Email plays a critical role in most people's Mac workflow. It's thus essential to have an email client that suits your needs and helps you work through your numerous email tasks efficiently.

Luckily, there's a range of options available for macOS. Here are the best email apps for your Mac.

1. Apple Mail

Apple Mail on Mac

Your Mac comes preinstalled with Apple's own email client, simply called Mail. Apple Mail is a feature-rich and responsive home for your inbox. It offers a standard set of features that's sufficient for most users.

The app has a common two-window design, spam filters, and timely notifications. Best of all, it's already available on your computer. You don't have to download anything, learn a new system, or pay for a subscription.

Apple Mail is an ideal email solution if you're also an iPhone user. You can seamlessly import media from your phone and continue writing drafts you left incomplete.

However, Apple Mail can feel archaic in places and has a rigid interface you can't customize per your preferences. Plus, it's not updated as often as the other options on this list, and lacks smart utilities. As such, you might want to log out of Mail and switch to something else.

2. Spark

Spark is for people who are constantly fed up with their overflowing inbox. This popular Mac email app groups your emails into various sections like Personal and Newsletters so that you can easily sift through them. More importantly, it has a clean look that doesn't get cluttered even when working with hundreds of messages.

In addition, Spark houses a multitude of other intelligent features that let you email like a pro. It can remind you to follow up, snooze emails for later, create templates for emails you send out regularly, schedule messages, and more.

Another highlight of Spark is its collaboration options. If you work in a team, you can delegate emails to a colleague, edit a draft together in real-time, and chat with them right inside the email app.

If you like, you can also personalize Spark to your wishes. Find the design overwhelming due to its many features? Switch some of them off. If you find a particular sidebar useless, just hide it.

Spark is even compatible with third-party integrations. This means you can connect Pocket to save links, or use Todoist to add emails as tasks.

Download: Spark (Free)

3. Airmail

Airmail mac

You could describe AirMail as a more responsive and seamless form of Apple Mail. It augments the simple aesthetic with a series of under-the-hood and user-facing improvements. The app brings all your email accounts under a single roof and doesn't bog you down with superficial additions.

AirMail allows you to turn emails into to-dos and memos so you can keep tabs on important messages that require a response. You can directly attach files from cloud storage platforms, such as Google Drive and Dropbox. You'll also find a minimal mode that retracts Airmail into a mobile-like, vertical window.

The app hosts nearly every major feature you'd expect, including the ability to snooze emails, keyboard shortcuts, and offline access.

Airmail's efficiency comes at a price, however, as it charges a one-time fee of $27. But it may be worth the cost if speed matters the most to you.

Download: Airmail ($26.99)

4. Spike

Spike email app

Spike is built on the idea of conversational email. The app transforms your inbox into something resembling an instant messaging app, allowing you to interact with your email threads like chats.

On the left, you have a list of your messages. When you click one, Spike launches a chat window on the right which shows its content and every other email you've exchanged with the sender in the past. There's a reply box at the bottom accompanied by attachment and emoji buttons---similar to a messaging app.

Spike can sort your emails based on common subject lines, senders, or in chronological order as usual. Apart from that, you can schedule and snooze emails, switch themes, create calendar entries, and more. Teams on Spike have the option to chat and video/voice call their colleagues as well.

Spike is free for personal accounts with under 100,000 messages. For businesses, the app carries a monthly price per user.

Download: Spike (Free, subscription required for business accounts)

5. Canary Mail

Canary mail inbox Mac app

Canary Mail puts security above everything else. You can choose to protect your emails with end-to-end encryption, which means neither Canary Mail nor the service provider will be able to read them. However, for this to work, the recipient has to be a Canary Mail user too. You can send regular non-encrypted emails to those who aren't.

Other than that, Canary Mail is filled to the brim with handy features. The apps come with a design that is both visually appealing and functional.

Canary's AI-based system learns your preferences and automatically highlights the emails it thinks are most important to you. On top of this, there's natural language search, snooze options, templates, and a one-click unsubscribe button for spam.

Download: Canary Mail ($19.99)

6. Mailplane

Mailplane universal search emails Mac app

Google offers a vast collection of tools with Gmail that you won't find on other clients. You can send self-destructing emails, enable two-factor verification for each message, quickly reply with automated suggestions, and more. Gmail's Smart Compose feature takes a lot of work out of composing new emails. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn't have a desktop app.

Enter Mailplane, a third-party Mac app that brings Gmail to your desktop. Mailplane is essentially a web wrapper for Gmail's web app. But it adds optimizations and a bunch of exclusive functions to make it feel more like a native client.

For starters, you have access to a universal search. It lets you look up emails from all your Gmail accounts in a single place. Mailplane also bundles a built-in annotation tool and quick-reply button for notifications.

Further, Mailplane comes with a Mac menu bar widget, which displays unread messages. Unlike a few other Gmail web wrappers, Mailplane supports a few popular Chrome extensions such as Grammarly and Boomerang.

Mailplane is not your only option for using the Gmail web app on your Mac. Check out these handy macOS apps that bring Gmail to your desktop.

Download: Mailplane ($29.95, free trial available)

Get the Best Email Experience on Your Phone Too

Your Mac is likely where you attend to most of your important emails. These apps ensure you have the right tools at your disposal to quickly get through the pile.

On the other side of the spectrum, you're no stranger to tackling emails on your phone when on-the-go. For a consistent email experience across your devices, we recommend taking a look at the best iOS email apps and the best Android email apps.