Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is an email client with useful productivity features such as calendar and task management.

It supports connecting to various types of email accounts, including Exchange, Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Likewise, it lets you share files as attachments from various cloud storage services.

The application has a streamlined modern interface. It is easy to navigate thanks to the availability of three different ribbons: Home, Organize and Tools. Just like all email clients, the most important element is the mailbox. In this respect, it lets you keep local copies of your emails, which means that you can continue to access them in offline mode. There is a feature called Focused Inbox that lets you discriminate the most important messages from the rest. Unfortunately, it does not seem to support a unified inbox for all your accounts.

Another convenient feature is the @mentions, which is intended to get a given person’s attention by highlighting their names. Likewise, there is the possibility to filter out those messages that mention your name. The good news is that you can keep track of the messages you send by requesting to receive delivery and read receipts.

In terms of collaboration features, it is excellent that Microsoft Outlook lets you create groups. Moreover, groups can be public or private, depending on the level of privacy you want. This feature helps you share conversations and events with all the members of a group. Likewise, you can create shared calendars with the possibility of setting different access permissions.

All in all, Microsoft Outlook can undoubtedly help you increase your productivity by allowing to manage messages, events and tasks from a single application. However, there are downsides as well. First, Microsoft Outlook is intended for professional rather than personal use. So, for your daily mail, you may find it too loaded with unneeded features. On top of that, the product needs an Office subscription, which makes it a rather expensive alternative for emailing.