It's been so long since I used Thunderbird that I'm not sure. I don't know if Thunderbird has things like the Focus Pane, where I can live-filter my Inbox down to just certain topics or certain senders. It feels a bit like OmniFocus or a GTD / Getting Things Done workflow:
The killer app for me is the Postbox 4 feature to file a message in a folder just by pressing the V keyboard shortcut. Postbox then shows an Alfred/Spotlight-like "quick bar" with autocomplete - so just by typing "V GER" I can file an email in my "German Lessons" subfolder without ever taking my hands off the keyboard. They have a similar feature for automatically entering responses with a couple of keystrokes:
(I also like that Postbox prompts if it detects the word "attached" and you forget to add the attachment, but I assume most email clients have that now.)
- Expression search addon to filter/search the inbox.
- Nostalgy addon for moving mail (and navigating the mailbox only with the keyboard). This addon is basically required for serious usage. Just press b and a popup shows up and allows you tochoose folder with autocomplete.
It looks like this http://i.imgur.com/qYheafo.png
I took a look, and it does seem many of Postbox's features are renditions of Thunderbird addons, just with a slicker UI. Nostalgy has clearly been a big influence, and possibly Expression (though both are inspired by Gmail). I haven't found an addon for the focus sidebar, but I bet that's out there too.
My only issue is that during the years I used Thunderbird (pre Postbox) & exploring the addons, I never even knew about Nostalgy or Expression. For me, it's worth $20 for someone to design a pre-loaded Thunderbird with the best addons & make it part of the default UI & support docs. I would have easily taken $20+ of billable time just to discover & decide between the TB QuickMove and Quick Folder Move addons.
[But I'm really glad Thunderbird can do this, now I can recommend Nostalgy & TB to folks who don't want to pay for an email program.]
http://www.softwarecrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/postb...
The killer app for me is the Postbox 4 feature to file a message in a folder just by pressing the V keyboard shortcut. Postbox then shows an Alfred/Spotlight-like "quick bar" with autocomplete - so just by typing "V GER" I can file an email in my "German Lessons" subfolder without ever taking my hands off the keyboard. They have a similar feature for automatically entering responses with a couple of keystrokes:
https://www.postbox-inc.com/blog/entry/postbox-4-quick-bar
(I also like that Postbox prompts if it detects the word "attached" and you forget to add the attachment, but I assume most email clients have that now.)