Is Mailmate worth the price/using?

frocco · December 27, 2021, 11:45am

Hello,
I currently use Apple Mail, but decided to try other emails like Gyazmail and Mailmate.
One think I like about Apple Mail is that you can set the junk mailbox to delete messages after a length of time.

Mailmate seems more secure to me as it warns me that download entire message will alert sender and I may not want this.

Also not sure how much support they have for Spamsieve, and scripts that Spamsieve supplies.
Thanks for any advise.

Michael_Tsai · December 27, 2021, 3:28pm

I’m not sure whether there is a way to do that with MailMate. I recommending asking them.

Apple Mail can do that, too, though I think MailMate offers more in that it can avoid warning you for trusted senders. (Though that is potentially less secure because senders can be impersonated.)

MailMate has great built-in support support for SpamSieve, so you don’t need to install any scripts.

Overall, I would say that MailMate is definitely “worth it” if you like the app, and many people do, but you would need to determine for yourself whether it’s a good fit for you.

Nick_Sloan · December 30, 2021, 2:29pm

Just chipping in as a long term MailMate user. Re your first point, yes MM does let you delete or transfer messages on any mailbox. In fact it has a far more extensive set of rules and preferences for individual mailboxes than Mail does. I believe the trial is more or less unlimited so you can play around with it before deciding. There is quite a lot to learn, but you end up (or at least I did) with a mail setup that you can tailor precisely to your needs. The search too is more sophisticated and flexible than in Mail.

Potential downsides to be aware of are that it is IMAP-only, and although it will display HTML and rich text emails, it can only send plain text/MD.

Michael_Tsai · December 30, 2021, 2:45pm

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on MailMate. I’m interested to know how to set it to do that on a schedule.

frocco · December 30, 2021, 3:50pm

Received this from Benny on how to auto delete.

It’s not a built-in feature. The best you can do is to setup a smart mailbox based on the Junk mailbox and let if have a Date-based condition, e.g., showing emails older than X days. Then add a rule to this mailbox (without any conditions) which is set to permanently delete the email. Make sure you set up this correctly since auto-deletion-errors can (obviously) lead to permanent loss of emails.

This smart mailbox will always appear empty since anything matching will be immediately deleted.

You cannot just add a date-based rule to the Junk-mailbox with the delete-action because rules are only triggered when something is “added” to a mailbox.

frocco · December 30, 2021, 3:59pm

Hello, any spam I get in the junk folder does not have a Spamsieve Score.
Have you experienced this issue?

Benny sent me this:

It’ll only appear for emails for which SpamSieve was explicitly used on that machine. It won’t work for email already in the Junk mailbox. It’s a “virtual” message value and not stored in the email itself.

But I do not understand what he means.

Michael_Tsai · December 30, 2021, 4:08pm

I think he means that no SpamSieve Score will be shown if the message was moved to Junk by SpamSieve/MailMate on another Mac or by a server junk filter.

You can use the Open Log command to see which messages SpamSieve has processed on that Mac.

frocco · December 30, 2021, 5:00pm

Thanks Michael, the log shows most of my junk email is not processed by Spamsieve if I am reading it right.
I see manual entries where I marked email that was already in the junk folder.

Must be iCloud is filtering more than I thought.
We talked about this a long time ago about the same issue.

Not sure what else if any I can do.
Still thinking it over as far as Mailmate is concerned over Apple Mail.

Nick_Sloan · December 30, 2021, 5:31pm

As Benny says, it’s a question of building a processing system using smart mailboxes and time-based rules. What MM gives you is a supremely flexible kit. For instance my junk mail is sent to Deleted after two days and Deleted mail is purged after a month. This is actioned by smart mailboxes hidden under the stairs. Another mailbox gets purged after two years, and another is sent to EagleFiler after a year. Mails are manually prioritised on arrival according to their long-term value, but not otherwise categorised, though I do use a few tags to identify special areas of interest.

billalpert · January 1, 2022, 9:24pm

I think MailMate is fantastic, but after using it a while I returned to Apple Mail. As far as I know it’s the only mail app that supports the system Power Nap on the Mac. That’s useful, since my main workstation is powered on 24-7 and it functions as my mail server, even when I’ve put it to sleep. When I power up the computer for a day’s work, Mail is up to date. Even SpamSieve appears to keep working. I think this limitation within all mail programs except Apple’s is likely imposed by Apple itself.

frocco · January 2, 2022, 1:08pm

That’s interesting, I only have a Macbook Air to run Spamsieve on.
So I have it set to not sleep.
I recently tried the drone setup, not happy that I can no longer use touch id because of the drone settings.

I have been bouncing back and forth between Mailmate and Apple Mail which seems to have more support because of Apple Scripts.

Maybe icloud is stopping spam better because Spamsieve is really not doing anything as far as I can tell.

Mailmate still does not show the Spamsieve score, which is pushing me more towards Apple Mail.

Michael_Tsai · January 2, 2022, 1:35pm

Could you explain this further? The drone setup should work fine with Touch ID.

frocco · January 2, 2022, 2:07pm

Under Users & Groups
For login items, I added Mail and Mailmate

I thought I read in the drone instructions, that this needed to be done.
upon adding, I was warned that this would disable touch id for login.

frocco · January 2, 2022, 3:09pm

This optional step will hopefully keep SpamSieve running if there’s a power failure while you’re away from your drone Mac. Open System Preferences. In the Users & Groups pane, set Mail or Outlook as a login item for your account. Under Login Options, enable automatic login. In the Energy Saver pane, set it to Restart automatically after a power failure. (This option is not available on all Macs.)

Michael_Tsai · January 2, 2022, 3:49pm

I don’t think this is specifically related to Touch ID. Whether or not you are using Touch ID, it means that your Mac will auto-reboot and log in so that your apps keep running after a power failure. You can still use Touch ID to unlock the screen, authenticate for administrator privileges, etc. It’s also fine to leave the option unchecked, in which case filtering will simply stop if your Mac loses power.

frocco · January 2, 2022, 8:11pm

MIchael, if I enable automatic login, I get this warning.

Turning on automatic login will disable Touch ID and remove any Apple Pay cards from this Mac

Michael_Tsai · January 2, 2022, 8:33pm

I’m not sure why it’s saying that, but I would suggest that you simply not use automatic login. I don’t think it works with newer T2 Macs that have encrypted storage, anyway.

frocco · January 2, 2022, 8:45pm

Thanks Michael, that sounds like a good idea.
I removed it.

hseiden · January 18, 2022, 4:44pm

Licensing is $50, but incudes the caveat/restriction that it’s per user not peer machine per se, so it can be installed in any multiple machines that you may be a user on. So basically $50.

It’d be nice if they gave a discount of some kind for simply trying its free trial, but I don’t think it’s currently offered that way.

Benny (the author) is a very smart individual and the program has a lot of features (read, perhaps a large learning curve). The good news however, compared to Mail- its stable, IMAP only (or Google Mail standards which it specially includes) and without the quirks in Mail.app (Apple Mail) that give me trouble.

So I’m evaluating it.

One thing to let you know here with SpamSieve integration and the Drone setup, I haven’t found a way to integrate any SpamSieve activity (scoring visibility) when using the Drone set up on a server into the client. It’d be nice if the Spam score showed when replying to a message, but it doesn’t. That’s pretty picky though as the functionality of Drone operation is fine on any machine when you’re running MailMate on a client machine or not.

hseiden · January 18, 2022, 5:00pm

You have the answer from Michael on SpamSieve integration, which I haven’t tried there since I’m using the drone set up.

However, these are my initial opinions so far of the good and bds aspects (there’s nothing ‘ugly’ about) MailMate:
Good

Rock solid app, runs fine on release version of Monterey (12.1 (21C52). There is a beta version that conforms to later beta versions and the author says it’s release will be current when 12.2 is released.
Setup of accounts is smooth and precise.
Basic operations seem standardized to functions in IMAP Servers. All the way to invisible mailboxes and using them in nifty ways.
Full support of HTML and markup, in both signatures and content (body of email).

Needs work (whether on my part or developer):

Published Manual details of the less obvious features is not apparent or even revealed.
No discounts/coupons/upgrade shown.
Working with Signatures is cumbersome. No import/export or bulk copy/past from previous clients.