Claws Mail

About

Claws Mail is a free and open-source email client and news reader, built on GTK+, offering a lightweight and privacy-focused solution for Windows, Linux, and BSD platforms. Its comprehensive product portfolio includes an integrated email client with IMAP support, an address book, and a news reader for NNTP and Usenet Newsgroups. Key features encompass customizability, plugin extensibility, multiple account support, a spam filter, offline functionality, no registration, portability, dark mode, GPG encryption, and content filtering, though some users note the lack of a built-in calendar. Positioned as a high-performance alternative to heavier clients like Mozilla Thunderbird, Postbox, and Evolution, Claws Mail is lauded for its minimal memory footprint (typically 12-40 MB). While praised for its speed and system tray minimization, users occasionally report a dated interface, manual setup requirements for mail accounts, limited HTML support (e.g., for inserting pictures), and isolated issues such as freezing during email sending on Windows or column display problems on Linux. Despite these quirks, it maintains a dedicated user base, with many having used it for over a decade, valuing its reliability for core email and RSS tasks.