eM Client vs Outlook: Which Email App Is Best for You?

Email remains an essential communication tool, but managing an overflowing inbox can negatively impact your productivity and add unnecessary stress to your workday. The right email client can help you take control by organizing your messages, filtering out spam and junk, and enhancing your workflow with integrated tools. Two of the most popular and full-featured options are eM Client for Windows and Mac, and Microsoft Outlook, which is available on more platforms. In this in-depth comparison, we‘ll evaluate eM Client vs Outlook in terms of setup, interface, email management, security, integrations, and value to help you determine which one is the best fit for your needs.

Getting Started

Both eM Client and Outlook aim to make the setup process quick and painless so you can start accessing your email without frustration. When you first launch eM Client, it walks you through a simple step-by-step process of choosing a theme, entering your email address and password, and configuring optional settings like email encryption, avatars, and which integrated productivity features you want to enable. While straightforward, there are quite a few steps involved compared to other email apps.

Outlook has one of the most streamlined setup experiences. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, it can automatically pull in your account details without even asking for your email address. After confirming the email address to use, everything else is configured in the background and you‘re ready to go. It‘s extremely fast and easy.

Winner: Outlook has the edge with its super simple setup, though eM Client‘s process is also quite user-friendly despite involving more steps.

User Interface & Customization

At first glance, eM Client and Outlook have a similar look and feel. Both offer a contemporary design with an optional dark mode and some interface customization through themes. However, eM Client embraces more of a clean, minimal style while Outlook has a busier interface with more icons, menus and its signature ribbon bar.

eM Client‘s approach puts more focus on your core workflow of going through emails quickly and efficiently. Helpful features like the ability to snooze messages to temporarily remove them from your inbox until a later time, and schedule emails to be sent later, are easily accessible. By default, eM Client displays your inbox and a preview of the selected email, with other tools like Calendar and Tasks available from a button bar at the bottom of the window.

In comparison, Outlook‘s interface packs in a lot more functionality upfront, with buttons for creating new emails, calendar events, contacts, and tasks prominently displayed in the ribbon bar. On one hand, this puts more power at your fingertips, but it can also feel cluttered and overwhelming if you just want to focus on email. However, Outlook is much more customizable overall, especially through its vast library of add-ins that can add new features, change the look and feel, and integrate with third-party services.

Winner: Tie. eM Client will appeal to those who prefer a clean, streamlined interface, while Outlook is more customizable and better for power users who want a lot of features and integrations a click away.

Email Organization & Management

Robust tools for organizing and finding emails are critical when you‘re dealing with a constant influx of new messages on top of years of archives. Both eM Client and Outlook support folders for organizing messages by topic or priority, tags/categories and flags for adding context and highlighting important items, and rules that automatically sort incoming emails based on criteria you define.

With eM Client, you can set up rules that look at factors like whether the email is incoming or outgoing, words in the subject line or message body, and more to determine if the message should be moved to a folder, junked, or tagged. Outlook supports even more advanced criteria and actions in its rules, letting you do things like forwarding messages, replying automatically, playing sounds or displaying alert messages.

When it comes to finding specific emails later, both apps offer powerful search capabilities. You can easily search by sender, subject, or keywords, or construct more complex queries, such as only unread messages with attachments received in the last week. Outlook has a slight edge here with its Advanced Search feature that provides a visual interface for building intricate searches. However, eM Client lets you quickly save any search as a Search Folder that acts as a dynamic view updating with new matching emails.

Winner: Outlook‘s email organization and search features are a bit more robust and flexible overall, but both are highly capable for managing a high volume of messages.

Security & Privacy

Protecting your email from spam, phishing attempts, malware and prying eyes is crucial. eM Client and Outlook both contain junk mail filters that analyze incoming messages and automatically sequester suspected spam in a separate folder. You can train the filters over time by manually marking any spam that slips through or legitimate emails that were flagged incorrectly.

To protect your privacy, both apps also block remote images by default. Many marketing emails and spam contain small tracking pixels that report back to the sender when you‘ve opened a message. Blocking these remote images prevents senders from knowing you opened the email. You can always choose to display the images on a per-message basis for trusted senders.

One security advantage of eM Client is that it supports end-to-end encryption of your emails using the OpenPGP standard. When enabled, you can digitally sign and encrypt messages so that only the intended recipient can read them, and verify the authenticity of emails you receive. Outlook only supports encryption for some Microsoft 365 subscribers using Windows, and relies on less-compatible Microsoft protocols.

Winner: eM Client. While both offer spam protection and privacy features, eM Client‘s open encryption support gives it the advantage.

Integrated Apps & Tools

For many, email is the central hub of their digital work life. So it‘s helpful to have other productivity tools close at hand. eM Client includes a calendar for managing your schedule, a contact manager, task list, and notes. You can view these modules individually or displayed in a side panel while reading your email. While fairly basic compared to standalone alternatives, they cover essential features like recurring appointments, contact groups, subtasks and syncing with cloud services like iCloud and Google.

Outlook has long prided itself on being more than just an email app. Its built-in calendar, contacts, and tasks are more robust than eM Client‘s, with support for advanced features like meeting scheduling with availability lookup, task assignments and status tracking. More importantly, these tools are tightly integrated with the rest of the Microsoft Office ecosystem, enabling online collaboration through Microsoft 365.

Thanks to its extensibility model, Outlook also boasts integrations with hundreds of third-party productivity services through add-ins. You can link your Outlook calendar and contacts to Salesforce, project management tools like Asana, customer support platforms, and much more to customize Outlook as the central hub of your workflow.

Winner: Outlook has the clear lead when it comes to integrated features and extensibility. While eM Client‘s built-in tools are useful for basic needs, Outlook offers more power, better cross-app integration, and a huge variety of add-ins.

Pricing & Value

eM Client technically has a free tier, but it‘s very limited, with a maximum of two email accounts, no VIP support, and certain advanced features disabled. To unlock the full potential of the app, you‘ll need the Pro version, which costs $49.95 as a one-time purchase or $119.95 for a lifetime license with ongoing upgrades. Volume discounts are available for businesses.

Microsoft Outlook is available as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription ($69.99/year for individuals, $99.99/year for families), or as a standalone purchase for $139.99. The subscription route makes the most sense if you also plan to use other Office apps like Word and Excel, and want cloud storage and collaboration features. But if you just need the email client, the one-time purchase may be more cost-effective in the long run.

Winner: eM Client offers a lower entry price, while Outlook may be the better deal if you already plan to use Microsoft 365.

Final Verdict

Both eM Client and Outlook are highly capable, professional-grade email apps for Windows and Mac. They share many of the same core features: support for multiple accounts, junk mail filtering, email organization tools, integrated calendars and contacts, and more. But they differ in their approach and priorities.

eM Client‘s clean, focused interface makes it great for people who spend most of their time triaging their inbox and want a highly productive email experience without a lot of distractions. Its open PGP encryption support is also appealing for security-conscious users. However, it falls short on mobile apps and integrations with other tools.

Outlook is the more powerful overall package, especially for those already in the Microsoft ecosystem. Its organization, search, and extensibility features are top-notch and you can customize the experience to your liking. The main downsides are the cluttered interface and lack of encryption options for some users.

Ultimately, the "best" option comes down to your specific needs and preferences. But you can‘t go wrong with either of these full-featured email heavyweights. Considering eM Client offers a free trial and Outlook may already be part of your Office subscription, it‘s worth taking them both for a spin to see which one fits into your workflow better.

If neither one quite feels like the perfect fit, we have other recommendations in our roundups of the best email clients for Windows and best email apps for Mac.