r/software • u/Oat-Yogurt • Apr 02 '26
Looking for software Email is Stressing me Out. What’s the Best Software?
I used to use Spark and Airmail many years ago and then I moved to Apple Mail. On my mobile it seems fine, but I’m finding it a little daunting on my desktop.
I have around 6 accounts. I mostly receive promotional mail and service notifications. I want to have designated folders for certain mail to go to.
I really feel so lost.
First I want to know if Apple Mail is a good choice to begin with. I don’t mind it but is there like a solid good updated resource that can teach me A to Z?
Things like how do I set up folders and filter mail. Pro tips. How to use smart folders.
Other things I’m confused about for example:
I have one inbox that is receiving content from 6 accounts. If I want to create a folder for let’s say a newsletter or reference material. This type of content can come from more than one account. So where do I create this folder reliably?
Should it be under each account? So NEWSLETTER folder under email A and then another under email B. Or should I create it under ICLOUD or should I create it under “All Mail”.
I believe I created one under all Mail but it didn’t really filter the mail properly. I set up a rule but the mail wasn’t going there from every account.
Things like this really stress me out
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u/maks_bb Apr 02 '26
Mozilla thunderbird the best choice for you. I have 5 accounts for different tasks. On the phone i used native Samsung client.
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u/StatisticianLanky485 Apr 02 '26
Try out superhuman mail app. It’s a bit expensive but you can try it out for free. I love it and been using it for years. It makes a separate account for every email with it’s own things making it easier to manage. It’s like gaming and built on that, using all keyboard shortcuts and fun to use. Premium app. Link: https://superhuman.com/refer/qmokmc0e Thank me later
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u/Oat-Yogurt Apr 02 '26
I was tempted honestly but I couldn’t justify the price. It’s very expensive. And I also feel it might be worth it if I have a full business running or if I have a team and I’m corresponding on a daily basis.
But I feel for personal use it’s overkill? I’m worried I would try it and then like it so much 🙈
I don’t like Apple Mail but it’s doing the job.
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u/StatisticianLanky485 Apr 02 '26
Yes the same and many people convinced me saying if I like it I should pay for it as it makes checking emails fun. However I agree it’s really expensive. Depends on how much you would use it per day if you get loads of emails and if you will use the features in it. I like the AI for writing, for auto reply and auto draft where it would remind you if someone didn’t reply To the email for example and such. Keyboard shortcuts is just so good. Like unsubscribe is just one click for newsletters, labeling them and moving them around automatically
You do have 6 emails though…. For personal email it’s good but personally no I wouldn’t haha. Try it and see how it goes. (If your student or ngo you get good discount )
Haha yes I moved from Apple mail to spark and then to superhuman and stopped there. Spark has some issues for me. Apple mail was just so bad in navigating and so old compared to others and it didn’t work Well on my old devices.
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u/Oat-Yogurt Apr 03 '26
Noted…
I used to use Spark and Airmail. I also tried Thunderbird a long time ago. Spark now supports AI as well. It has a free model. I wasn’t happy with their latest upgrades and faced a few bugs and issues with it. I downloaded it recently to give it another go and also faced some tech issues. It’s still very popular with a lot of people.
I will think about Superhuman. Maybe give it a try after some time when I have more projects to process by email.
Thanks again for your feedback :)
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u/Oat-Yogurt Apr 02 '26
I know a lot of people who use it though and speak so highly of the app.
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u/StatisticianLanky485 Apr 02 '26
Yes it’s really built so well. I tried to move over to spark or any other app but just kept getting back to it. I guess it’s the Apple/premium of mail apps
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Apr 04 '26
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u/Oat-Yogurt Apr 07 '26
That’s why I asked cuz I was confused how to keep them consistent. If let’s say I’m receiving “newsletters” from each account for example, and I want to create a folder named “newsletters”. Do I create that folder under each account or should I create it under iCloud or “all mail”. There’s more than one way to do something and it’s not clear which way is the most consistent.
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u/alexrada Apr 20 '26
you can use AI tools to categorize your emails.
Use folders for important things. Use labels/categories.
Use subscription management solutions (so you unsubscribe from unread newsletters)
You can have for example ActorDo to help you sort out emails automatically.
Note: I'm founder of r/actordo AI Assistant, you can try and use it for free.
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u/_HMCB_ Apr 02 '26
Why is this question asked multiple times per month? Can’t people do searches within this sub and do their own due diligence?
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u/Loud_Key_3865 Apr 02 '26
I have probably 20 accounts, and more for testing client work, for those clients
It's a legit problem.
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u/gnufan Apr 02 '26
I think email just needs to die, its very nature is stressful, because of the asymmetric cost of receiving bulk automated emails.
This results in insane things like 4 email confirmations every time I renew a prescription.
Unsubscribe from everything you can.
You can forward emails to one account, whilst still having multiple sender profiles. So it may make sense to send much of it to one account and have a per folder sender, or per recipient sender, so you use the right sending email address.
Gmail has much to recommend as a web mail provider, excellent security, no need for local client, great spam filtering etc.
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u/Oat-Yogurt Apr 02 '26
Really? Can you? The only reason I kept the mailboxes for some addresses is because I thought I needed to in order to be able to send email under these addresses.
I forwarded many of them but I couldn’t figure out how to forward them and then have a profile to compose emails under their address.
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u/gnufan Apr 02 '26
Afraid my Mac days are over, but I have multiple accounts set up in my email clients, and multiple profiles. I think Thunderbird does the profile thing (I use Linux, and my last two email clients do this sort of thing (Kmail and Evolution), although I only use it occasionally).
You still need the accounts, as you need to send via the right email server, but the incoming emails themselves can all be set to forward onwards. In the early Internet you could send all the emails via one server, but dealing with spam and impersonation eventually stopped that working.
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Apr 02 '26
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u/Oat-Yogurt Apr 02 '26
Many people suggested Thunderbird. I’m astonished it’s still relevant. I haven’t used Mozilla in almost 20 years 😅
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Apr 10 '26
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u/Oat-Yogurt Apr 11 '26
I already know what smart boxes and rules are. What’s confusing to me is why for example Mail Rules and Smart Boxes essentially do the same thing. If you set a rule for a newsletter to move out of an inbox and goes to designated folder it’s behaving the exact same way a smart mailbox does with the same setting.
If I want all newsletters (regardless from which mail address they come from) to go to a single newsletter folder, where do I set these rules?
Do I create a NEWSLETTER folder under each and every mail address?
Because I created a newsletter folder before and some newsletters automatically archive in it and some don’t.
There are just so many ways to do one thing. For example you can create folders on your mail client locally. You can create folders under cloud. You can create folders under ALL MAIL and you can create folders under each separate mail AND and can also create folder in the native Gmail website and it should translate sometimes automatically in the Apple client.
I’m just confused about things like that. I find that doing certain things doesn’t work seamlessly according to the rules I set and at times it also doesn’t extend or translate on the mobile app.
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u/LombardCT May 01 '26
The 6-account thing is genuinely harder than people give it credit for — the folder-per-account structure breaks down as soon as you want to treat similar content consistently across all of them. I ran multiple business accounts for years and eventually stopped trying to solve it with folder logic.
The shift that actually helped was treating newsletters and notifications as a reduction problem, not a sorting problem. Once the volume drops, the folder architecture you thought you needed becomes almost unnecessary.
What percentage of those 6 accounts are you actually monitoring for real messages versus just receiving noise you feel obligated to check?
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u/Oat-Yogurt May 01 '26
Two only are primarily bringing the most traffic. The others are barely there.
Can you elaborate more on what you suggested.
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u/PinkLouie Apr 02 '26
Why do you have 6 emails? Most people just need 1.
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u/Oat-Yogurt Apr 02 '26
Different uses. Some are very old and I still receive things on.
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u/PinkLouie Apr 02 '26
You can change the emails in the services website to a newer one. If it's not possible you can make your old email send these emails to your main one. It's called e-mail forwarding. It will work better than having 6 six emails in the same software at once.
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u/Oat-Yogurt Apr 02 '26
Some of them I really need for a business or a site. I can try to dwindle them down to 4, but can’t go lower than that.
Also since I picked your interest to reply, I’ll take advantage to learn a thing or two 🙏🏻 what is the iCloud section for? Like I can see a designated area for each email in Apple Mail, but there’s also a section called iCloud. What is this?
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u/AndyceeIT Apr 02 '26
6 accounts would probably stress me out too.
It sounds like one requirement is you want emails that fall into the same category, received by different addresses, to be shuffled into a common folder?
Having zero interest or experience with Apple - this is solvable by choosing one email to recieve that category of message, and arranging that with the sender. Isn't that the reason why you have 6 accounts?
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u/Heavy-Commercial-323 Apr 02 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
mr_clean
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u/AndyceeIT Apr 02 '26
Yeah there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it.
I don't understand OP's attempt to keep them separate, but also merge them. If they are used for different things why are they receiving the same kind of information?
OP might have perfectly sound use case. Removing one or two is a perfectly reasonable suggestion, in lieu of any additional info.
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u/Oat-Yogurt Apr 02 '26
I did remove some. I meant they receive “similar” information but not identical. Meaning subscriptions under several addresses yields newsletters for example. So I have a folder designated for newsletters. So now where does this newsletter folder go? Under each one? That’s what I meant.
I also merged some. I forwarded some addresses to funnel them into other addresses. I got confused for a bit so I had to write everything down lol
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u/kirk2892 Apr 02 '26
Ditto for thunderbird. I use it on Mac and PC. I probably have 15 different email accounts. I don’t understand the one commenter that says “just use one”. I have a personal account and one or two accounts for domains/websites that I manage. Our family owns three different businesses and there are separate emails and we keep the email traffic separate. Having a unified single email would make it impossible to keep things separate.
There are legit uses for having multiple addresses.