Think Linux email clients can’t find a balance between aesthetics and functionality? Want a professional-looking email client with professional features? Well, Mailspring is my go-to free and open source (FOSS) email client that combines sleek design with powerful features!
Why Mailspring Is My Favorite Email App
When I say Mailspring is my favorite email app and not Thunderbird, I’m not claiming Mailspring is better than Thunderbird—because “better” would mean Mailspring can do everything Thunderbird can and then some more. That isn’t the case, and Thunderbird is the more feature-rich alternative.
However, Mailspring can do a few things that Thunderbird can’t. It brings a different set of features and priorities to the table, and I personally just align better with what it has to offer—which essentially boils down to the following five features.
Modern Design with Theming Support
Mailspring is hands down one of the most sleek-looking FOSS email clients out there—offering a clean, polished design that just looks modern! Everything from the padding and margins to the font style looks thoughtfully crafted. It lays out a lot of information (which I’ll go into later), but it does that with a level of minimalism that I just can’t help but love!
Let’s start with its default four-column layout. You have your email folders like Inbox and Sent Items in the leftmost panel, followed by the list of emails in the selected folder, then the email preview, and finally, the rightmost panel displays information about the sender along with a list of previous email exchanges.
The layout feels intuitive and information-dense without being too overwhelming. However, if it feels like too much, you can easily change it by heading into Edit > Preferences. You can adjust how many panels you want and also split them vertically or horizontally.
Also, if you find the default theme a bit too bright and blue, you can switch to a different theme by heading into Edit > Change Theme. By default, Mailspring offers six themes. I particularly like Darkside, especially on Ubuntu—those make the app feel like a native part of the operating system. You can also install community themes from GitHub or even make your own theme using this tool—though it does require some coding know-how.
Link Tracking and Pixel Tracking (Read Receipt) Support
These are the main features that set Mailspring apart from other desktop email clients. Usually, these functionalities are reserved for professional email marketing software, and the fact that we’re getting them in a consumer-level tool is just brilliant!
When writing an email, you can simply press a button to enable link tracking or pixel tracking or both for that specific email. Link tracking does exactly what it sounds like—if you include a link in your email and the recipient clicks it, you’ll get a notification. Meanwhile, pixel tracking is essentially stealthy read-receipts—you’ll get a notification when someone opens your email.
These features can be genuinely useful in professional contexts. For example, when sending emails for job interviews, knowing whether they saw your message gives you actionable information about when to send a follow-up. The same applies to sending support emails—you can gauge whether your message was received and act accordingly.
Now, this is a freemium feature! At the time of writing, the free plan gives you five uses (could change in the future) for link tracking and pixel tracking per week. You can get unlimited tracking by upgrading to Mailspring Pro for $8 per month. Personally, I stick with the free plan since I don’t need tracking on every email!
In some places, like the EU under GDPR, email tracking is illegal without explicit permission from the recipient. If you live in these areas, or your recipient does, only use these features after obtaining the necessary permissions.
Detailed Email Analytics
Beyond basic tracking, Mailspring provides a comprehensive analytics dashboard that gives you insights into your email performance. You can see not only how many emails you received and when but detailed metrics about your sent emails—how many you sent, how many of them were opened, and how many got replies!
If you’re sending a significant volume of emails, the analytics can even show you which subject lines and templates (you can create email templates with Mailspring) perform better—giving you data-driven insights into what gets read more often!
While these features are technically geared toward marketing use cases, they’re valuable for non-marketers too! For example, if you’re job hunting, you get data on how many of your emails are being opened and replied to, helping you understand if the problem is your subject lines or the message content.
Snooze Emails, Set Reminders, and Send Later
Mailspring includes three clever productivity features that help you stay on top of your important emails: snoozing, reminders, and send later! The snooze feature lets you tell Mailspring to remind you about a specific email at a specified time. It’s perfect for those moments when you receive a long newsletter or detailed email that you want to read, but not right then, and also don’t want it lost in your inbox.
The reminder feature does the same thing but for the emails you send out. It lets you set a reminder to revisit the email if you didn’t receive a reply within a specified timeframe. Let’s say you sent an invoice to a client and want to follow up if you don’t receive acknowledgment within a week. This option ensures you won’t forget!
Finally, the send later feature—which is particularly useful with all the analytics you have at your disposal. You can check what times a particular recipient generally opens your emails and then specify Mailspring to send that email at precisely that time. This can dramatically increase your open rates!
In-App Email Translations
Mailspring also supports in-app translation, which is a surprisingly handy feature that saves you from the hassle of copying an email, opening a browser, and heading to Google Translate to understand what it says. Mailspring handles the translations right inside the app—you just hit a button and the email is automatically translated. This feature is particularly useful if you work with international clients or receive newsletters from foreign sources. At the time of writing, there’s support for about 100 languages.
How to Install and Set Up Mailspring
If you like all the features Mailspring has to offer and want to install it, you can do so as a Snap package. This means Ubuntu users can directly install it from the App Store—just search for “Mailspring.
On other distros, if you have Snap installed, you can just as easily install it using this command:
sudo snap install mailspring
Now, if you dislike Snaps, it’s also available as a Flatpak. You can install it using this command (provided you have Flatpak already set up):
flatpak install flathub com.getmailspring.Mailspring
You can also visit Mailspring’s official website and download it as a DEB or RPM package, but I’d advise against that. Those packages don’t auto-update, meaning you’ll need to manually download and install new versions when they’re released, which becomes a real hassle over time.
Once installed, launching Mailspring will prompt you to create a new Mailspring account. This is essentially a user registration process—you’re not creating a new “user@mailspring.com” email address—and it’s completely optional. It’s only necessary if you want to use the Mailspring-specific features like read receipts and link tracking. Also, the email account you use to create your Mailspring ID is purely for creating a new account with Mailspring and won’t get added to the email client.
Next, you’ll connect your email accounts to the Mailspring client so it can display all your inboxes and emails. It supports all the popular email services like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo and gives you an easy point-and-click interface to quickly connect the client with your email account. Alternatively, if you’re using custom domains, you can manually configure IMAP and SMTP settings as well. I’ve personally used both options and they work flawlessly!
After following these setup steps, Mailspring will take a few seconds to maybe a minute to load all your emails. You can add more email accounts from File > Add Account.
Mailspring might not be as customizable or feature-rich as Thunderbird, but it offers a specific blend of simplicity and professionalism that I’m sure will appeal to many of you!