Mail user agents
Recently I've decided that I should change the way I host my email. I've moved to fastmail.fm + offlineimap + Dovecot + Mutt. I've played with a few IMAP clients and am currently back to using Mutt like I used to ten years ago.
I wondered what email clients my friends are using. I could ask them all... or I could write a program to query the London.pm and perl5-porters mailing lists for email user agents (one random email per email address) for the last year.
London.pm results
76 Gmail
29 Mutt
27 Thunderbird
22 Apple Mail
7 Alpine
6 Evolution
4 KMail
4 Gnus
3 SquirrelMail
3 Exchange
2 Unknown
2 Internet Messaging Program
2 Claws Mail
1 YahooMailRC
1 tin
1 RoundCube Webmail
1 Postbox
1 Pine
1 Opera Mail
1 Microsoft Outlook
1 LinkedIn
1 iPhone Mail
1 iPad Mail
1 Hotmail
1 Blackberry
perl5-porters results
277 RT
100 Gmail
76 Thunderbird
50 Mutt
31 Apple Mail
14 Exchange
11 Gnus
10 Evolution
8 KMail
7 Unknown
7 Alpine
6 perlthanks
4 Microsoft Outlook
4 Claws Mail
3 Opera Mail
3 Microsoft Windows Live Mail
3 A Perl smoker
2 Zimbra
2 WWW
2 Wanderlust
2 SquirrelMail
2 MIME
2 Microsoft Office Outlook
2 Internet Messaging Program
2 Google Groups
1 YahooMailWebService
1 VM
1 Thoth
1 The Bat
1 Sup
1 slrn
1 Postbox
1 perlbug-summary
1 Perl
1 Pan
1 nmh v
1 Mulberry
1 Mobile Office v
1 Microsoft Windows Mail
1 Microsoft
1 MessagingEngine
1 Loom
1 Kaiten Mail for Android
1 iPhone Mail
1 Hotmail
1 /home/nicholas/bin/summary.pl
1 Heirloom mailx
1 git
1 ELM
1 CERT
1 Becky
So it looks like Gmail, Thunderbird, Mutt and Apple Mail are in the lead. As usual with exploring data, no huge surprises. Is this about what you expected? Are there any ultraneat IMAP clients I should look at?
Léon Brocard (aka acme) is an orange-loving Perl eurohacker with many varied contributions to the Perl community, including the GraphViz module on the CPAN. YAPC::Europe was all his fault. He is still looking for a Perl Monger group he can start which begins with the letter 'D'.
I was surprised mutt had that many.