Are Thunderbird, Zimbra Desktop best alternate to Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook?

We all have our own experiences of using the Microsoft Proprietary Desktop Email Clients. This post highlight some of the key issues that occur in the popular Desktop Email Clients provided by Microsoft – Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook. These issues are so bigger and severe that users are forced to change to other available alternatives to Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook.

Here are some of the reasons – Why you will leave Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook for an alternate Desktop Email Client like Thunderbird, Zimbra Desktop etc.

Problems that occur with both email clients

1. First and obvious one is that it provides no (or very less) value for money as compared to open source (free) email clients like Thunderbird, Zimbra Desktop etc. Which provides almost same (and better) functionality.
2. Both can not handle a large number of emails. There are performance issues with both of them on having thousands of emails in inbox or other folders.
3. Searching email from thousands of emails become impossible.
4. DLL files issues are very common.
5. Portability becomes a issue in case of upgradation and migrations.
6. Add-ins also some time becomes reason for frequent crashes.

Problems that occur in Outlook Express

Outlook express suffers from a variety of issues, which makes it less favorite Desktop Email Client. Some of the common issues are:

1. On having thousands of emails, outlook express gives you different kinds of errors, does not function properly and behave in an erratic manner like –
   1. It goes very slow.
   2. It gives error – “Outlook Express did not shut down correctly.”.
   3. FIND Function fails to find messages.
   4. You can not open many messages simultaneously.
   5. It takes several minutes/hours to compact the .IDX inbox and other boxes file that outlook express uses to store emails.
   6. Outlook Express fails to start.
2. Other errors can be:
   1. Outlook starts downloading but it stops always in the same E-mail
   2. Outlook keeps downloading the same E-mails over and over
   3. Outlook Express just “sits there” or gives a Server time out error
   4. It cannot find server

Problems that occur in Microsoft Outlook

Similarly Microsoft Outlook have some common issues, which makes it difficult to use and some of them are:

1. It maintains a single .PST file for storing all types of messages and folders, that can corrupt all data in case of a crash.
2. It also have performance issues when number of emails grows to thousands.
3. It goes very slow and moving around messages becomes a mess.
4. Searching becomes headache, does not find relevant messages.

So what’s the solution

Solution is simple. Just switch to an Open Source (FREE)  Desktop Email Clients like ThunderBird, Zimbra Desktop Email Clients and there are lots more.