows for some level of automated organization.

This popular email provider incorporates modern AI-powered functions like intelligent sorting, which can be helpful for automatically managing incoming messages. That said, while sufficient for basic personal use, Apple Mail’s efficiency can become a concern for complex business workflows or high volumes of emails.

Some users find its automation features less robust for demanding professional environments, noting that the Rules feature sometimes becomes cumbersome and slows down the application when dealing with large inboxes.

Furthermore, even though its AI-powered intelligent sorting helps with email clutter, some users prefer a less rigid AI categorization system. They want full control over their inbox customization for better personalization.

Apple Mail offers a user-friendly interface with a clean design and intuitive layout, making navigation, email composition, and account management straightforward. Its interface maintains consistency with other Apple applications, ensuring a familiar user experience for Apple ecosystem users.

The client provides a solid set of features for managing emails and integrates with other Apple services, such as Calendar and Contacts, allowing for a seamless workflow. However, its integration with non-Apple productivity tools is less robust, and larger inboxes may also take longer to load. 

Apple Mail, being the built-in email client on macOS devices, comes free of charge for Mac users and does not require additional purchases or subscriptions.

Explore further: Discover the top alternatives to Apple Mail and find out how it stacks up against Microsoft Outlook. 

Microsoft Outlook for Mac is a feature-rich email client offering comprehensive tools for managing emails, calendars, contacts, and tasks. It has a familiar user interface consistent with the Windows version, providing a seamless email experience to Mac users.

Microsoft Outlook for Mac provides a comprehensive email management system with features and functions that cater to the needs of professionals. It has folders, allowing email organization into distinct areas (projects, clients, etc.), so you can segment your inbox quickly. For a hands-off approach to workflow, it offers powerful automation known as Rules to help you filter emails into your preferred categories. 

However, the time-consuming setup and maintenance process, plus the need for careful configuration to ensure smooth operation, can impact efficiency. 

Outlook is excellent for task prioritization, with its flagging system and priority assignments (High, Normal, and Low) enabling you to focus on urgent items. For efficiency and cohesiveness, the email client also has Conversation view, designed to group related emails in a thread, allowing you to quickly catch up on correspondence. 

That said, some users have complained that threads get broken, making it difficult to follow the flow of communication.

Keep reading: Learn the difference between Microsoft 365 and Outlook and see how they compare.

Outlook’s interface is not as straightforward as some of its competitors. The default three-panel view, often cluttered with icons and buttons, can make the platform a bit difficult to navigate, and the lack of compartmentalization can make it hard to locate specific features.

Despite the complexity, Outlook for Mac seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft services, such as OneDrive and Teams, allowing for streamlined collaboration and enhanced productivity. While Outlook is a Microsoft product, it integrates well with other Apple services. Outlook also enables you to effortlessly switch between your Mac and iPhone. 

Microsoft’s native Outlook for Mac app is free for macOS users on the App Store. The client’s free version features ads, but you can upgrade to a paid, ad-free tier.

Outlook for Mac is available as part of the Microsoft 365 subscription, which comes with various pricing tiers depending on the user's needs. The paid tiers provide access to advanced Outlook features and services, such as a personalized email address, advanced security, an ad-free interface, and premium support.

The pricing for individuals goes as follows:

1. Microsoft 365 Family package: $12.99/month

2. Microsoft 365 Personal subscription: $9.99/month

3. Office Home & Student: One-time purchase set at $149.99

The pricing for businesses goes as follows:

1. Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $6 per user/month

2. Microsoft 365 Business Standard: $12.50 per user/month

3. Microsoft 365 Business Premium: $22 per user/month

4. Microsoft 365 Business Apps for business: $8.25 per user/month

Notion Mail is designed to revolutionize how you manage your email on Mac. It’s engineered to be a productivity powerhouse, streamlining your workflow by leveraging AI. With its highly customizable interface, Notion Mail tackles the inefficiencies that often plague traditional email clients. 

Notion Mail significantly enhances your workflow efficiency with its intelligent, AI-native features. These features improve your inbox, making it smarter by automating the tedious tasks that typically consume your time. 

To boost your productivity, Notion Mail offers AI-powered automation tools like the AI autopilot feature. It automates tasks like sorting, email prioritization, and email summarization to free you from manual inbox management. You can set up autopilot to automatically categorize all emails from a specific client into a project label or summarize lengthy email threads to grasp key info.

Notion Mail also offers AI-assisted email composition, helping you draft emails faster with suggested replies and speed up your response time using reusable snippets. For instance, you can create snippets for common customer inquiries or updates, allowing you to insert pre-written drafts with one click. 

Scheduling meetings becomes seamless with Notion Calendar integration. Notion Mail automates the process and helps you avoid scheduling conflicts, eliminating the frustrating back-and-forth. For example, you can use the /schedule command to quickly propose meeting times within an email, allowing recipients to select their preferred option directly.

Notion Mail’s interface is modern and minimalistic. Built on the familiar Notion-style editor, it’s easy to learn and navigate, regardless of your tech skill level or the complexity of your workflows. All the features are laid out intuitively, allowing you to maximize productivity and efficiency.

Notion Mail enables you to create “inboxes within an inbox,” allowing you to tailor your email display to your specific needs and workflows. This means you’re not limited to a single, rigid inbox layout. You can create views that prioritize the information you need, minimize distractions, and promote efficient task management. 

For power users, Notion Mail can integrate fully with Notion’s productivity suite, including docs, wikis, and projects, enabling a cohesive workspace. You can easily link emails to relevant projects in Notion or even create tasks from messages without switching applications. 

Other than macOS, Notion Mail supports other operating systems like iOS, Android, and Windows, so you can access your email from anywhere, whether at your desk or on the go. It’s worth mentioning that Notion Mail is an exclusive Gmail client, which means you need to sign up with a Gmail or Google account to access your inbox.

Notion Mail is free and offers advanced features upon signing up. If you want to automate your inbox even further, you can purchase the Notion AI add-on. 

When choosing the ideal email client for your Mac, it ultimately comes down to your specific needs. If you’re looking for a smart, automated, and streamlined email experience, Notion Mail stands out. With AI-powered inbox organization and task automation, this email client offers a modern solution designed to boost productivity and minimize email overload.

Getting started is straightforward—all you need to do is visit the signup page and connect your Gmail or Google account.

Bonus read: Interested in learning how other popular email services compare? Check out these unbiased reviews:

• Best Proton Mail alternatives

• Gmail vs. Apple Mail

• Business Gmail vs. personal Gmail

• Ymail vs. Gmail

• Gmail app alternative

• Best alternatives to Zoho Mail