Doxory?

kevinr has decided E-mail is hard, especially since I receive O(100) theoretically non-spam messages a day at my main account. I desperately need a good MUA -- otherwise e-mail becomes effectively worthless as a means of communication. GMail has proved the best solution to date, but I have reason to believe that I could make mutt do what I need it to do, given enough time spent tweaking my .muttrc.

Asked 4 years ago

My choice: GMail (mail lives on a server I don't control, no IMAP access, no tweaking necessary)

RedHotWings
For now... you can always change if Gmail ever does you wrong.
strawman52
If nothing else you can read the Google ads
izzycat
all real numbers are O(100). learn how to use big-O notation correctly.

jtu, jesse, nelhage, Ian, aletta, Richie, Karl, whymse, raf, peggusus, glasser, cshiley, ctsims, androidqueen, stardust9121, passioncat, erin, shadow, curious79, hawkeye, Brad, paigep, misty, PhoneticLight, mumkin, saifatlast, ChickenPotPie

mutt (mail lives on my own server, IMAP access, PGP, needs extensive configuration)

ntn
Lack of PGP is the only thing that's keeping me from gmail right now, but mutt still wins because of that.
seph
gnus!
kyrandil
really, how much do you value your time vs your privacy?
nakor
It sounds like you're at the border between what Mutt can handle and where Gnus starts being worth it.
merlin
Why not have both? Have gmail forward to your other account and vice versa...

meri, uberjay, quince, ctl, trs, lakmiseiru, srl, Yoyo, Kake, ocschwar, jake, kyoumeisha, kilroi, Lex, tibbetts, daveman692, susannah, Diane, jmorzins, alamagordo, Kitty, ZaTyrn, saul, coolworld, Schuyler, ternus, hatter, Lattyware, dha, hippybear

Skipped (with comments)

danbri
This is truly one of the great dillemas of life. Thunderbird is getting better slowly too (acquiring some notion of freeform tags, etc).
geoff
Pretend you are a normal person. Assume you aren't capable of doing anything fancy. Change the way you use mail until the tools you have work well for you. Personally, I use OS X Mail.app and imapmail.org as a host.
Mark
If (and only if) you're an emacs user, and plan to tweak massively anyway, gnus is what you want. If you like gmail, divmod/quotient might be worth a look...
photon
One of my friends redirects all his mail to gmail, then has gmail redirect his (now spam-free) mail back to his server. Ugly, but apparently works.
steev
See http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13273 You could run fetchmail on your server and use IMAP, PGP, mutt from there. running your own SMTP server may be too much of a pain for message volumes in the 10^-2 day range. This way Gmail remains a spam proxy and backup location if your server site goes down.

If you make a stupid choice because a website tells you to, it's your own damn fault.