When Multiple E-Mail Accounts Make Sense

This week, Mozilla’s cross-platform e-mail client Thunderbird has been getting a lot of attention because Mozilla has announced a new subsidiary focused on it. Thunderbird is a good e-mail client, but I actually like to use several e-mail clients for various purposes–in addition to my primary use of Outlook and Gmail. On a USB key I carry around with me, I have a number of small footprint, free e-mail clients, and I’ll round up some good portable ones you can carry in this post.

QM – The Quick Mailer is a good e-mail client to have on a USB key because of the extremely small footprint it has—only 16K. You can also add QM to Windows Explorer’s Send To menu for a very fast way to e-mail files from any machine in an organized way. That’s a handy little application that I wouldn’t turn to a bulkier e-mail client for.

JBMail is another small footprint e-mail client that is great for a USB drive. At 159K it takes little space and loads instantly. It has POP3 and SMTP support, and you don’t need to install it to use it on the run. You can just load the application right from a pocket USB drive.

For Mac users, GyazMail is a free, small footprint alternative to e-mail engines such as Entourage. If you frequently work on a mobile basis, it can get you out of a jam, and it has solid security features built in. GyzMail also integrates with lots of features and the scripting in Mac OS X, so you can easily use address books with it and more.

Of course, I use Mozilla’s Thunderbird on a regular basis as well. If you haven’t tried it, it’s a solid application and if you use multiple platforms it will be flexible enough for you.

One final benefit of using multiple e-mail clients is that you can greatly reduce the amount of spam you receive in your primary e-mail accounts by using other clients when it makes sense. For example, I try out a lot of web applications that I’m not necessarily going to use later. When I sign up for them, I often like to use one of my non-primary e-mail addresses just to make sure that the addresses I care about are not on every mass e-mail list out there.
Do you use multiple e-mail clients? Do you know of any good portable clients?

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