Comparing Email Programs for the Small Business

We have hundreds of emails generated every week with customer pre and post sale questions.  In order to manage the volumes of email the right email software for the job will make a big difference on your productivity.  We have tried Micorosoft’s Outlook, Poco System’s PocoMail, and Qualcomm’s Eudora email programs.  Here is what we liked and didn’t like about each one. 

Microsoft Outlook has the post it note idea for automated reply messages. It is clumsy to access and the auto-complete will work through the spell checker and has a limit how long of a message you can use with this shortcut.  I do not recommend using macro enabled email due to the ease of virus infection through a macro. 

We kind of gave up on Microsoft Outlook when it crashed out after either it had a virus get through the html based email.  The virus checker support for Outlook has no problems and seemed to be easily installed.  Once Microsoft Outlook crashed, it never would open the program and reinstalling it still caused it to crash out.  That is when we tried PocoMail.

The PocoMail has some really great features, but we had so many crashes with the combination of using a virus checker that we had to abandon out of frustration.  The PocoMail software has an intelligent auto-complete feature that surpasses the other email programs, but the lack of stability was just too much to be productive.  PocoMail has a feature to render out the HTML emails to avoid the viruses that are sent this way. 

PocoMail was difficult to set up with the virus checking software; we had to configure the virus checker manually through a network gateway to get it functioning.  The lack of support with the virus checking software was most likely the source of the crashing.  If you send a lot of email one after the other it would crash the whole program, and when it started up again all the email that you deleted and answered shows back up again and unread and not replied to.  PocoMail just released a new version 4.0 and we have not tried it as we abandoned ship before this version, so possibly the software has become more stable.  If the crashes get worked out PocoMail would win the email contest hands down for the configurable interface setups and features it has.

Eudora so far seems like it is good on stability.  The auto-complete function is limited just like Microsoft Outlook is also limited.  But Eudora has a signature panel that you can put all your repetitive reply email on and is easily accessible in the left window pane.  Virus checker support through this email program is working just fine and was an easy set up. 

It takes time to get used to the short cuts to switch the display screens on both the left panel and the right panels.  It is not on the same thought process like Outlook on this, but it is better and quicker when you are working with multiple windows.  Sometimes the signature panels will go to an HTML code display, which needs to be closed out and reopened again to get back the correct text display.  It would be so wonderful to have the auto-complete feature that PocoMail offers for the frequently used replies. 

I do like the automated junk mail deleting in Eudora.  It has a better report status for the sent window showing a checkmark if successful or unsuccessful.  It would be nice if the sent email would automatically move to an archive folder so that you have a daily report of what is going on without clogging the sent folder with thousands of old emails.