Looking for an alternative to your email client
Five pages for people who already pay for something and are wondering what else exists. Each one says what leaving would cost you, and each one names the other options.
- MissiveMissive is a good product that charges per person for a collaboration suite
- FrontFront is built for support organisations and priced accordingly
- SparkSpark is a well-made native application
- MailbirdMailbird’s licence covers one user on up to three devices
- HiverHiver’s strength is that nobody leaves Gmail
What these pages are for
An “alternative to X” page is usually a sales pitch wearing a question mark. These are written to a narrower brief: quote what X publishes about itself, with the page and the date; say plainly what you would lose; and list the other alternatives, including the free ones and the ones that are better than Mailbind for a particular job.
The migration section is the same on every page because the migration really is the same, and it is the best argument for trying anything: your mail lives at your provider, both products read it over IMAP, and running two clients on one mailbox is normal. Nothing is cut over, so nothing has to be undone.
Three questions that decide it faster than a feature list
- Are you paying per person for a problem that is really per mailbox? Missive, Front and Hiver all charge per user; Mailbind’s Pro plan is flat for one person with any number of mailboxes.
- Are all your addresses at one provider? If they are at Google, a Gmail layer like Hiver is the least disruptive option. If they are scattered across hosts, only a client that speaks plain IMAP can treat them alike.
- Do you need a support desk or an inbox? Tickets, SLAs, a help centre and CSAT are a different product from a mailbox, and no amount of inbox will substitute for them.
What Mailbind is, in one paragraph
A web email client for people with several mailboxes. It connects to any IMAP and SMTP account, shows them in one list, and sends a reply from the mailbox that received the message. Free for two mailboxes; €12 a month flat for unlimited mailboxes and the AI features; €14 a month per member for shared inboxes. Published in the European Union by a French sole trader, with no VAT added to the price.
What it is not: a support desk, a chat tool, a calendar, a CRM, a native desktop application or free software. Every page in this family says so, and three of the five tell you when to stay where you are.
And the free options
Before paying anyone, two things are worth half an hour. Thunderbird is free, open source and donation-funded, runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, has a unified inbox and keeps everything on your own machine. And your provider’s own webmail is genuinely fine for one address.
Mailbind’s own free plan is in that spirit: two mailboxes, every feature except the AI and the team ones, no card and no trial clock. If two mailboxes is all you have, it stays free.
Common questions
Do I have to migrate my mail?
No. Mailbind connects to your existing mailboxes over IMAP, so nothing moves. Disconnecting deletes Mailbind's copy and leaves your mail exactly where it was.
Can I run two email clients at once?
Yes. Two IMAP clients on one mailbox is a normal arrangement, which is what makes a week-long trial safe.
Which of these is cheapest?
Thunderbird, at nothing. Among the paid ones it depends on whether your cost grows with people or with mailboxes — each page works through the arithmetic with the other product's published figures.
Are these pages impartial?
No, they are ours. They are checkable instead: every competitor fact links to the page it came from and carries the date it was read.
Keep reading
The trial that costs nothing
Two mailboxes, no card, and your current client stays installed.
Start freeFree plan, two mailboxes, no card.
Page updated October 29, 2026