I’m handling more and more email lately and Apple Mail has started to really suck. It’s mail database is corrupt and I can’t search messages anymore. There’s weird read / unread issues in folders and other misc. issues with SMTP servers. I love Outlook 2007 for Windows but Entourage 2008 also doesn’t really work for me. Since I’m a Google Apps Premiere user, it made sense to use the web interface for a while but then I wanted something more powerful.

Along comes Mailplane. Justine Ezarik raved about it in a blog post last year and I’m well aware of her email volume so surely it will work for me.

Mailplane is free for 30 days with every feature turned on. I believe it’s only 30 dollars after that. I’ve been using it for 2 weeks now and there’s no going back to web based email or Apple’s mail. I could use Outlook 2007 but I want a native client that I can just open up without having to open up VMWare Fusion and start Vista.

Basically, it’s an application that uses Webkit to load Gmail or Google Apps and automatically logs in for you. Then, you can use Gmail just like you did before but now there’s a toolbar that interacts with the website to make it easier to reply, forward, star or delete mail. There are tons of functions and best of all, it’s an application on its own so there’s no worries if you close Safari or Firefox. It does not give you offline access to mail but is a great solution for Gmail lovers that want a little more power.

Download the Trial