I am not interested in FairMail. I have tried it and do not like it. This is not a judgment of its value; it is just not what I personally am looking for.

I'm looking for a reliable email client that meets my needs on Android. I searched the sub and found a number of threads about this, but it largely seems to be the same suggestions over and over. This will be a somewhat long post, so I'm going to break it up into features I need, features I want, features I don't want, my issues with the options I've tried, and email clients from other platforms that I like (but aren't available on Android).

Features I need

These features are absolute must-haves; if a client doesn't support them, it is completely unworkable for me.

Support for Gmail email addresses
Support for multiple email accounts (minimum 3)
Support for rich signatures OR HTML signatures
Reliable, instant push notifications
Reasonable cost (free is ideal, of course, but I'm willing to pay a reasonable one-time fee or low subscription price if the app is worth it)
Ad-free

Features I want

These are features I can get by without, but lacking them significantly decreases my interest.

A nice, MODERN UI – I don't care if it's Material 3 Expressive or not, but I don't want it to look like something built in 2007 and hardly touched since, even if it's feature-rich.
Support for iCloud email account (instant push notifications for this account are not as important)
Support for Gmail labels
Unified inbox, ideally with an option to open this by default.
Gmail "send from"/alias support (multiple "from" addresses on one account)

Features I don't want

AI features
Inbox categories (if I can turn them off, it's fine)

Apps I've tried

Gmail: Notifications are completely unreliable. Doze mode means I don't get notified at all if my phone has been locked/screen off for more than a few minutes. Even when I'm actively using my phone, the way notifications work is confusing and stupid – when I get a new email, instead of the push notification showing the details of that email, it shows the details of the oldest email since I last cleared notifications. (So let's say I get 5 emails over an hour; when the first notification comes in, it'll be fine. When the second one comes in, the push notification shows email 1. When the third one comes in, the push notification still shows email 1. etc...). Also, it's super annoying that there's no way to set all inboxes as the "default," and that the back gesture pulls me out of all inboxes and into the specific account inbox.

Spark: Just buggy. Often times, when I'm looking at my inbox, there'll be mismatches between the sender name and the content of the email (e.g., it'll show the correct sender name for an email, but the subject line and/or preview of the email content will be from a different email). Gmail label support also doesn't seem perfectly functional yet; I recently found that a swath of emails I'd labeled in the Spark app did not show those labels on Gmail on my computer. That said, it's still one of the better options I've used.

Edison Mail (Email): Another of the better options I've used. However, the UI feels a bit dated; I can't hide the "AI" buttons; and it does not support Gmail labels.

Outlook: Apparently, hundreds of my draft emails are (for whatever reason) marked as "Unread,* and there's no way to exclude that folder from the count shown on the notification badge (this used to be an option, but apparently no more). There also doesn't seem to be any "Select All" option for me to mark all those drafts as read.

Canary: Tons of features are paywalled and they shove AI down your throat at every opportunity.

Thunderbird/K-9 Mail: Signatures can only be plain text. HTML signatures are allegedly on their roadmap, but they haven't said anything about this in months, and on their Github, it says this feature was planned to be done by December 2025...

Nine: Seems to possibly be abandonware? I wasn't even able to log in to my account; it gave me a notification that the app is blocked by Google to keep my account safe.

FairEmail: I know this is a favorite, but that UI is just...horrific. I'm sure some people appreciate it, and I'm not saying they're wrong to feel that way, but it's just not what I'm looking for. On top of that, while it is very feature-rich, it seems very un-intuitive to me; I'd rather something easier to use.

Shortwave: It seemed decent, but I'm not paying $14 PER MONTH!! to remove their self-promotion in my signature.

Aqua Mail: Charges $10/mo to add more than one account.

Email clients on other platforms I like

Mimestream: macOS/iOS email client built for Gmail exclusively. No iCloud email support, but extremely feature-rich in every other way, with a great UI. Reasonable cost, at $4.99/mo or $49.99/yr.

Apple Mail: Lacks Gmail label support, but has just about everything else I need and want, at no cost (other than using an iPhone).

Samsung Email: Pretty shocking, as there's very little I like about basically any Samsung products, but I did like their email app. Clean interface, easy to use, supports most of my features. However, it only works on Samsung devices; I tried installing the APK on my OnePlus, and the app won't launch.

Does anyone have any recommendations based on this? I know I'm being a bit picky...I can settle for Spark or Edison Mail if needed, but it's just odd to me that there are so many options that seem great, but are missing some key functionality or have some super annoying behavior (Thunderbird, Gmail, Spark, Outlook...)

u/-patrizio-

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