eM Client – Outlook replacement?

So, when your neighbor or family member decided to purchase a new PC, how long did it take for them to discover that Outlook Express is not available on Windows 7?

And when they called you to complain, what direction did you turn for a replacement email client? Thunderbird? Eudora? Windows Live Mail? something else? Well, there are pros and cons to each of the above alternatives.

ENTER EM CLIENT!

A fellow MVP’er recently suggested that I take a look at eM Client. And I must admit, I’m quite impressed with it at first glance.

PLEASE NOTE:

eM Client does not interface with Exchange. Second, eM Client has both a free and Pro (paid) version. The free version is more than suitable for the family member or neighbor you might have in mind.

GO AHEAD AND INSTALL IT!

1. Yes, go ahead and download and run the eM Client install utility. It runs on both Windows 7 & 8.
2. Click to Agree to the EULA, and click to Install.
3. Once installed, decide whether to make eM Client your default mail application, and then click Finish.
   

CONFIGURING IT IS EASY!

1. When eM Client starts up the first time, you can select which theme to use. I went with the default Modern theme. Click Next.
   
2. You can then choose whether to import email accounts and data from either Microsoft Outlook or Windows Live Mail, or you can select to Skip Import, which is what I did on my computer, and then click Next. However, I installed eM Client on another computer that has Outlook 2007, and the import feature brought over both the data and email settings.
   
3. You can choose to let it do an Automatic Setup, by entering your email address and password. Or you can click on the Mail option and set things up manually. eM Client includes support for Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL, as well as standard POP3 or IMAP mail accounts.
   
4. For my first test, I created a new email address on one of my web sites, with a mail server that supports both POP3 and IMAP. From the eM Client window, I entered my email address and password, clicked a couple of buttons, and voila! we are up and running.
   

EM CLIENT FEATURES

You can read the long list of features for yourself from the eM Client website. I’ll just point out three things right now:

1. The first feature is that it looks like Outlook (without the Ribbon Line)!
   
2. The second feature is that I imported an email account with a default PST file nearly 7GB in size, plus an archive PST file over 4GB in size, and it all imported fine – mail, calendar, contacts and tasks!
3. The third feature I like is that eM Client includes a built in backup utility, that can be configured and runs via Windows Task Scheduler. Yes, no big deal to most of us, but it sure is a nice feature for my neighbor!