# Claws Mail

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Claws Mail and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free desktop email client that people trust with multigigabyte inboxes, praising its speed and light footprint. Critics say it has bugs and a non-native look on Windows.

## Why people recommend it

- Handles multigigabyte inboxes well (2 comments): "Claws-mail has all my email for over 15 years. My inbox is several gigabytes in size, which claws handles flawlessly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515998)) "Native desktop app, lightweight, extremely fast, able to handle multigigabyte inboxes for breakfast." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619541))
- Lightweight, fast native desktop app (2 comments): "Native desktop app, lightweight, extremely fast, able to handle multigigabyte inboxes for breakfast." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619541)) "Compact, efficient, to the point." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47143854))
- Seen as a sensible traditional client (4 comments): "There are X frontends to NMH like Sylpheed or claws. They make sense." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354162)) "Clawsand SeaMonkey both have a more reasonable design." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141341)) "Seamonkey or claws mifht be good alternatives too." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704542))

## What people warn about

- Bugs and unreadable emails reported (2 comments): "it has enough bugs that I didn't even find it usable, nevermind reliable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124892)) "Literally less than half of my emails were readable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619951))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Mozilla Thunderbird](https://hackerapproved.com/p/thunderbird.md): 210 recommend
- [Microsoft Outlook](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-outlook.md): 117 recommend
- [Apple Mail](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-mail.md): 57 recommend
- [Penguin Mail](https://hackerapproved.com/p/penguin-mail.md): 14 recommend
- [GNOME Evolution](https://hackerapproved.com/p/evolution.md): 13 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Claws Mail", https://hackerapproved.com/p/claws-mail/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).