How many email apps are there for Mac users? The names will sound very familiar.

There’s Apple’s Mail in OS X. There’s Microsoft’s Entourage in Office (soon to be Outlook). There’s Mozilla’s free Thunderbird and a half dozen spinoffs. And a few geeky email apps for Mac users with more esoteric needs. What if your email app requirements are simplicity and not bells and whistles? What are the basic features you must have?

Email That’s Actually Easy To Use

To be brutally frank, I don’t think there’s an email app for the Mac that I have not tried and I don’t really prefer any of them. The aforementioned or these:

Postbox. Eudora. PowerMail. MailForge. Mailsmith.

See? Already that’s more email apps than you thought available to Mac users. All are decent, a few have a price tag, many are free. All of them do email and come with an assorted set of features, both greater and different than Apple’s Mail.

Let me introduce you to a thinking different email app for the Mac. GyazMail. At first, GyazMail seems like Apple’s Mail, but isn’t as cluttered and complex, yet it has the basic features most of us expect.

First, GyazMail runs multiple accounts, because most of us have multiple email accounts. The main window can be displayed at two or three panes, displays HTML messages, works with SpamSieve for junk mail, has Rules and Filters for incoming messages.

All the basic email types are supported, too, including POP3, SMTP, and IMAP. Surprisingly, keyboard shortcuts are customizable. GyazMail also has built-in email address auto completion, and unlike some of the competing email apps, can import email from Mail and the standard unix mailbox format.

What more do you need?

Behind the scenes GyazMail also supports SSL and TLS plus iPv6 (future proofed) and auto syncs with Apple’s built-in Address Book. That’s about it. Oh, you can send messages in batches, and some templates are available, and so is search and folders for organization.

GyazMail probably balances simplicity (truly easy to set up and use) with basic features we need, but with a slightly different look and feel. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Apple’s Mail, but sometimes we have a need-to-be-different itch that needs scratching.