Readers may remember that 18 months or so ago I wrote in glowing terms about an email application, MailMate. For me, it struck a perfect balance between the geeky tweakability of something like Mutt, but with a friendly GUI face. Unfortunately, difficulties with HTML emails that needed to be forwarded on at work meant that I had to revert to Apple’s Mail. Since then, work email has got even less flexible, and we are now restricted to accessing it via an Exchange server only¹. For a while, in an attempt to simplify, I used Mail.app for both my work and personal email. Eventually, I realised that it was silly not to use my favourite email software where I was able to, just because I couldn’t use it everywhere. Not to mention the fact that I need some balance for the horrible Exchange situation. Now I use MailMate exclusively for my personal email, and Mail for work email. In many ways, it makes it easier to separate my work and home life, and to mentally disconnect from work in my free time.

I bring up the subject of MailMate again because Benny Kjær Nielsen (the developer of MailMate) has launched a crowd funding campaign to fund development on version 2 of MailMate. I meant to link to this before now, because I think it’s a project well worth backing, but a few very busy weeks at work and a broken boiler got in the way, and I didn’t get around to it. In any case, the fundraising target was reached quite soon after launch. Nevertheless, any additional contributions will extend the time that Benny can spend working on the application (at least another month per $5000). I was very happy to contribute: MailMate has improved amazingly since I wrote my review back in 2012, and I can’t wait to see what MailMate 2.0 brings. If you’re curious too, this review is a great primer on MailMate’s current distinctive features.