Why You Might Want An Email Manager App That You Don’t Really Need

When it comes to Mac apps, it’s a “different strokes for different folks” world. Take email. Please.

If there’s an app we love to hate and are forced to use it’s any email app on the Mac. Through the years Apple’s Mail apps has grown up, matured, and obviated the need for nearly any other kind of email app, regardless of features.

That makes using MailboxManager all the more problematic in an email infested world, even for Mac users who have dozens of email accounts.

MailboxManager is not an email app. It’s a utility which simply checks your email accounts so you can see what’s there, delete, forward, or “manage” before you download the messages into another email app.

On the surface, this sounds like a good idea. Why clutter up Mail on your Mac when you can pre-fetch messages, delete what you don’t want, forward or redirect other messages?

Using the built-in POP email protocol, you can view a list of all the messages in a particular account (multiple accounts can be viewed by the pop down menu, one at a time), and then decide what to do with each.

Sounds reasonable, no?

No. It’s not.

Why bother with pre-fetching email messages in the first place? Do you save time? No. Is it less effort? No. For all of what sounds reasonable and plausible, for most Mac users, MailboxManager is a solution looking for a problem.

Apple’s Mail does a good job of managing multiple email accounts using the IMAP protocol which can leave messages on the email server, but allow you to view and perform whatever management functions you need.