Desktop email client as a frontend

crackhammer · 17 Jun 2018

Hello folks,

There are a few desktop email clients threads on this board. I checked a few but none discussed what I am looking for.

I have multiple email accounts. I used to use Thunderbird in the past until its database size ballooned over 6gb. Now switched to a far smaller SSD and need to watch the size being used by the email client.

All I am looking for is an email client that acts as a frontend for the webmail. I do not want it to download anything locally, just connect to the webmail required and communicate with it for the tasks involved. I tried to figure out if such setting is present in Thunderbird but whatever I tried, nothing worked so now I have just given up on that.

Hence, looking for any application that does solely this job.

Many thanks in advance.

Plankton · 17 Jun 2018

AFAIK....every email client downloads from the email server to the client end. The only way to avoid this is to use a web-based email service like Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook.com and others. Here are some other's.....

10 of the Best Free Webmail Services SitePoint

dalchina · 17 Jun 2018

You could configure your accounts not to delete messages from the server and set up a mail rule to delete messages in Tbird that are older than x days.

That way you can continue to use Tbird.

Poppeeper can what you want that (free/commercial). It's not a full-featured email client, but you can configure each email address (I have mine set up so they are linked to Spamihilator to filter rubbish).

It can scan multiple email accounts in a couple of seconds, let you view headers or the whole email, and reply (e.g. using Thunderbird if you wish).

It's tray resident, and can be set to periodically scan for new mail and indicate via the tray icon etc.

I use it as an email front end, and reply (using Tbird) and delete emails. Any email then remaining that I may wish to retain (I don't download it from the server at this stage) I eventually receive via Tbird where it's sorted by mail rules.

You could choose to simply leave mail on the server, or delete it from the server.

I have emails going back a good number of years - a LOT - total 5.35Gb, on a 2nd disk on my laptop.

Plankton · 17 Jun 2018

dalchina said:

Poppeeper can do that (free/commercial). It's not a full-featured email client, but you can configure each email address (I have mine set up so they are linked to Spamihilator to filter rubbish).

It can scan multiple email accounts in a couple of seconds, let you view headers or the whole email, and reply (e.g. using Thunderbird if you wish).

It's tray resident, and can be set to periodically scan for new mail and indicate via the tray icon etc.

I use it as an email front end, and reply (using Tbird) and delete emails. Any email then remaining that I may wish to retain (I don't download it from the server at this stage) I eventually receive via Tbird where it's sorted by mail rules.

You could choose to simply leave mail on the server, or delete it from the server.

I have emails going back a good number of years - a LOT - total 5.35Gb, on a 2nd disk on my laptop.

Very cool...I'll be checking this out myself. You learn something new every day.