Mailplane: Gmail on your Desktop

Posted by Jacob Schulman on 12/26/07 in Internet, Utilities, Web

Logo Although Apple’s Mail.app seems to be a big selling point for Leopard, I’ve never really been fully sold on computer-based e-mail clients. There are just so many good online options that offer more storage, more features, and to me, a greater ease of use. I’m a big fan of Gmail, Google’s excellent free e-mail service, however, using Gmail through Mail.app seems to me a little clunky and not as smooth as I’d like it to be.

Enter Mailplane, the excellent desktop client for Gmail. With this lightweight app you can make Gmail your default e-mail program and you never have to deal with Mail.app again. With a couple of simple clicks, you can have Mailplane become your default client and the functionality it adds to Gmail is just awesome.

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Although you could make yourself a desktop Gmail client with the previously mentioned Fluid, there are just too many great features integrated into Mailplane to let it slip by unrecognized. The most obvious is that it is an actual program; you can set your Mac to use it as a default program for all mailto links. Also, you can manage multiple Gmail accounts with the app. Mailplane also supports Growl notifications of new messages. However, the integration doesn’t stop there. Mailplane features a media browser that is very similar to that of Mail.app and also integrates into the iLife apps (i.e. an “Email” button in iPhoto ‘08).

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Another useful feature that you don’t get with the online version of Gmail is drag and drop functionality for attachments. To attach a file you just drag the file onto the window and Mailplane will either add it to the current e-mail or open a new mail page.

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In beta for almost 8 months, Mailplane has matured into a very slick little desktop e-mail client. It provides the best of both worlds: desktop functionality and online convenience. There are still a plethora of things that I’d like to see in future versions. For example, how about some way to integrate with Gdrive, the unofficial way to use some of your Gmail storage space as an offsite backup option? Also, what about a companion program for Google Calendar that can work both online and off?

Mailplane is nearing the end of its beta period, which ends officially on December 31, 2007 as does the nice $5 Beta user discount. After that time, Mailplane will cost $24.95 and is available from uncomplex gmbh.

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16 Comment(s)

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MB-switcher said on

December 26th, 2007 at 6:09 am

I personally don’t see the big advantage of mailplane ever since gmail offers free IMAP access. I thought this app was slick also (when gmail only had pop3) but now I rather prefer apple mail over mailplane

Josh said on

December 26th, 2007 at 7:03 am

Sure, Mail.app with IMAP-ified Gmail is okay… but nothing (yet) beats Gmail’s “conversation” view, and of course Mailplane retains that! (I simply can’t bear my inbox without Conversation view anymore, and no, Mail.app’s “Threaded” view doesn’t cut the mustard.)

Another unmentioned-but-nice benefit of it’s integration with OS X… is that it works with your OS X Address Book. You can’t do that with Gmail’s webmail page. Very slick. MailPlane is kinda the best of all worlds, really.

That said, I’m a happy user of MailPlane.

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MB-switcher said on

December 26th, 2007 at 7:48 am

the conversation view truly is something I miss…
however, the integration of mail in os x is a whole lot better in my opinion and for my needs I def. need offline message viewing.
when gmail in combination with mailplane can offer that I will probably switch in an instant.

Jean Jacques said on

December 26th, 2007 at 8:59 am

You better black out your email address in that third image, or you’ll get spammed for life (it’s beneath that “starting…” window..)

Josh said on

December 26th, 2007 at 9:11 am

dude, spammers are not scouring macapper’s images for email addresses. there are millions out there in plaintext. lay off the crack.

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Gevorg Harutyunyan said on

December 26th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

Please vote here http://gmailrulz.blogspot.com

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Jacob Schulman said on

December 26th, 2007 at 12:57 pm

Where’d I leave it out? I thought I got them all

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MacMailRules said on

December 26th, 2007 at 1:42 pm

Gmail is great, but the interface sucks - which makes Mailplane’s interface suck equally. I really don’t get it, you prefer to look at the nasty HTML-style interface of Gmail over Mac Mail? Weird. And Mailplane is no different than using Gmail in Safari - it’s just in a different wrapper. Give me a break. This app is totally LAME!

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Gevorg Harutyunyan said on

December 26th, 2007 at 1:46 pm

I can not say same, because I love Gmail Web Interface very very much.

Simply The Best :D

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Britonius said on

December 26th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

Obviously mail interfaces are a personal preference. I do like Gmail’s interface, especially the conversation view. I also like the Firefox add-on called Better Gmail 2 for several reasons but one is so that I can have expandable labels. I wished Mailplane would provide that functionality in addition to the others great features mentioned here. I also would like to see if allow offline viewing as someone mentioned it does not do that as well as a companion app for Google calendar with offline viewing as well. I will definitely check this application out further.

Does anyone know the memory usage difference in using Mailplane rather than using a Safari window?

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Jeff said on

December 29th, 2007 at 1:43 pm

I love Mailplane for it’s simplicity in letting me quickly switch between multiple GMail accounts (used for different business and personal).

Seba said on

January 18th, 2008 at 2:17 am

I have some things to say.. I been working on web developement about 10 years and to be honest I do love gmail performance, however, it is terribly ugly!!…People.. honestly.. IT IS UGLY… have anyone of the people who do like the interface tried the Yahoo mail?? The new version.. it is MUCH better than gmail. Even calendar and contacts are far better (not to mention that in some countries like yahoo.es. you have imap support and also you can siync with your palm and ipaq for free.. I used this functions arround 2003…many years ago) Even the performance now is similar to gmail and the spam filter also good… this is only one example of free and good web mail. Probably there are other.

There are also other good mail clients which have imap support and also are similar to mac MAIL app.. for example thunderbird, or Netscape mail (very popular arround 1998_2000)… and maybe you don’t know but they DO have a conversation view, is like a news thread… which I also used to love.

So I just tried to say that I DO love the Ideals and Values that google represent of free quality software for the world. But to be honest they are not the best in user interface… they maybe popular since the google search was much better than any other at one point… but now they have not enhanced greatly their software interfaces although they have incredible amount of resources and workers all around the globe.

And please, to those guys that may say “So you use yahoo, this is why you criticize google”… I DO use Google Apps.. my domain is in google, i have accounts for my family..(because they are free) but for this reason I found so many flaws compared to other systems that I complain … I truly want google improve their applications. This is why the discussion should be objective, with knowledge of what you are saying not just because you like it or it is popular.

Therefore, for me mailplane it is nothing compared to other (free) clients.

Thanks

Britonius said on

January 18th, 2008 at 11:02 am

@Seba: Why do you see the need in belittling us because you don’t care for Gmail or MailPlane. I happen to think Gmail is beautiful as it is very simplistic and to the point, not bloated like Yahoo. As I said before it is a personal preference, and just because you have done web development for 10 years does not make you an expert of what others may like. I have done web development for 14 years and started out hosting our web from Officevision/PROFS, if you even have a clue what that is, but it still does not make me an expert on what others may like in an interface. You have to ask people what they like not tell them what they like. Plus if you want to go down the expert road I have been supporting email systems from PROFS to CC:Mail to MS Exchange to Lotus Notes for major corporations for 15 years and I have seen and tried out almost all of the email clients out there, and I am still not going to say that Gmail or Mailplane or any other client is the best for any one person, but I will tell them what I like about it if they ask and then let them choose.

I do have a Yahoo account that I never use any more for Email, Contcts or Calendaring other than to use my Flickr account. I don’t like Yahoo’s interface as it is too busy, Ads are too large and get in the way, NO conversation view, no automatic refresh when new mail arrives, and the calendar sucks compared to Google’s Calendar. I like the nice simple interface of Gmail, the out of the way Ads, the auto mail refresh and especially the Conversation view. And Yahoo’s Spam filtering, compared to Gmail, sucks as well. I just sent a message from Yahoo to my Gmail and then replied with my Gmail back to Yahoo and Yahoo detected it as Spam. Do what? And when I did use Yahoo spam sucked then too, as it would constantly detect good mail as spam and bad mail as good. I very rarely have that problem with Gmail.

I also really don’t see how you think Yahoo Contacts is better, it is very plain vanilla like Gmail Contacts.

I also like Gmail Labels rather that Yahoo Folders as I can add multiple labels to my gmail emails yet I can only add an email to one folder in Yahoo.

And the best part of Gmail which was the original selling point is the search capabilities, they are awesome and Yahoo once again sucks. Not to mention if it weren’t for Gmail’s giving us multiple GB of space the others like Yahoo would still be making us pay for the large amounts and giving us almost nothing for free.

I also like the fact that Google’s calendaring is tied into Gmail and they are also tied into Google Docs (Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations) which can be read and edited online from any computer.

I also like that Google Talk is tied into Gmail and I see that Yahoo has finally tied Chat into their email client. Of course it would be nice if Yahoo as well as AOL and others would get on board with chat standards like Google has done so they can all talk together easily for once.

Any way, the point once again is personal preference and as we can see my personal preference is much different than yours. I mean it’s OK to tell people what you like about a product, but it doesn’t mean others are going to like it for those reasons or that they should like it because you have some special gift to know what is better. And it is definitely not cool to tell other people that their personal preferences are bad just because you don’t like it.

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Josh said on

January 18th, 2008 at 3:39 pm

I usually like sexy, elegant graphics on my web pages… but for some reason, email is different. I use it hundreds of times a day and I need it to be no-nonsense. Quick and utilitarian.

Gmail just works.

Best webmail out there today… hands down.

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Albertkinng said on

September 22nd, 2008 at 7:12 pm

Mailplane is an app that I would pay just .99 cents I mean, it’s almost $30 dollars for a fluid kind of app! no way. Please build a better GUI and a more friendly user experience and I pay 50 dollars, but right now it’s not that good. Sorry.

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Josh said on

September 22nd, 2008 at 7:16 pm

LOL
The previous commenter really has no clue what he’s talking about. A fluid-type app wouldn’t have:
-drag and drop for attachments
-integration with iPhoto
-keyboard shortcuts
-configurable toolbar
-menubar info with unread count badge
-ability to toggle between many Gmail accounts

Clearly, he hasn’t spent any time with the app and doesn’t know how it works or what it offers.

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